Writer's Block!
Sep. 1st, 2009 07:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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nano_writersThere are only two months left until the start of NaNoWriMo!! Is everyone getting excited?
Last month, in order to prepare some groundwork for our novels, we worked through Stephanie Bryant's worldbuilding exercises. Did you discover something new and exciting about your story world, Nano Writer?
This month, we're going to take a closer look at a particularly paralyzing problem that plagues both novice and experienced novelists alike:
Writer's Block
When asked about the most frightening thing that he had ever encountered, Ernest Hemingway is said to have replied: "A blank sheet of paper in my typewriter." Really? A blank sheet of paper? A man who scouted for Nazi submarines with his yacht and aided the French Resistance in World War II, Papa Hemingway afraid of a blank sheet of paper?
Perhaps then we might ask first: what exactly is writer's block?
Jenna Glatzer, writing in Outwitting Writer's Block, colorfully describes the phenomena as "an insidious pest - a beady-eyed rodent hiding under the floorboards of even the hardest working writers, waiting to rear its hideous head at the most inopportune times."
A more succinct definition is offered by Victoria Nelson, author of On Writer's Block, a new approach to creativity: the temporary or chronic inability to put words on paper.
Karen Peterson, a psychologist who has conducted research on writer's block (and procrastination), theorizes more specifically that writer's block is the state we experience when our logical, language processing left-brain tells us to write and our emotional, senses processing right-brain says instead - "no" - backed by every doubt we may harbor about our ability to write.
"Just Do IT!" 
"Just say NO!"
Dr. Paterson argues that the "just-do-it" left side of the brain is often at odds with the "just-say-no" right side and that "even though the logical left brain may exhort us to write, the right brain remembers every hypercritical voice we've ever heard, and is more than happy to replay them, en masse, every time we try to write."
Further, she explains:
Hemmingway, noted big-game huntsman, as the hunted?
She offers the following experiment based on research that shows that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and vice versa:
Instructions
Print a copy of both lists shown below. Read each statement in the first list, checking off any statement that "resonates with you", responding instinctively without pausing, using your dominant hand (usually the hand you write with).
Then read the second list and check off any statement that evokes a personal response, this time using your other hand. Don't just copy your previous answers. Instead, switch to the other hand, let your pen linger there for a moment, close your eyes, then open them, and see what pops out.
How did you do? Tell us below in the comments!
Most people get different answers when they change hands because they are accessing the other side of their brain and allowing its way of thinking to be outwardly noted. That's the theory anyway.
If your answers to both lists are exactly the same, Dr. Peterson suggests that you retry the experiment when no one else is around as the presence or possible intrusion of an outside voice can interfere with your own spontaneous response.
Tomorrow we'll take a brief look at ways that our fellow Nano Writers have suggested that will bust through writer's block as well as several suggestions that Dr. Peterson offers that may appease our child-like right-side brain, unfreezing our response to write.
Until then, Nano Writer, keep writing!
Bibliography
Glatzer, Jenna. Writer's block and other problems of the pen. Guilford, Conn: Lyons, 2003. Print.
Nelson, Victoria. On writer's block a new approach to creativity. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Print.
Parshall, Gerald. "Papa and All His Children." U.S. News & World Report 1 June 1998 124.21 (1998): 67-69. Print.
Peterson, Karen E. Write. 10 days to overcoming writer's block : period. Avon, Mass: Adams Media, 2006. Print.
Last month, in order to prepare some groundwork for our novels, we worked through Stephanie Bryant's worldbuilding exercises. Did you discover something new and exciting about your story world, Nano Writer?
This month, we're going to take a closer look at a particularly paralyzing problem that plagues both novice and experienced novelists alike:
When asked about the most frightening thing that he had ever encountered, Ernest Hemingway is said to have replied: "A blank sheet of paper in my typewriter." Really? A blank sheet of paper? A man who scouted for Nazi submarines with his yacht and aided the French Resistance in World War II, Papa Hemingway afraid of a blank sheet of paper?
Perhaps then we might ask first: what exactly is writer's block?
Jenna Glatzer, writing in Outwitting Writer's Block, colorfully describes the phenomena as "an insidious pest - a beady-eyed rodent hiding under the floorboards of even the hardest working writers, waiting to rear its hideous head at the most inopportune times."
A more succinct definition is offered by Victoria Nelson, author of On Writer's Block, a new approach to creativity: the temporary or chronic inability to put words on paper.
Karen Peterson, a psychologist who has conducted research on writer's block (and procrastination), theorizes more specifically that writer's block is the state we experience when our logical, language processing left-brain tells us to write and our emotional, senses processing right-brain says instead - "no" - backed by every doubt we may harbor about our ability to write.
"Just say NO!"Dr. Paterson argues that the "just-do-it" left side of the brain is often at odds with the "just-say-no" right side and that "even though the logical left brain may exhort us to write, the right brain remembers every hypercritical voice we've ever heard, and is more than happy to replay them, en masse, every time we try to write."
Further, she explains:
And, just to make sure we get really blocked, the right brain, being more in tune with emotion, is also more closely connected to the command center for the classic fight-or-flight anxiety response, which can be triggered automatically by the sight of a desk filled with unfinished writing projects - or no projects at all.
As writers, we are exhorted to stay and fight the fight: Write no matter how lousy you feel about it. On the other hand, if we take flight from the writing process, we can do just about anything else on the planet: watch inane television, check e-mail, eat junk food, smoke cigarettes, inhale coffee, balance the checkbook, clean the kitchen - you name it, but none of it will produce the Great American Novel. The obvious choice is to write in spite of our internal jitters. So why don't more of us choose this option?
The answer to this question may be explained by the results of recent brain research, which has revealed a third option that precedes the flight-or-flight response: the freeze response... This is exactly what classic writer's block feels like: At the very moment when you want to write, you just can't. The blank page or the blinking cursor might as well be a predator.
Hemmingway, noted big-game huntsman, as the hunted?
She offers the following experiment based on research that shows that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and vice versa:
Instructions
Print a copy of both lists shown below. Read each statement in the first list, checking off any statement that "resonates with you", responding instinctively without pausing, using your dominant hand (usually the hand you write with).
Then read the second list and check off any statement that evokes a personal response, this time using your other hand. Don't just copy your previous answers. Instead, switch to the other hand, let your pen linger there for a moment, close your eyes, then open them, and see what pops out.
Dominant Hand: Top Ten Reasons to Avoid the Process of Writing
____ I never get time alone to write.
____ I hate being alone.
____ I squander my time alone on meaningless activity.
____ I feel like I have nothing to say.
____ I have so much to say, but I don't know how to say it.
____ I don't know where to start.
____ I don't know where the novel/chapter/story/essay/poem goes next.
____ I shouldn't have to revise.
____ I hate the process of revising.
____ I don't know when to stop revising.
Nondominant Hand: Top Ten Reasons to Avoid the Process of Writing
____ I never get time alone to write.
____ I hate being alone.
____ I squander my time alone on meaningless activity.
____ I feel like I have nothing to say.
____ I have so much to say, but I don't know how to say it.
____ I don't know where to start.
____ I don't know where the novel/chapter/story/essay/poem goes next.
____ I shouldn't have to revise.
____ I hate the process of revising.
____ I don't know when to stop revising.
How did you do? Tell us below in the comments!
Most people get different answers when they change hands because they are accessing the other side of their brain and allowing its way of thinking to be outwardly noted. That's the theory anyway.
If your answers to both lists are exactly the same, Dr. Peterson suggests that you retry the experiment when no one else is around as the presence or possible intrusion of an outside voice can interfere with your own spontaneous response.
Tomorrow we'll take a brief look at ways that our fellow Nano Writers have suggested that will bust through writer's block as well as several suggestions that Dr. Peterson offers that may appease our child-like right-side brain, unfreezing our response to write.
Until then, Nano Writer, keep writing!
Bibliography
Glatzer, Jenna. Writer's block and other problems of the pen. Guilford, Conn: Lyons, 2003. Print.
Nelson, Victoria. On writer's block a new approach to creativity. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Print.
Parshall, Gerald. "Papa and All His Children." U.S. News & World Report 1 June 1998 124.21 (1998): 67-69. Print.
Peterson, Karen E. Write. 10 days to overcoming writer's block : period. Avon, Mass: Adams Media, 2006. Print.
