Stuckness - When A Writer Goes Blank

There's nothing worse for a writer than stuckness. Okay, maybe having no hands is worse. Apart from that, being stuck, or blank, is probably worse. Am I talking about writer's block? Maybe. But sometimes there's something else-- it's like a distinct blankness that descends over your day. You can't write your script, you can't write your emails, and you can't talk to people without being grumpy. 

The worst part is, everyone has advice! "You just need to write through it," or "well, you need to focus on your inner writer" or some other thing they read in a book about writing. But that takes away from the uniqueness of it. Just like nobody can tell Diablo Cody how to write Juno, nobody can tell her how to get over her stuckness, if she ever has it. In fact, it makes it worse. 

What is this stuckness I talk about? It's a thing you wake up with -- you're grumpy before you've had your cereal, and for no known reason the Gods have decided you will not be writing today. Here's something I've experienced: the ones who tell you "just write through it, that's what I do," are often the ones who don't write very good stuff. If you can write all the time, then something is wrong. The best writers always want to write and are always doing everything they can to write, but sometimes they come across the stuckness and have to deal with it by taking a walk, or a holiday, or by getting high and throwing their laptops out the window. They need to get out of the train they're on. That's what it's like --- a stuckness brought on by being in one place that is heading nowhere good.

You need that insight that comes from a new experience, or a serendipitous event, or by being suddenly in danger. You need that insight. The best writing is usually writing about the girl you loved when you were fourteen, or the time you and your friends got stranded in Estonia when you were twenty three. The problem is; once we've written the hell out of them, we're left with five months of sitting at your desk and your only experiences are the different types of teabags you've been drinking. You ignore social opportunities, because you want to write, and you ignore film recommendations because you want to watch your Woody Allen collection again. You keep it too close to home, you follow your path a little too closely. Of course, your path is the path, but all paths take on new directions. I'm bored of talking about paths already. This is the stuckness!

The comfort with the stuckness comes from experience. You know that it's part of the creative process. So is the bad newbie writer telling you how to deal with it. You probably did that too back when you were a bad writer. The stuckness comes when you really want to write something amazing, or when you have a really big project to be focusing on. The stuckness is telling you this is important. you need to see things differently.