Writer's Block

Oscar Wilde: One of my Favorites.

Writer’s Block

For the past few days, I’ve been unable to write more than a few words at a time. Hate that hate that hate that.

When I’m blocked like this, I start thinking I’ll never write again, and then panic ensues. Not a good place to be.

However…

I just read a blog on shewrites.com by Lauren B. Davis in which she retells the story of James Joyce in Paris. Seems he was working – trying to work – on one of his novels, and a friend stopped by, commenting on how horrible Joyce looked. Then the friend asked how the writing was going. To which Joyce responded that it was going dreadfully, and that he’d written the grand sum of 7 words that morning. His friend replied that seven words was pretty good. For Joyce. To which Joyce then replied, “Now I have to figure out what order to put them in.”

Also read quotes by Oscar Wilde (a favorite of mine) regarding writer’s block:

“I don’t believe in it,” he wrote. “All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?”

Another quote attributed to Wilde concerns his spending the entire morning removing a comma from a poem he’d written and then spending the afternoon putting the comma back into the poem.

Kind of like Sisyphus, eh?