{"id":3838,"date":"2012-07-06T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=3838"},"modified":"2012-07-06T06:00:02","modified_gmt":"2012-07-06T11:00:02","slug":"blocking-the-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=3838","title":{"rendered":"Blocking the Action"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<\/a>
It may take a lot of coffee to work through Writer’s Block. Are you prepared for that? Picture from here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Writer\u2019s Block is the invention of a scribe who couldn\u2019t turn an assignment in on time, who had too many other things on his mind (yeah it was a man who invented the cop-out, go figure), or was just plain lazy.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe not. Maybe being blocked is real. Maybe. But there are ways around it, over, under, through it and the determined writer has to be prepared to find those ways. Most of those ways are constituted in actually doing the work.<\/p>\n

Anxiety is what it is. One isn\u2019t necessarily \u2018blocked\u2019 but rather is anxious about either the work or something associated with it. Overcoming it is basic problem-solving:<\/p>\n

1- What do you want?<\/p>\n

2 – Why can\u2019t you have it?<\/p>\n

3 – What are you prepared to do to get it?<\/p>\n

Being blocked is when the writer gets to the second question and says \u201cI don\u2019t know!\u201d and that\u2019s where the cop-out is. Right there? See it? I. Don\u2019t. Know.<\/p>\n

Block is continued when the writer doesn\u2019t have any idea of how to overcome the anxiety that has afflicted him. He doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s going to do to get what he wants, which is to Write. So instead of calling bullshit and working through the \u2018block\u2019, some writers crawl into a bottle (liquor, pills, whatever) and go down for the count, making the anxiety worse.<\/p>\n

The best cure I\u2019ve found for being blocked is to actually write. Not what I want to write, but something else, something light and fluffy and not at all related to what I should be working on. The old brainbox is stuck on something, some problem, and it\u2019s all rooted in the subconscious. Time to dig our your Freud, kids, and examine what\u2019s in your head. For instance, I\u2019m writing this post in early June because I\u2019m stuck at a point in my novel where I need to solve a problem that\u2019s going to get out of hand if I don\u2019t think it through a little better.<\/p>\n

So yeah, writer\u2019s block is real and has been studied and studied and studied by people smarter than you or me. Being blocked is no excuse. It\u2019s a cop-out to say \u201cI\u2019m blocked so I\u2019m not writing.\u201d That\u2019s an unacceptable response to your craft if one is a serious writer. A lack of inspiration is one thing and also easily solved by a writer who wants to write: go somewhere and open your mind.<\/p>\n

You need stimulation but don\u2019t go overboard. You still need to sit down and write. Remember the recipe for a good story: butt in chair, fingers on keys.<\/p>\n

You’re not blocked. Get to it. Go.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writer\u2019s Block is the invention of a scribe who couldn\u2019t turn an assignment in on time, who had too many other things on his mind (yeah it was a man who invented the cop-out, go figure), or was just plain lazy. Well, maybe not. Maybe being blocked is real. Maybe. But there are ways around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[197,528,873,1075],"class_list":["post-3838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-coffee","tag-hurdles","tag-problem-solving","tag-storytelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}