Dealing with writer's block

Most writers at some point have had to deal with writer's block, a time when their creative flow was blocked or choked to a minimum that negatively impacted their ability to write. It is often defined or characterized by a lack of motivation to write or an inability to adequately articulate your thoughts into written words. Colleges and universities put out content designed to help their students identify and address writer's block and writer's anxiety, the idea that your writing sucks basically.

Writer's block is something that is very real and affects many people, as evident by the higher education system's efforts to help students understand how to recognize and overcome it for their own educational needs. And its something that doesn't just apply to writing books or college essays. Musicians have spoken at length about how sometimes they suffer from the same kind of mental blocks when trying to write songs.

Anything dependent on the written word is subject to being stalled by writer's block, and/or writer's anxiety.

And there is no one-solution-fits-all for dealing with writer's block. Each of us has own things in our lives that can trigger this artistic disruption. For some, it could be that being in a crowded place with a lot of noise is too distracting and that distraction keeps you from effectively writing. The solution for you might be something as simple as moving your workspace to somewhere quieter and more secluded. But that approach won't work for everyone. There are those that thrive in that bustling, noisy environment and can actually draw inspiration from it.

For me, the thing that causes the most blockage to my writing is simply life. I'm one of those writers that prefer to write in private. I don't want others looking over my shoulder while I write offering criticisms or suggestions. I want to write my story. If you want to write a story then go away and write your own but don't tell me how to write mine. I don't even really care to do much writing when I'm sitting on the couch near my wife. She has no cares or concerns about my writing but I still don't like to write with her around.

I just like to sit by myself with my thoughts when I write. And this might also be because I have been known to act out certain scenes to get a better understanding of the animations, actions, emotions, and whatnot that I'm trying to describe. Try acting out a fight scene by yourself in a crowded public place. I'm sure that'll get you some strange looks in most places. And I'm not about willingly embarrassing myself in public like that.

Acting a fool by myself is one thing, but doing it public is another.

And therein lies my conundrum.

My access to private time for writing is something of a precious commodity these days. I spend M-F 8-5 (and sometimes more) doing my day job as an IT consultant. I mean, I have to pay the bills somehow and my books aren't doing the job to the level that I need to quit my day job. My wife comes home from her job between 5-6 most evenings. I love my wife very much so I want to spend time with her every night when she comes home. We prepare dinner together many nights or go out to eat. After dinner, we enjoy just sitting together in our living room enjoying some relaxing shows and movies on the TV.

We spent years (from 2002 to 2019) raising 4 kids that were active in sports that we helped to coach. There were years that between all of the kids and their various teams that we had practices and games 7 days a week, sometimes multiple in a single day, for weeks on end. That meant going to work every weekday only to spend our evenings at practices and/or games and then when the weekends rolled around we got spend even more time at practices and games. By the time our youngest son stopped playing sports that we could coach at the age of 14, we were freaking tired. These days we want to relax and rest to make up for the years and years that we spent chasing our kids around soccer fields, ballparks, tennis courts, and more.

But as I've said, I don't like to write when I'm spending time with my wife. If I'm writing then I'm not spending time with my beloved and if I'm spending time with her then I'm not writing. Even on the weekends now that we don't have our free days crammed with sports and more for the kids, I don't do much writing. I spend time with my wife. I spend time with kids, who all live nearby. I spend time with the friends I didn't get to spend time with during the years the kids were so active. I spend my free time these days building and fostering my connections with those around me which leaves little time for the privacy I require to write productively.

But Gary, how do you manage to write your blogs then?

Fair point. I do have pockets of time where I can write. Some days I try to work on writing new books but others I focus on my blogs. My website and its blog entries are critical for exposure and search engine algorithms that I desire for a variety of reason. Before my books were published I could focus on only writing them but now that I have other obligations to support my published works I have to choose between using these windows of freedom to create content for my website or to create content for my books. Blogs can be written in a matter of minutes, when properly inspired, whereas books take much longer to create. This means that my smaller windows of time are generally geared towards my blog while larger windows would be more attractive for working on new stories.

Sadly, I don't find myself with a lot of large blocks of free time these days unless I want to forego the relationships of the people around me. I could choose to ignore my wife at night to hide in my office and write but I love being around her too much to ignore her like that. In fact, we have an agreement that she can't work from home because I do and her presence in the house is too much of a distraction to me. I just want to be near her to hold her, kiss her, talk to her, and all that. After all these years, I'm still infatuated with her to such a degree that her mere presence in my vicinity is all-consuming of my attention.

And then there's the issue of my kids and friends. Three of my sons are mailmen. They work hard all week long battling the elements of nature to bring people their mail and deliveries. It is hard, grueling work that often leaves them too exhausted at the end of the day to do much else. This means that if I want to spend time with them that I have to do it on their days off, which are few and far between generally. I'm not going to tell them, "sorry, I can't spend time with you on your 1 day off in 2 weeks today because I want to finish a chapter I've been stuck on." I'm not that type of dad.

And likewise for my friends. One of my best friends is a teacher. Not just any teacher though. He's a band teacher. Not only does he have to teach classes but he has to arrange music for their performances, help design halftime shows for the football games, prepare the band for a variety of contests from marching contest to individual sight reading contests. He puts in outrageous hours for the first several months of the school year that leaves him almost no time to hang out. We get only a few months of the year where we can find windows in our schedules that align for us to hangout. This is one of my best friends, I'm not going to blow him off to write. I'd rather hangout with him and get into some our usual antics than be secluded in my office, where I already spend much of my life, to write the fictional antics of others.

These days, if I want to write, it has to basically be late at night after my wife's gone to bed (she's a morning person and I'm a night owl) or on the evenings that her work needs her to work late. Those times do exist and I have gotten some writing done in them but my productivity is far less than what it was 10 years ago when I was writing The Ascension Legacy series.

But here's the thing.

When I was most productive with my writing was when I was traveling for work extensively. I would spend months on the road. Countless nights spent in hotel rooms far away from my wife, my kids, and my friends. Other than the daily routine phone call to my wife and the occasional text with everyone else, I was completely alone. I could sit in my hotel room from 5:30 in the afternoon until 1 or 2 AM the next day and just write. That's 4 to 5 days each week of me getting anywhere for 6 to 8 hours of writing done each day. I was basically writing like it was a full-time job clocking in nearly 40 hours of writing time a week.

That's a lot of writing each week on top of everything else I had to do back then.

Since COVID hit in 2020 and the world stopped, I haven't stepped on a plane to travel for work once. Maybe my writer's block is lifestyle related. I started writing at a time when I wasn't burdened by the social connections that I want to maintain today. I had more access to privacy and solitude that allowed my writing to flourish more then than now. I become so accustomed to writing in that environment that I find it difficult to adapt to my new home-bound lifestyle.

Writer's block isn't always about motivation or inspiration but can also be triggered by distraction. I think it is safe to say that these days I have ample distractions. I want to write, so it isn't necessarily a lack of motivation. I have tons of ideas for the many stories I've started and others I've yet to start so inspiration doesn't seem to be the issue either. The issue is time because time isn't infinite. There are only so many hours in a day and I have limit myself to what those hours can be used for. Some have to be used to do work that pays our bills and puts food in our mouth. Some have to be used to maintain the loving relationship that my wife and I have found in our marriage. Some have to be used to maintain the close and loving relationship that I have with my children. Some should be used to maintain the relationship I have with my friends.

What good is a life when your writing requires you to forsake these things? Not a very good one, in my opinion.

And if that is true then it would seem that my writer's block is very much a self-inflicted one. It was born of conscious decisions on my part with the full understanding that if I was doing these other things that I wouldn't be spending that time writing. It isn't so much writer's block but maybe writer's back burner as I've made the conscious choice to put my writing largely on the proverbial back burner so that I can spend my time with those closest to me while I can.

Maybe there will come a time where life creates opportunities for me to return to those pre-COVID levels of writing productivity but for now, I don't plan on forcing it. If I start traveling for work again then I'm sure I'll take advantage of that time to do more writing. If my books take off and afford me the ability to quit my day job then perhaps I can focus more on writing then. If my wife starts traveling for her job then maybe that will create a similar opportunity for me write as my travels did. But as long as I remain physically close to those to who I am emotional close, my preference, my choice is to spend my time with them and not just my keyboard.