Writer's block is a condition, associated with writing as a
profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task in hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers.
Causes of writer's block
Writer's block may have many causes. Some are essentially
creative problems that originate within an author's work itself. A writer may run out of
inspiration. A project may be fundamentally misconceived, or beyond the author's experience or ability. (A fictional example can be found in
George Orwell's novel
Keep The Aspidistra Flying, in which the hero Gordon Comstock struggles in vain to complete an epic poem describing a day in London:
"It was too big for him, that was the truth. It had never really progressed, it had simply fallen apart into a series of fragments.")
Other blocks, especially the more serious kind, may be produced by adverse circumstances in a writer's life or career: physical
illness,
depression, the end of a
relationship, financial pressures, a sense of failure. The pressure to produce work may in itself contribute to a writer's block, especially if he is compelled to work in ways that are against his natural inclination, i.e. too fast or in some unsuitable style or genre, and he or she is not willing to adapt. In some cases, writer's block may also come from feeling intimidated by a previous big success, the creator putting on him/herself a paralyzing pressure to find something to equate that same success again. The writer
Elizabeth Gilbert, reflecting on her post-bestseller prospects, proposes that such a pressure might be released by interpreting creative writers as "having" genius rather than "being" a genius . In
George Gissing's
New Grub Street, one of the first novels to take writer's block as a main theme, the novelist Edwin Reardon becomes completely unable to write and is shown as suffering from all those problems.
Recently, the writer and neurologist Alice W. Flaherty has argued that literary creativity is a function of specific areas of the brain, and that block may be the result of brain activity being disrupted in those areas.
Notable blocked writers
Well-known writers who have suffered from block include
George Gissing,
Samuel Coleridge,
Ralph Ellison,
Joseph Mitchell and
F. Scott Fitzgerald. Writers who overcame block and published new work after a hiatus of decades include
Harold Brodkey, whose novel
The Runaway Soul appeared some 30 years after it was first projected, and
Henry Roth, whose first novel,
Call It Sleep, was published in 1934; his second,
Mercy Of A Rude Stream, did not appear until 1994.
Writer's block in Music
The album
Black Clouds & Silver Linings by the
progressive metal band
Dream Theater contains a song called "Wither", which is about the fear of having writer's block suffered by the guitar player of the band
John Petrucci. It is said that the songs in this album are about personal experiences.
Writer's block as depicted in other media
In works where writers appear as characters, writer's block has often been shown as part of the story.
