Oh Doctor, is it Writer's Block?

"Writer's Block doesn't exist. Anyone who says they have 'Writer's Block' simply hasn't tried hard enough to write yet."

This is what a professor told my class once. I don't know if you're like me, but I definitely don't think he was on to something here. I don't see Writer's Block as a lack of ambition or dedication. It's not a matter of the writer not exploring every conceivable plot avenue possible. It's also not a matter of too little creativity on behalf of the artist.

For me, Writer's Block is just that, a block. I compare it to the athlete working out. When you use a muscle too much, lactic acid builds up and makes the area around the muscle swell, produces that radiating heat effect, and often causes pain or discomfort. Writer's Block is simply this, but in the creative part of the brain.

I recently struggled with a bought of Writer's Block. For the past few months, I've been working on a nonfiction piece (my first! How exciting!). I'm more than 3/4 of the way through, all the time thinking I knew exactly how the piece would progress and especially how it would end, when I got stuck. I have experienced Writer's Block before when writing my manuscripts, but those were all fiction. I thought, Writer's Block is unheard of in nonfiction since all the events actually occurred. I was wrong. In an unexpected turn, a scene I had been planning to save for later decided it needed to be written RIGHT NOW. It demanded it and I couldn't refuse because it worked so well in the space I was writing it. However, that messed up the next scene. My dilemma was: Should I still write this scene, or has it just become extraneous?

Having written most of this nonfiction piece, I had been working my creative muscle for a while. This seemingly simple decision had caused a major congestion within my creative muscle. I was blocked.

For six days, I stared at the problem. I was trying to find an answer on how to make the important parts of the yet unwritten scene work given my new addition. I reread other sections of the manuscript, revised and edited portions that I thought worked well, and then stared again at my problem section.

And I just couldn't do it anymore.

As much as I wanted to write and finish my nonfiction manuscript, I couldn't sit there for another day, trying to sort out its problems. Instead, I did everything else. I did laundry, I went shopping, but most importantly, I read. And I didn't just read nonfiction books, I read all kinds of books. My Writer's Block reading list consisted of:

Oink: My Life with Minipigs by Matt Whyman (A British authored nonfiction about, you guessed it, minipigs.)

Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys (A YA fiction about New Orleans and growing into the person you wish to be.)

and

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (A classic British horror novel.)

I recommend them all highly. But more importantly, these three books helped pull the congestion right out of my creative muscle. Perhaps it was the mental break from writing that scene, or maybe it was the act of reading how other writers explored their plots that made me able to write again, and more importantly, helped me to discover what my manuscript needed from me. Whatever the cause, it was not that I hadn't tried hard enough to write that brought on my Writer's Block.

So, if you've been diagnosed with good old Writer's Block, don't fret. It is a real problem. You're not going crazy. And there is a cure. It will be hard to accept and hard to administer, but once it goes down, you'll be in the clear.