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?
