Author’s and Writer’s Block

By Susan Reichert, Editor-in-Chief, Southern Writers Magazine

Recently, Chris Pepple wrote a great post on Suite T about writer’s block. So many writers experience this. It is frustrating, to say the least to be working on writing a short story, article or novel and suddenly you can’t get it to move forward. You are stuck. It is like someone put a wall between you and your imagination of words.

Staring at a blank page trying to pull words out is a mixture of emotions no writer wants.

I knew other writers, even well-known writers had to have experienced writer’s block. So, I began searching to find what they said about it. Here are just a few.

“Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.” — Norman Mailer

“Nothing will work unless you do.” — Maya Angelou

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?” ― Kurt Vonnegu

“I don’t sit around waiting for passion to strike me. I keep working steadily, because I believe it is our privilege as humans to keep making things. Most of all, I keep working because I trust that creativity is always trying to find me, even when I have lost sight of it.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert

“Breaking through writer’s block is like thinking out of the box: Both require an ability to imagine a world outside your four walls or rearranging them to get a better view.” ― Susan J. McIntire 

“How time flies; another ten days and I have achieved nothing. It doesn’t come off. A page now and then is successful, but I can’t keep it up, the next day I am powerless.”– Franz Kafka

“Pretend that you’re writing not to your editor or to an audience or to a readership, but to someone close, like your sister, or your mother, or someone that you like.” — John Steinbeck

The quote I liked the most was: “Writing about a writer’s block is better than not writing at all.” ― Charles Bukowski

Next time I get this dreaded occupation of writer’s block, I will try Charles Bukowski’s suggestion and write about writer’s block.

However, if that doesn’t work, I will find the nearest art gallery and spend time there. With pen and pad of course.

What about you? What do you do when you have writer’s block?