words by Millie Harris
I keep a running list of habits I blame for my writer’s block: lack of sleep, too much coffee, too little coffee, the internet, my phone, my chair squeaking every time I move. I’ll sit there, fingers hovering over the keyboard, watching the time tick away at me in the upper right corner of my laptop screen and I will find my brain utterly blank. How can I claim to be an aspiring writer if I can’t write? If I can’t post, can’t publish, can’t hit the word count, can’t keep up, then what exactly am I? Who am I when I’m not being the thing I claim to be?
At some point in the middle of this procrastination spiral, I did what every modern writer does: I outsourced my despair to Google. ‘How to fix writer’s block’ produced an adventurous page, filled with many nuggets of wisdom I’m sure will help many others, but that is when I stumbled upon Toni Morrison’s opinion on the matter.
Toni Morrison, author of the renowned novel Beloved among numerous other writings, stated:
When I sit down in order to write, sometimes it’s there; sometimes it’s not. But that doesn’t bother me anymore. I tell my students there is such a thing as “writer’s block,” and they should respect it. You shouldn’t write through it. It’s blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven’t got it right now. All the frustration and nuttiness that comes from “Oh, my God, I cannot write now” should be displaced. It’s just a message to you saying, “That’s right, you can’t write now, so don’t.” We operate with deadlines, so facing the anxiety about the block has become a way of life. We get frightened about the fear. I can’t write like that. If I don’t have anything to say for three or four months, I just don’t write.
Toni Morrison treats writer’s block as something meaningful, which is startling, because most of what I have absorbed about writing tends to treat the block as embarrassing, a moral failing. It’s something you’re supposed to outwit with routine: to wake up early, write everyday, and hit your pre-planned word count. It is not as if this has come from nowhere either. We repeat, almost reverently, the details of writers who seem to have solved the ‘problem’ with sheer force of habit. Stephen King, for example, has spoken about setting daily page count goals that he strictly adheres to and “only under dire circumstances does he stop before he reaches that goal”. Haruki Murakami, also, has described a similar discipline: when he is drafting a novel, he gets up at four in the morning, writes for five or six hours, then runs ten kilometres or swims fifteen hundred metres “every day without variation”. Could you continuously utilise your body as another instrument in service of the written word? Are you able to be up in the dark, running after hours at the desk, no matter how you feel? For many, the answer is no, not because they are less committed to the work, but because their bodies and time are already spoken for. In Toni Morrison’s world, writer’s block is not attributed to laziness, it is your standards for what you write that refuses to let you ‘fake it’.
When I’m feeling blocked, I automatically interpret it as a personal deficiency. I’m either too tired, distracted, or uncommitted; I haven’t read enough; I’ve read too much; I’ve fried my brain on social media, the list goes on... So reading Toni Morrison’s opinion on writer’s block certainly made me pause and consider that maybe what I’m attempting to write has simply outgrown the tools I know to use. Maybe, the block shows what my current habits and vocabulary can handle as the work is refusing to be reduced to what I currently know how to say. Perhaps, for now, “the block ought to be blocked”. I think of pieces that have stalled in exactly the same place for weeks, not because I had nothing to say, but because I was trying to make them obediently form into something that just didn’t fit. There was an essay that only began to move once I let it become more personal, another that refused to progress until I admitted I needed to stop writing and go away to read, to gather language that wasn’t yet mine. In each case, the block was more an insistence for these pieces to become something different than I had planned.
The line that struck me the most is, “We get frightened about the fear”. It’s one that hits so deeply simply because it is true. The block appears and I begin to panic; then I panic about panicking; then I panic about what the panic suggests about my seriousness, my discipline, my worth. We’re afraid of losing time or worth in ourselves as we have to prove to both others and ourselves that we actually are writers. Because that is the underlying fear, isn’t it? That the block proves you are not who you claim to be. That wanting to write down the worlds crafted in your head and then putting them down on page are two different talents entirely. The fear is so all-encompassing that the words I do write down aren’t mine, they belong to the anxiety instead. But, the “we” within this sentence goes to show that we are not alone in this, it is not a flaw Morrison is pointing out, it is something she also experiences. We are frightened about the fear because we have tied so much of our worth, our seriousness, our identity, to the ability to produce words on demand. The vocabulary we use gives this away. We talk about ‘serious writers’, ‘hard-working creatives’ and ‘content’. To fall silent, even briefly, can feel as if we are disappearing from the conversation we so desperately want to be involved in. Morrison’s “we” refuses to allow any distance between the acclaimed author and a beginner. If she can name herself inside this loop, then the fear cannot be the measure of who does and does not belong at the desk.
This may be why turning writer’s block into an enemy is so tempting. If it’s an enemy, then we are noble for fighting it. We then have bragging rights to ‘defeating the beast’ and can showcase our shining accomplishments to the ones who surround us. I can push words onto the page and call it a victory, producing proof that I am still here and that I am a writer.
But is the enemy narrative too convenient? Toni Morrison pushes how we are not empty for feeling blocked. She wants us to know that we do have something inside of us. But perhaps, instead, what we are trying to write has just outgrown the tools we currently know how to use. So, perhaps the question is not ‘How do I defeat writer’s block?’ but ‘What is this block preventing me from doing right now?’ Is it preventing me from writing something dishonest? Is it preventing me from writing something shallow? I could write a sentence because I know how to logistically craft one, but is that what I truly want to say?
There is an argument that the page is sometimes the only place you can find out what you think. Waiting until everything feels fully shaped before you write is lovely to ponder on, but for a lot of people, the thinking happens within the clumsy first draft. You don’t ‘have something to say’ and then write; you write and watch what insists on staying. Musicians such as pianists practise scales on days they don’t feel inspired, partly so that when something they truly want to play comes into their path, their hands can keep up. An extremely strict respect for the block can, in some cases, stunt that writing muscle. Sometimes the work needs a version of you that is tired or pressed for time, sometimes you can accidentally write your best work when your thoughts are frazzled and happy accidents occur. There is the risk of taking Morrison’s position perhaps too literally, where we only stay in the comfortable and safe aspects of ourselves, instead of dipping our toe into what we are unsure will be created. Though the safety net is known, it can also trap us inside, never allowing us to reach further than what we can control. The hard part is telling the difference between a block that protects the work and a block that protects the ego. One way I try to tell is by asking myself a few uncomfortable questions. Am I hesitating because the sentences I’m reaching for feel dishonest, or because I’m afraid they will not sound clever enough? Is the reluctance coming from a sense that I am selling the subject short, or from the prospect of other people seeing me try and fail? Sometimes putting a name to my fear helps me to navigate my next steps.
I don’t think I will ever completely love having a writer’s block, as the feeling itself is still utterly unpleasant. However, I am trying to stop interpreting it as a verdict on my character and instead meet it halfway. Sometimes we can take notes instead of drafting. We can read around instead of pushing through. We can let ourselves write badly in a notebook no one will ever see. Doing these small things can keep us in conversation with the work, even when the work will not yet speak back to us. None of this proves anything to an audience, but it does prove something, perhaps, to you.
At the start of this piece, I asked how I could claim to be a writer if I could not write, but I am starting to suspect that was the wrong fear to have. Writer’s block is truly miserable, but it is also, at its best, a sign that a part of you still cares what your name is attached to. The true danger is to stop caring and start mindlessly producing whatever the world will passively consume. Some days we will write despite feeling uninspired because we ultimately have to. Some days we will stop, or change form, or let the piece sit for a little while longer. In either case, the fact that we have noticed something being wrong, something not lining up or an inability to justly write a piece, is not a flaw in your character. It is part of the work. If anything, it is part of what makes us writers in the first place.
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Millie Harris studied English Literature at York St. John University, graduating with a First Class Honours, alongside reviewing books for Zimmer’s Book of the Month column. As Literature Editor, she curates and plans the magazine’s Literature section. Aside from her work at Zimmer, Millie is extremely passionate about film, books and all things media. She spends her spare time researching, reading and being with her cat. Millie has happily been a part of Zimmer since the beginning and has loved every moment!