Life of Bry

Originally Published: August 25, 2019

Writing has been many things throughout my life. It’s been a fun way to pass time and an escape from reality, a way to express my emotions and a job that made me money. It’s also been a chore and the absolute bane of my existence. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am a writer. That has been a major part of my identity since my mom somehow taught three-year-old me how to write because I insisted on doing homework with my five older siblings. 

I used to write short stories as a kid, and then I went on to study journalism in college. I wrote for the Pittsburgh Penguins’ website and I wrote for Duquesne University’s student-led newspaper The Duquesne Duke. Even now I’m writing a book in my free time and desperately trying to keep writing on this blog.

However, as much as I adore writing, I also absolutely despise it. 

I hate it because I so often find myself staring at my screen at a blank document or tapping my pen against a sheet of paper. For me, it’s a moment of panic, because I feel like I had so many ideas just moments before beginning the writing journey and suddenly they’re all gone. I can sense the anxiety rising from my stomach into my chest and just wish for something — anything — to come to me. 

Most people call this writer’s block, which, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, is “a psychological inhibition preventing a writer from proceeding with a piece.” 

Writer’s block is a myth. There’s nothing psychically preventing said writer from completing or starting their task. I don’t think anybody in this century would disagree with the notion that this block is truly mental. 

To put it crudely, it’s an excuse. 

It’s an excuse to not write at all; to not sit at your desk with your pen in hand, waiting for the right words to start flowing. It’s a way to make not writing justifiable in your own mind. It’s telling yourself, “Oh, I want to write, but I physically cannot because I have a disorder.” 

It’s an excuse made up to make us feel better about being unproductive. And I am 100% guilty of using this excuse. I believe everyone has used it during their lives.

In fact, I was using before starting this very post. I had an entirely different topic in mind for this week’s post, but just didn’t want to take the time and effort to research. 

So, I sat at my desk, scrolling through Twitter and telling myself that my writer’s block will pass. That’s when I began wondering what writer’s block is and why every literate human being has claimed to be afflicted by it. 

What I found was nearly 27 million search results on Google with tips on how to “cure” writer’s block and why it’s a myth.

However, I did stumble across a very interesting article from The New Yorker called “Blocked”. The author discussed the origin of writer’s block and addressed why it’s a made-up disorder. It’s a fantastic read, and you can find it here. 

But if you don’t want to take the time to read the whole article, I want to point out some fascinating cases the author presented with some of my own research.

First up is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an 18th century poet who helped found the Romantic Movement in England. He produced his most acclaimed work in his mid-twenties and spent the remainder of his life addicted to opium because he insisted he was disabled due to an intense case of writer’s block (even though that term didn’t exist at the time).

A 34-year-old Coleridge wrote in his journal, “so completely has a whole year passed, with scarcely the fruits of a month.—O Sorrow and Shame … I have done nothing!”

In the 20th century, Edmond Wilson, an American writer and critic, released “The Wound and the Bow” in 1941, a series of essays reintroducing the Greek idea that creative intelligence and disease go hand in hand. His theory was that writers who no longer are capable of writing pieces had something mentally wrong.

Wilson worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was a prime case of creative burnout and writer’s block. 

By the time Fitzgerald was 23, he had already published his best works. The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and the Damned and This Side of Paradise earned him great wealth and popularity, however, Tender is the Night failed, spiraling Fitzgerald further into depression and alcoholism.

Fitzgerald died at 44 without finishing his last novel.

Then, a New Yorker staffer, Joseph Mitchell wrote what is noted as his best piece in 1964, but never wrote anything else. The legend is that he would go to the office every day for years after it was published but never wrote another piece.

Another famous case of what can be considered writer’s block is Harper Lee. She published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960 and never released a second novel until Go Set a Watchman hit shelves in 2015. Watchman wasn’t even a second novel per say, but a prequel to Mockingbird that Lee wrote prior to her first novel. 

In several interviews, Lee claimed that a second novel was coming, but she was slow. In fact, “Blocked” mentioned that she said she only produced a page or two a day.

After reading “Blocked” I was left with some answers and even more questions. Many of these writers suffered from actual mental illnesses and addiction. 

Throughout history, creatives have been faced with deep depressions, alcoholism, anxiety and opium addictions. So is creativity linked to mental illness? Or are all of these cases simply a minority in correlation? 

Now that’s a topic way above my area of expertise, so I’m not even going to touch it. However, it is curious that while writer’s block itself may be a fictional disorder given to procrastination and creative slumps, there may be another cause to the downfall of so many successful and attributed writers. 

Whatever it may be, I hope it stays away from me. I’ll just keep blaming writer’s block for my lack of creativity.