The 7 Secrets of the Prolific Writer's Block (3 page)

1. Identify and Overcome Perfectionism (Chapter 2)
   
2. Abundantly Resource Themselves (Chapter 3)
   
3. Manage Their Time (Chapter 4)
   
4. Optimize Their Writing Process (Chapter 5)
   
5. Understand and “Own” Their Identity as a Writer (Chapter 6)
   
6. Minimize the Chances of Toxic Rejection, and Cope Strenuously With It When It Happens (Chapter 7); and
   
7. Create Liberated and Empowered Careers (Chapter 8)
   

These are the Seven Secrets of the Prolific, and each of this book’s remaining chapters covers one of them. Before we get to them, however, let’s delve more deeply into the nature and mechanisms of procrastination.

W
hy would anyone persist in a self-defeating strategy such as the harsh litany described in Section 1.2? Because of perfectionism (Chapter 2), which:

(1) Convinces us that writing is easy and, therefore, that if we’re having trouble doing it, it must be because we’re lazy or otherwise deficient.

(2) Leaves us terrified (not merely afraid) of the possibility of failure. To a perfectionist, as awful as underproductivity feels, it is still more palatable than the “ego death” that would result if she somehow managed to finish her work but it fell short of her goals. And since perfectionists set goals that are pretty much unattainable, “falling short” is pretty much guaranteed.

(3) Perceives only one “solution” to procrastination: bullying. You’d think that after years of trying that and seeing it not work, a writer would try something else, but: (a) bullying is the only strategy most of us are taught, and (b) perfectionist psychology is fundamentally rigid and inclined toward self-punishment (Section 2.7). (In contrast, note how the prolific writer in Section 1.2 didn’t bother with blame and self-punishment, but flexibly created options for herself.)

In the end,
it’s mainly perfectionism-fueled fear (or terror, really) that fuels procrastination
, because at the moment of writing, or even when the writer is merely contemplating writing, it creates an overwhelming need to “escape” to a safe place, and procrastination is the easiest and most obvious route to do so.

The fear usually has four components:

• Fear of failure (or success) around the current writing session
  
• Fear of failure (or success) for the project as a whole
  
• Fear of failure (or success) for one’s overall writing (or academic) career
  
• Fear and anxiety around the act of writing itself
  

Given that even one fear is a powerful barrier to writing productivity, you can imagine how powerful four combined are.

A final, devastating component is procrastination’s addictiveness. An addiction is a self-reinforcing destructive habit that, the more you partake of it, the more you need to. Procrastination definitely qualifies, since every time you procrastinate you increase your fears around your writing and, consequently, your need to procrastinate.

Procrastination and “traditional” addictions do, in fact, share a common core of perfectionism. In
The Heart of Addiction
1
, Lance Dodes, M.D., writes, “Severe, unrealistic self-criticism is a very common precipitant of addictive behavior.” Of one of his patients, he writes, “His use of a drug to deal with the self-condemnation of such a punitive conscience ... [is] a way to create an identity free of the ‘tyranny’ of this internal hanging judge.” And at least four of the twelve attitudes and behaviors that Allen Berger discusses in his book
12 Stupid Things That Mess Up Recovery
are perfectionist symptoms: trying to become perfect, “feeling special and unique” (Section 2.2), selective honesty, and “believing that life should be easy.” I discuss each of these, and many more symptoms, in Chapter 2.

Procrastination’s “quintuple punch” is one reason it’s such a difficult habit to overcome, but another is that it is sneaky and deceptive and doesn’t fight fair (Section 1.8). It can be overcome, however, and relatively straightforwardly, once you move past dithering and on to actual problem-solving.

The first step is to get a handle on the precise nature of your obstacles and triggers, which we begin to do in the next chapter.

1
For more information on the books I discuss check out http://hillaryrettig.com.

O
ne of the worst impediments to overcoming writer’s block is the word “block.” Many of us, hearing it, consciously or unconsciously envision a giant boulder or a monolith a la
2001: A Space Odyssey
—and how the heck are you going to get around that? At best, you might scale it like a mountain climber or chisel away at its edges.

"Uh, oh."

Fortunately, your block isn’t a monolith; it’s a giant spaghetti snarl with at least a dozen (or, more likely, two or three dozen) “strands,” each representing a particular obstacle or trigger. Some strands are probably immense hawsers, while others are tiny shoelaces or dental floss.

The strands are all snarled together, and that’s your block:

A minor impediment...

The fact that your block is really a snarl is great news because a snarl can be untangled far more easily than a monolith scaled or chiseled. And that’s exactly what you need to do—identify the strands so you can start coping with (and ultimately eliminating) them. Another wonderful difference between snarls and monoliths is that while chipping away at a monolith never gets any easier, with a snarl the more you untangle the easier and faster subsequent untangling gets. (And you can start with the easiest strands.)

Here’s a typical spaghetti snarl from a blocked fiction writer:

• Not sure about the direction of my novel

• Not sure if I’m any good at writing

• Not sure if I can finish

• Not sure if people will like it or if it will sell

• Not sure it will get published

• Worry that since I’m not that familiar with the publishing industry I’ll be taken advantage of

• Afraid that the questions I want to ask my writing group will be stupid, annoying, or pointless

• Afraid I won’t be a success, or that if I am I won’t be able to repeat it

• Afraid if I get published that people will judge my appearance

• Don’t have a good environment for writing (stuck writing on the couch with laptop and lots of clutter)

• Get distracted by TV and Internet

• No time

• Family is a distraction

• Personal worries (including financial worries) get in the way of writing

• Worried that I may be judged for my choices in writing/genres

• An ADD diagnosis that has left me insecure and ashamed, and also makes it harder for me to organize big projects

• Afraid of losing privacy after being published

• Last job (not writing-related) had both a negative environment and an abusive boss so there’s some residual trauma.

The above strands map closely with the barriers to productivity discussed in this book—and especially with perfectionism.

Here’s another snarl—this time a typical one from a graduate student unable to write her Ph.D. thesis:

• Need to preserve “together” facade to colleagues; embarrassing to reveal I’m struggling

• Confusion/conflict over the direction of thesis

• Conflicts about writing about (and thus mentally reliving) some intense, shocking and possibly traumatizing field work experiences

• Desire to cling to benefits of student life: health insurance, relative lack of responsibility/authority

• Fear of not getting hired despite best efforts

• Feelings of fraudulence and not belonging

• Horror (justified based on the my experience) of work/success being stolen

• Ambivalence about assuming authority

• Rampant sexism/misogyny by thesis advisor and father

• Discouraged that I can’t write papers as easily as when I was an undergraduate

• Keep comparing myself to others

•Single-parent stresses; conflict between parenting and graduate student roles

No wonder these writers were blocked! Every time they tried to write, each strand became an internal voice that not only created fear but that argued persuasively that they should be doing something else. In the next chapter, I discuss the metaphor of a forest path that I frequently use to describe this problem.

P
icture your writing session as a stroll down a beautiful, sun-dappled woodland path. The path is wide and flat, the air warm and inviting, and on either side of you are banks of friendly plants alive with twittering birds. You’re having a marvelous time!

All of a sudden someone pops up out of the underbrush and joins you on your path—it’s your husband, full of opinions on your current piece of writing.

You walk on for a bit, your husband yammering in your ear—not just about the writing, now, but about how he wishes the house were cleaner and how you two never go out any more. It’s an unpleasant distraction, but you’re still mostly enjoying your walk.

Then someone else pops up—your parents, who are worried about how your writing will reflect on them.

And then your siblings parachute down onto the path asking whether you don’t think you’re wasting your time, and aren’t you embarrassed to be driving around in that old car?

Then an old writing teacher pops up, reminding you of how “you really don’t do dialogue very well.”

And an editor who, twenty years ago, described a story of yours as “jejune.” (You had to look the word up, and oy did it hurt when you did!)

And the author of a newspaper article you recently read that proclaimed that the market for epic family sagas, like the one you happen to be writing, is “dead.”

Etc.

Soon, you’re walking at the center of a clamorous crowd, none of whom you’ve invited. Naturally, you’ll have a hard time writing in the midst of their harping, carping, and negativity.

The prolific handle things differently. They decide, with absolute authority (get it? author-ity), who comes on their path and how long they can stay. You’re only allowed on if they want you on, and the minute you’re no longer an asset to their process, you’re gone. (I like to imagine that “gone” being either in the form of a vaudeville hook whisking the offender off stage right, or a giant boot sending him into orbit.)

And no free passes—
everyone
has to pass the “asset” test, including partners, parents, kids, and “important” teachers, editors, and the like. And those who fail a few times permanently lose their right to apply for entry.

They’re banished, baby.

And so the prolific have a wonderful time strolling peacefully and productively through the hours, days, and years of their work.

I
t would be great if, right now or very soon, you would put this book down and make a list of all the strands in your snarl: meaning, all your fears, worries, resource deficiencies, and other barriers to productivity. Try to write something concerning each of the categories mentioned in Section 1.1: conflicts over the project, fears of failure and success, resource deficiencies, etc. Also be sure to cover the five elements of the quintuple punch: fear of failure (or success) around the current writing session, the project as a whole, your overall writing career, and the act of writing itself, as well as procrastination’s addictiveness.