Lia Declan's Musings

The Reality Behind the Myth

The cursor blinks… It’s a taunting devil on an empty white field, and it’s the only thing moving. Your hand rests on the keyboard, your fingers are positioned on the home keys, but they’re not moving. The start of a sentence is typed, perhaps: “The night was…” Your hand moves to the backspace key, and the sentence vanishes. The cursor resumes blinking.

This is the common physical evidence for the condition known as “writer’s block.” It’s a state of paralysis, an inability to produce text. We treat this term as a formal diagnosis of a genuine affliction that arrives from outside, like a virus or a storm. It’s a convenient label, and… it’s a damaging one. It bundles a dozen distinct problems into one impassable package. It suggests a massive wall when the problem is, in nearly all cases, a series of small, solvable points of friction.

The idea of “writer’s block,” as a specific neurosis, was first coined by Edmund Bergler in the 1940s. He treated it as a serious psychological disorder. The concept was useful, it spread, and gave writers a name for their frustration. But in giving it a name, we also gave it power. We made it a monster that attacks us at the worst possible time. A “block.” By accepting the term, the writer accepts a passive role without culpability. You do not solve a block; you wait for it to go away. You wait for “inspiration” to return, for “the muse” to speak.

This is a failure of a practical understanding. Writing isn’t a passive act of transcription from a mystical angelic creature. Writing is work. It’s a complex cognitive and physical task. It involves idea generation, information retrieval, structural planning, sentence construction, and fine motor control. When the work stops, it’s not because the magic has vanished. It’s because one of the components in that complex machine has failed. The “block” is a symptom, not a disease. The true task of the writer isn’t to wait for the symptom to vanish, but to diagnose the underlying cause and apply a specific, practical solution. The problem is almost always one of physiology, psychology, or process.

The Physical Diagnosis: The Body and the Brain

We treat writing as an act of pure mind, but it’s a physical endeavor. The brain is an organ that consumes roughly twenty percent of the body’s energy. The act of drafting, making thousands of small, rapid decisions about word choice, rhythm, and logic, is one of the most cognitively demanding tasks a human can perform. This work depletes real, measurable resources.

The most common cause of a writing stoppage is simple physical exhaustion. The brain is tired. It has run out of available energy. The feeling isn’t “I am uninspired.” The feeling is “I can’t make one more decision.” The writer mistakes this biological reality for a failure of talent.

The solution isn’t to “push through.” That’s the equivalent of trying to run a marathon on a broken ankle. The solution is physical. Stand up, walk away from the desk, leave the room. Drink a glass of water, eat a piece of fruit. The brain needs sugar and oxygen. Often, believe it or not, it needs sleep. A twenty minute nap isn’t procrastination; it’s refueling. A walk around the neighborhood isn’t avoidance; it’s a way to shift the brain from the focused, high-energy “task-positive network” to the “default mode network,” where non-linear connections and problem-solving can occur.

The physical environment is another source of friction. The chair is uncomfortable, the room is too hot or too cold, the light is poor, and the keyboard is sticky. These are not minor complaints. They’re constant drains on the writer’s limited pool of focus and energy. Each one is a small pebble in your shoe. A writer’s workspace should be as functional and free of friction as a carpenter’s workshop. If the tools are broken, the work can’t be done. Fixing the ergonomic chair or changing the lightbulb isn’t “getting ready to write”; it’s part of writing.

There’s also the problem of inputs. A writer can’t only be an output device. Trying to write without a steady supply of new information, new experiences, and new art is like trying to draw water from an empty well. The mind needs raw material to process. This is why reading isn’t separate from the writing life; it’s essential to it. But inputs must be varied. If you are writing a novel, read poetry. If you are writing essays, watch a documentary. If you are writing screenplays, go to a museum. The act of “filling the well” isn’t a cliche; it’s a requirement. The brain needs new data to form new connections. More often than not, a “block” is just the mind’s signal that its reserves are empty and it needs new material.

The Psychological

More often, the stoppage isn’t physical. The machine is fueled, the tools are in order, but the operator refuses to engage. The problem is then a psychological one. This isn’t a deep-seated neurosis, as Bergler suggested. It’s a practical, understandable, expected response to a perceived threat. The three most common threats are perfectionism, judgment, and scale.

Perfectionism is the most common killer of productivity. The writer sits with a blank page and expects the first sentence to be the final sentence. They are trying to write a good first draft. Nonsense, there is no such thing. The writer is attempting to do two jobs at once: create the raw material and, simultaneously, edit it. This is impossible.

The creative, generative part of the mind and the analytical, critical part of the mind are separate functions. Trying to use both at the same time is like trying to drive a car with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. Many people do it, but it almost never ends well.

The solution is to separate the tasks. Give yourself explicit permission to write badly. The goal of a first draft isn’t to be good; its goal is to exist. It’s the raw lumber, the carpentry comes later. A writer can fix a bad page. A writer cannot fix a blank page.

To achieve this, a change of tools can be effective. If you are frozen in your word processor, open a plain text editor, one with no formatting options. The change in interface lowers the stakes. Write on a legal pad, a journal, or even a napkin, with a cheap pen. Write in a font you do not like, like Comic Sans; it makes the words feel temporary and less important. The goal is to disable your mind’s editor, to trick it into believing that “this doesn’t count.”

The second threat is fear of judgment. This is perfectionism’s external-facing twin. The writer isn’t afraid of their own standards; they are paralyzed by the imagined standards of an audience. They are writing a sentence and immediately imagining a bad review, a critical agent, or a disappointed reader.

This is a failure of focus. The solution is to remove the audience. Write for an audience of one. Write the story or the essay that only you want to read. The writer must forget the destination, the finished book, the audience, and focus only on the two feet of road visible in the headlights. The next sentence is the only sentence.

The third threat is scale. The task seems too large. A 2500-word essay. An 80,000-word novel. A 120-page screenplay. The human mind isn’t built to hold a project of that size in focus all at once. Looking at the entirety of the task is overwhelming and leads to paralysis. The “block” is a rational response to an impossible demand.

The solution is to break the work into physical, manageable sections. The task is never “write a novel.” The task is “write 400 words.” Or, even smaller, “write for 20 minutes.” Or, “write one paragraph.” The writer sets a small, achievable, physical goal. A 400-word count is a concrete number. You either hit it or you do not. It’s not abstract, like “write a good chapter.” By reframing the work as a series of small, repeatable, physical actions, the writer bypasses the psychological paralysis. The work is no longer a 5k marathon; it’s a series of small steps.

The Process

Sometimes the body is rested and the mind is willing, but the words still don’t come. The stoppage here is one of process. The writer’s method is failing them. This often happens when a writer is trying to navigate and draft at the same time.

For the writer who plans, the “block” often means the outline is flawed. They have written themselves into a corner, and the plan doesn’t show the way out. The solution is to stop drafting. Stop trying to write, and go back to the outline. The problem is structural. Get out your index cards and shuffle them. Talk the plot through with a friend. The problem isn’t with the writing; it’s with the architecture. Fix the blueprint, and the construction can resume.

For the writer who discovers as they go, the “block” is more common. They have followed a character into a dead end, and the story has lost its momentum. This is a terrifying feeling, but it’s, again, a process problem. The writer has lost the thread. The solution isn’t to stare at the last sentence, hoping a new one will appear. The solution is to go backward.

Go back five pages, or ten, or however far you need, until you find the last moment the story felt “alive,” the last point where the momentum was strong. Start writing again from that point, on a new path. The pages written since are not a waste; they were a necessary exploration of a path that did not work. Or, jump forward. Write a scene from much later in the story, a scene you do know. Write the climax. Write the final conversation. Then, work backward to figure out how the characters got there. The “block” is just a signal that the current path is cold. The writer must simply choose a new one.

A stale process can also be the cause. The writer always writes at the same desk, at the same time, with the same software. The routine, once helpful, has become a rut. The brain has created such a strong association between that chair and the feeling of “stuckness” that sitting down triggers the paralysis.

The solution is a deliberate, physical change of context. Take a laptop to a library. Write in a coffee shop, surrounded by the ambient noise of strangers. The new sensory input can break the old, unhelpful association. Write longhand in a notebook. The physical act of forming letters uses different neural pathways than typing. The slower speed forces the brain to slow down, to consider words more carefully. Or, try dictation. Use a voice-to-text app and speak the story, although not my personal favorite, many will swear by it. This bypasses the critical editor entirely and engages the verbal, conversational part of the mind. The method is irrelevant. The goal is to change the physical parameters of the work to get the machine moving again.

I have a desk in my room, with a comfortable chair, a dimmer on my wall switch, and everything from white noise machines to music, or even the tele on the wall. However, I spend less time at my desk than I do on the sofa, the dining room table, or the back deck. As I write this article, I am sitting in an antique wing-back chair in the corner of the dining room with my laptop on a barstool.

The Actionable Cures

When a stoppage occurs, do not sit and stare at it. This is the most important rule. Staring at the blank screen reinforces the feeling of paralysis. The “block” feeds on inaction. The solution is always action. Not necessarily writing action, but any action.

If the problem is psychological, the action must be small and non-threatening. The “freewrite” is a classic tool. Set a timer for ten minutes, and write. Do not stop writing for any reason. The hand must keep moving. If you can’t think of what to write, you must write “I cannot think of what to write” over and over until a new thought appears. It doesn’t matter if the words are nonsense. The goal isn’t to produce good text; the goal is to re-establish the physical link between the brain and the hand. It’s to remind the body that it can produce words.

If the problem is a lack of input, the action must be to go gathering. Go with someone, or on a solo expedition to acquire new sensory data. Go to a hardware store and read the names of paint colors. Go to a botanical garden and look at the structure of plants. My favorite is to go to an antique shop and hold old objects. This isn’t wasted time. It’s the process of data acquisition.

If the problem is exhaustion or simple frustration, the action must be to do a different kind of work. Do a physical task that has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Wash the dishes. Fold the laundry. Rake the leaves. Organize a bookshelf. This is the “chop wood, carry water” solution. These simple, repetitive tasks are meditative. They quiet the analytical mind, and they produce a tangible, visible result. This feeling of accomplishment, “I have completed a task,” can be enough to break the paralysis. The writer can return to the desk not as a failure, but as someone who has already gotten something done.

The concept of “writer’s block” is a myth that we perpetuate because it’s more romantic than the truth. It’s more dramatic to be “blocked” by a mystical force than to be “stuck” because we are tired, scared, or have a bad outline.

But the truth is more useful. The truth is that the stoppage is a practical problem. It’s a blinking light on a dashboard, indicating a specific issue. The machine is out of fuel. The operator is afraid. The map is wrong. The writer’s job is to stop looking at the blinking light and go check the engine.

I’ve lost days to the same blinking light, convinced I’d forgotten how to write, when all I needed was a sandwich, an antacid, a few minutes with a video streaming service, or a walk. One of my worst stoppages lasted almost two weeks and was broken by something a baby said to her mother, behind me at the market.

The solution isn’t to wait. The solution is to diagnose the friction and apply a concrete solution. Get up. Walk away. Fix the plan. Write one bad sentence. Write a note to a loved one. Write a shopping list. Just write something, and I promise you, the stoppage will resolve.

The cursor will still be there when you return. It’s not the enemy. It’s only waiting for motion. Write something, anything, and it will move again.

Tell us what you do when you’re feeling “Blocked.”