writer's block Archives – Anarchy and Autoimmunity

Eliminating distractions is essential to becoming a good writer.

Stephen King, in his acclaimed memoir, On Writing, advises aspiring authors their writing space “really needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut.” He writes:

The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business; you have made a serious commitment to write and intend to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

He cautions against libraries, park benches, and public spaces because he believes you need a room of your own, a place you feel truly inspiring, your own creative sanctuary. He recommends drawing the curtains so you cannot see the world outside. Such a place should have no television, no video games, no tools one can use to fritter away the time as though each of us will live forever.

Close your internet browser

Fine advice at the turn of the millennium, but King never anticipated the world twenty years later. How could he? Who, in 2000, would have known that the very tools we use to write are also portals to bookstores, clothing stores, stores for purchasing more distractions? What would King say now about television’s transformation from worn reruns filled with dull, low-budget commercials to high-definition, commercial-free content available on demand?

How would he advise we avoid YouTube? After all, its customized recommendations fill our days with endless streams ranging from pop-song videos to eighteenth-century Colonial American cooking. You can even watch videos on writing and interviews of King himself.

And what of Facebook and Twitter? Online social life has evolved from teenagers late-night chatting with friends they’ve actually met to near constant interfacing with acquaintances spread across time zones. Every year, people around the world devote more and more time to social media, from 90 minutes per day in 2012 to almost two-and-a-half hours in 2019.

Unfortunately, for the twenty-first-century writer, this and more is available at a mouse click. The keyboards we should hear clacking away on our latest novellas instead beat irregularly to the rhythm of our palpitating hearts. We read and worry about things we cannot control: coronavirus, presidential elections, our friends’ opinions of our lifestyle. We spend mere seconds working on things we can control, let alone a few minutes writing.

So how does the writer write? How does one get anything done at all?

Isolate yourself so you can focus

Per King’s advice, I write with my office door closed, in a space I decorated to trap myself with my adventurous, romantic spirit. No, I don’t mean the groomed aristocrats populating Tessa Dare’s historical chick porn. I mean the cynical idealist willing to sail the seven seas in search of his own soul. Picture Hemingway relaxing in a Cuban cigar lounge after returning from a safari only to discover the world as he knew it no longer exists.

For the less dramatic, I suggest isolating yourself from the online universe. Temporarily disconnect your WiFi or uninstall the time-sucking apps from your phone. If you need the internet for research, as I do, then turn off browser notifications and Windows 10 pop-ups. I use Linux because it doesn’t come prepackaged with programs incessantly reminding me about yesterday’s email, today’s news, and tomorrow’s dermatology appointment.

Another trick: Use Focus Writer or the Focus mode in Microsoft Word. These block the entire screen except for the page you’re writing on and foster concentration.

Get out of the house

Unlike King, I also suggest getting out of the house. Even science fiction and horror authors can learn from reality. Some of my best material, in fact, even some of my exact scenes, have been borrowed from interactions with and observations of the world and people around me.

Coffee shops are great, but make sure you visit one where you feel inspired and comfortable. Soccer moms sprinting through Starbucks is not conducive to concentration. Frequenting the same coffee shop quickly turns it into your second office. This is a good thing.

Establish a writing schedule and goals

Psychologist Paul Silva in How to Write a Lot prescribes schedules and recommends goals. He instructs writers to remove what he calls “specious barriers,” or excuses we make for not writing. If you truly have a barrier, remove it. If you see an obvious distraction, eliminate it.

Goals can be set and measured in time, word count, pages, or chapters. I go to my local coffee shop to write for at least one hour three times per week. If I write 500 words in that hour, great. If I struggle to hammer out 75, that’s okay, too, as long as I’m making progress.

Find your muse, embrace bursts of inspiration

Last, but not least, embrace bursts of inspiration when it arises. Channel your angst. Spill your sadness. Pour life’s greatest joys and disappointments onto your page.

A friend once told me, “Heartbreak is your muse.” Find your own muses. And when you do, never let the daughters of Zeus out of your sight.

Better yet, take them home. Close your door. And eliminate distractions.

Finding motivation to write the last month has been impossible.

At work, late May deadlines creep closer and closer. Days in the office lengthen. Stress increases. Dates on my Outlook calendar disappear. I pine for a vacation that seems to never come.

I want—no, I need—time to be alone, to think, to forget everyone else’s problems and focus on my own. I want to feel truly human, to remind myself life has to be more than just a series of succeeding weeks at a desk and weekends at a grocery store or a bar.

My suppressed immune system spent the past two weeks battling a virus. I had to down cocktails of cold medications to persevere through back-to-back meetings, only to come home and crash on the couch to reruns of House, MD and made-for-Netflix British teen dramas.

Motivation in pill and liquid form

Meanwhile, my body and brain are still learning what to do on less than 10 milligrams of prednisone. Systemic corticosteroids make me feel elated, energetic, invincible. For almost a year, I have depended on them, in part, to counteract the fatigue caused by an overactive immune system. As my doctors continue to taper me off, I wonder if I have even been myself the past year. Were the steroids the only reason I was able to maintain a job, a side gig, a new novel, a workout regime, and a blog?

This returning fatigue has left me reaching for lattes, London Fogs, and liquid energizers as I hope that maybe, just maybe I’ll find an evening or a lunch break to pound out a paragraph or three. Hell, this lame Saturday afternoon keyboard confessional was brought to you by Monster Energy Ultra Violet.

Writer’s block: a psychologist’s view

When I work with university faculty, I preach against procrastination and what psychologist Paul Silva in How to Write a Lot calls “specious barriers,” the excuses we make for ourselves for not writing: I need more time. I need to do more research. I need a new computer. I need inspiration.

Paul Silva's "How to Write a Lot" is for anyone making excuses for themselves on why they can't find the time or motivation to write. — Paul Silva’s *How to Write a Lot* is for anyone making excuses for themselves on why they can’t find the time or motivation to write. He prescribes schedules, recommends goals, and helps writers remove what he calls “specious barriers,” or excuses we make for not writing.

Silva’s solutions are simple: Schedule the time. Do the research. Buy a new computer.

He forgives the novelists and poets among us—our penchant for plumbing the depths of the human soul, our unspoken goal “to move readers to tears.” He is even so kind as to compare us to “landscape artists and portrait painters.”

I have never been that kind to myself. Writer’s block may be the curse of all who seek to win with words, but I’ve never believed in curses.

Lacking inspiration? Find it, I say.

Need motivation? Brew a cup of afternoon joe.

But then again, maybe I am too hard on myself. Cannot inspiration be found in salacious British high-school scandals?

Anarchy and Autoimmunity

Tag: writer’s block

Writing pro tips: Eliminating distractions