The naked truth about writer's block we'll hate

"I only write when I'm inspired, so I see to it that I'm inspired every morning at nine o'clock."

Peter De Vries

Yesterday while I was cradling my daughter to sleep, I played a podcast by Seth Godin called Akimbo.

(Podcasts and audiobooks are great timesavers!)

Seth talked about writer’s block, and condemned it completely.

He said that there’s no such thing like plumber’s block or engineer’s block, but people say that they’re going through writer’s block.

Having balked down repeatedly by the same sentiment, after listening to Seth's podcast, it has got clear to me that writer’s block is a clever way of saying that I’m not afraid of putting my work in public, but there’s an internal problem, beyond my reach, which is impeding me to go forth.

It’s also a smart way of saying that we’re willing to engage in hard work, but a mysterious problem of our mind is preventing us from doing so.

The naked truth though?

We're scared. Scared of being criticised, scared of leaping up, scared of doing the effort hard work requires.

Seth further cited a few authors like Isaac Asimov and Stephen King, who have said that writer’s block is the creation of our own mind – it’s a chain we choose to wear when we’re not willing to do the emotional labour we require to get our work done.

Isaac Asimov wrote more than 400 books in his life. And his mantra for being so productive was that he went to his typewriter every morning at 6 and continued to write till noon.

He didn’t permit any doubt affect his work. If it appeared to him that what he was writing was real shit, he didn’t pay it any attention.

He just wrote.

When we decide that we have to ship our work by such and such time, we automatically gear up to do the effort it requires.

Then we don’t allow writer’s block to stall our productivity.

We can feel inspired to write. We can also feel writer's block numbing our minds and freezing our fingers.

It's our decision.

Yes, if we wait for the best mood to write, it would be rare that we produce something significant. Sometimes we do get successful in writing great things with ease and in no time, and it seems that we’re bitten by some creative bug or something.

But very rarely this happens, and hoping that we get bitten by this bug every day is impractical.

And relying on this mood to come would only make us produce very little.

Real artists don’t wait for the muse or inspiration. They call the muse and make themselves inspired at their will, and get to work. Without fears, without frictions, without any mysterious problem.