by Steve Burden

Created on: June 06, 2010   Last Updated: June 07, 2010

It is ironic that Writers' Block is the subject of so much writing. Google it, and 5 million results bounce back at you! Writers obviously find the subject particularly immune to blocks of any kind. My adding to the growing mass of written material is a kind of therapy for me - a help in lowering stress levels. It is so infuriating to find the world oddly empty of write-able subjects, just at the very moment I am ready to write.

It appears there is a gang of aggravating irritations making it their business to frustrate the writer at work. Since this is not medical problem, we cannot visit the doctor and ask for an anti-biotic-like pill that will relieve our predicament over a period of days. Owing to the fact that sick notes are not issued for Writers' Block, we have to deal with the problem head-on.

The trials of professional sportsmen and women are much reported. The psychology of winning is almost a stand-alone science. Not being a sportsman myself, I understand (from my armchair) that their training deals with essentials like positive attitude, physical strength, stamina and nutrition. Nothing is overlooked in the pursuit of success.

Athletes consider success on the field to be worth the adoption of strict health and fitness regimes. For the writer, success on the page demands a similar gritty determination, but regimes are less well defined. Perhaps one day, a link will be made between physical strength, stamina, nutrition and the art of writing. Meanwhile, we experiment with humour, drink coffee and imagine a deluge of inspiration before another bout of humour and more coffee!

Economists make much of the fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but it seems to me that in life, there is no free anything. We reap what we sow. A half-hearted written effort is rarely rewarded with astonishing success. Writing is a solitary art; the groundwork has to be done alone.

Introduce a deadline, and somehow things get rather complicated. Uncannily, it seems that issuing a deadline is the universal signal for 'writers' block' and and his grisly gang, to activate their schemes and plots. They have a flair for timing. The effect of a well-timed punch-line is the stuff of skilled comedy, and similarly, the timing of the writers' block gang, can be just as effective - except that it isn't funny! 

The ugly gang of frustrations opposing our creativity, have to stopped somehow. Hand to hand combat with a committed mob, out to thwart our every advance, is nasty work, but victory once tasted, is very sweet!  

Full time professionals must learn to deal with this in a matter-of-fact way. Part-timers and spare-timers like me, lack the experience to manage the crisis without a minor panic attack. Imagine working only with a typewriter! Or writing everything by hand! How did Charles Dickens manage? Computers have made our job so much easier, that it is almost insensitive to make a fuss about the frustrating lot of the contemporary writer.

Insensitive or not, I'm going to publish my little 'fuss' anyway! 

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