Yes, it’s a real thing. It’s not a writer being lazy or wanting to get out of working. Writers want to be working. I know few writers who aren’t workaholics and I know no writers who haven’t experienced writers’ block.
Writers’ block is always a pain, but it’s really a pain when you’re facing a deadline. When I was writing for television it was a great luxury if I had two weeks to write a first draft. (And it had better be VERY close to being ready to shoot.) By my later years, I knew tricks to beat writers’ block. I would just write uninspired dialogue to get through the “vomit draft” and go back and fix it later. I’m a horrible first draft writer, but once I had 60 pages of something I would relax and the muses would start talking to me again. But it took me decades to get to that point.
The worst writers’ block I ever had was when I was writing my novel Dark Debts (the first time.) I’d been cruising like there was no tomorrow when all of a sudden I hit a wall. I had no idea on earth how chapter five should begin. Or what should be in it. And it was so bad that I never even made any false starts.
I have told friends for years that all I have ever done is take dictation because there is always a voice in my head telling me what the characters should say. My friend Hart Hanson, of Bones fame, used to tell me, “You really shouldn’t talk about the voices in your head.” Sometimes they would be images. I’ve always been a very visual writer and I’d see the scene the way it was going to look on the screen and that would tell me what to do next. But this time, there were no voices and there was no screen.
Dark Debts was my first attempt at a novel and I had started it having no idea whether or not I had the capability of writing a novel, so when nothing came to me after chapter four, I concluded that I did not have the right stuff and I should leave the novel writing to the people who knew how to do it. I was still writing screenplays at the time, so I went back to what I knew I could do and forgot about the novel.
Then one day I was sitting at the computer working on a television script, when all of a sudden there was a vision in my head of my male protagonist (in Dark Debts) standing at the door of a double-wide trailer, about to knock. And I knew that he could smell pine. I asked myself, “Who lives here?” And the answer came to me: a woman who turned out to be an important character. So I let him knock on the door and I let her answer, and suddenly I knew what they would say to each other. I started writing and I didn’t stop until the book was ready to go to a publisher.
In projects that I have done since then, I have noticed several times that the reason that I got writers’ block was that I hadn’t yet lived through an experience that was going to affect the writing of that chapter or that scene. Since I believe in God and I believe that He is involved with my creative pursuits, I liked that notion and now when I get blocked I tell myself that maybe there is something I have to live through before I’ll know how to write the next bit.
Writers’ block is very mysterious to writers. We don’t know why we get it and sometimes none of the tricks we’ve used before will get us out of it. My longest spell of it lasted for two years but I know of people who have gone through it for much longer than that. If you’re writing on a staff of a television show, you know that (to quote one of my mentors Glenn Gordon Caron) “You can get on the train or off the track. Either way the train is going to come.” I’ve turned in many a rough draft wherein the muses were silent, and as I have said to people who employ me, “If I’m not seeing or hearing anything I am as bad as any other bad writer.” Luckily we have at least a week to make it better, and we actually have up until the day that the scene shoots. I have always been able to find the muses in that length of time. But only because I had to.
People ask me for tricks for getting out of writers’ block and I can only tell you what I try. I go to movies and keep a writing pad on my lap. Movies inspire me and sometimes they will do the trick. I read a novel by an author that I love and sometimes that will jar me out of it. If I’m not on a deadline, I start on (or go back to) another project. When none of that works and I don’t have a deadline, I just wait it out. Sometimes it takes a long time, and many times I have decided, “That’s it. I’m done.” As if I’d used up all of my talent like ink in a fountain pen and now it’s just gone.
But it never is. Go have a drink with a writer friend and talk about what a pain writers’ block is, and he or she will remind you that it always ends. Because it does. I’m an industrial strength pessimist and I’m here to tell you that it always ends.
In the meantime, amuse yourself by writing some Game of Thrones (or Sopranos or Breaking Bad or any good show) fan fiction. Remind yourself of how much fun writing is. Because it is. With all of its frustrations (and they are legion) it’s still the best career on the planet. Write on.