It should hardly come as a surprise that CK hangs out with the writing community. Like all communities it has its particular characteristics, foibles, likes, hates, and wide variation of membership. It has members who’ve been there for sixty years, and newbies with innocent dreams barely beginning the hard path.

And one of the common questions that newbies ask with almost monotonous irregularity is, “How do you get past writers block?”

After one has skipped the obvious half-joke / half-true answer, “With difficulty,” one utters a few words of wisdom and lets them get on with it.

Writers block is a real thing, just as Depression is, except that it isn’t a psychological disorder. It isn’t well defined. And it is undoubtedly a syndrome rather than a genuine obstruction to the mental cogs. It’s linked to creativity, self-discipline, art, everyday psychology, personality, and some other stuff that’s probably quite important to many people making their way through this curiosity called Life, especially writers. So some of my blogging therefore has to cover writing, art, and creativity in general, and the topic of writers block consequently gets occasional coverage.

Do all writers suffer from writers block? No. But that’s like asking whether everyone suffers from depression. Australian statistics show that about one third of people will suffer from Depression at some time in their life, so just because you haven’t yet, doesn’t mean you never will. There are writers who have been happily dictating, tapping, or scribbling away for twenty years without a hiccup, and then suddenly - bang … it hits them. For inexplicable reasons their well of creativity has dried up and … what does one do then?

For others it sneaks up on them slowly. Again, Depression can behave this way. It can slowly, and insidiously drag you down until it becomes very clear that you are depressed, but impossible to state when it started. A writer can find that their writing lacks quality. Words are still pouring forth into the manuscript, but it’s like ‘Goodspeak’ in 1984. It’s automated production with no life, no heart, no blood, no ideas, no creativity and sparkle. The automated processes and methods that have been developed and used over twenty years are still operating, but what’s coming out is just 99% hard work without the 1% creative genius. It’s hack stuff, and Artificial Intelligence certainly could (and in some cases already is) doing it just as well. It’s a musician playing the notes on the score without feeling anything anymore. A dancer going through the motions while the mind is no longer in the performance. For a writer, it’s like reading a book and finding one has arrived at the end of the page and can’t remember anything about what one has just read.

Has Celestial Koan ever suffered from writer’s block, or is he just spouting from study and observation?

Well - he has suffered from one particular form of this cruel affliction.

This happened to me once. I’m writing a novel. 30,000 words in. Nice plot apparently all laid out. Everything going smoothly, and then … that little twist I need to explain something simple - a miscommunication between two people, is suddenly lacking. The original idea is lacking something. I need something better, more plausible, more interesting, more in-character, etc.

And … everything stops.

Usually I have no trouble dreaming up solutions to little plot requirements like this without difficulty. It’s part of the creative challenge I rather enjoy. My overall schema for a book often leaves a few little holes to be resolved when I hit them precisely because these little challenges keep my creative juices flowing, and stop the actual writing from becoming a mundane chore once the plot, character, research, schema etc. for the book have already been developed.

But not this time.

I whiteboard. I throw ideas around. I talk to friends. I watch promising films and read odd books looking for inspiration. Nothing comes.

I pray. Listen to music. Walk on beaches. Do something else.

Nothing comes.

For 2 frustrating months.

No way out. I can’t just gloss over it, or come back to it later, or work around it.

A very unhappy three months.

That book is still waiting for me to get back to it.

I finally received an inspiration for something totally different, which resulted in the production of a totally different non-fiction book. Writing and creative life went back into motion.

So yes - I’ve suffered from one form of writers block and I do understand some of the horrible frustrations and feelings that go with it.

I’ll talk about it in other more specific and general posts elsewhere, such as here. (Currently unlinked). Meantime you’ve learned a little about writers block, and about CK.