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Tuesday, January 7, 2020

WRITER'S BLOCK_What to Do About It_IWSG post


“Neurotic inhibitions of productivity.” 

That was what Dr. Edmund Bergler called it in the 1940's.  Who the heck is Edmund Bergler anyway, you ask?

He was the man who first coined the term: 

Writer's Block.

After conducting multiple interviews and spending years with writers suffering from creative problems, 

he discarded some of the theories that were popular at the time.

They hadn't drained themselves dry. They were not victim of a lack of external motivation: pay the landlord.

Nor did they lack talent nor possessed by laziness nor were they simply bored. 

In a 1950 paper called “Does Writer’s Block Exist?,” published in American Imago

a journal founded by Freud in 1939, Bergler argued that a writer is like a psychoanalyst.

 He “unconsciously tries to solve his inner problems via the sublimatory medium of writing.” 

A blocked writer is actually blocked psychologically—

and the way to “unblock” that writer is through therapy. 

Psychiatrists all over America are now rubbing their hands 

in eager anticipation of hordes of anguished writers.

Not so fast there, Doc!


In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, the Yale University psychologists Jerome Singer and Michael Barrios 

tried to gain a more empirically grounded understanding of what it meant to be creatively blocked. 

To give you the Cliff Notes version of their findings:

 Blocked writers did, indeed, suffer from 

flagging motivation, felt less joy in writing, daydreamed less, and could not recall their dreams.

Ah, Ha!


The famous prolific writer, Graham Greene, fell victim to the dreaded Writer's Block 

and stumbled onto a solution that worked for him.

In his fifties, he faced a creative “blockage,” as he called it, 

that prevented him from seeing the development of a story or even, at times, its start. 

In his youth, he had kept a dream journal.

The dream journal proved to be his savior.

 Dream journaling was a very special type of writing, Greene believed. 

No one but you sees your dreams. No one can sue you for libel for writing them down. No one can fact-check you or object to a fanciful turn of events.

He once told a friend:

 “If one can remember an entire dream, the result is a sense of entertainment sufficiently marked to give one the illusion of being catapulted into a different world . . . .

 One finds oneself remote from one’s conscious preoccupations.”

 In that freedom from conscious anxiety, Greene found the freedom to do what he otherwise couldn’t: 

Write.

 Such escapes allow writers to find comfort in the face of uncertainty;

 they give writers’ minds the freedom to imagine, 

even if the things they imagine seem ludicrous, unimportant, and unrelated to any writing project.

Greene once had the following dream:

"I was working one day for a poetry competition and had written one line

‘Beauty makes crime noble’

when I was interrupted by a criticism flung at me from behind by T.S. Eliot. 

‘What does that mean? How can crime be noble?’ He had, I noticed, grown a moustache."

Suffering from Writer's Block?  

Why not try putting down your last dream into prose?  

As Louis L'Amour wrote: "The water does not flow until you turn on the faucet." 

Go ahead: explore your inner self.  You might be surprised what you find.

27 comments:

  1. Hi Roland - love the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons - so true ... I'm sure anyone who writes for a living must suffer occasionally - just glad I don't - cheers Hilary

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    1. I love Calvin & Hobbes, too. :-) Writing is not a constant flow with me... sometimes fatigue takes its toll! Ouch!!

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  2. I usually don't remember my dreams, but maybe I need to try and then write down what I do remember.

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    1. If you get up in the middle of the night for some reason, you can usually recall the dream you just left. Some of the elements in my novels come from my dreams. :-)

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  3. I used to keep a dream journal. 99% of the stories I've written came from a dream, including the ones I'm working on now. Dreaming is the one place the imagination can truly go wild.

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    1. Our internal censor is "asleep" you could say! :-)

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  4. Roland, thanks for the Calvin and Hobbes I really miss that cartoon. have a great New Year!

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  5. I usually get blocked if I'm trying to work out the next step. It has to be logical and a surprise or twist. :-)

    Anna from elements of emaginette

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    1. Like you, Anna, I get slowed down in writing when I try for a surprise but one that flows logically out of the circumstances of the plot!

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  6. I enjoyed your post and found it informative. I've started at least one book based on a dream. Finishing it had to happen while 'awake' but it is interesting what we can think up when we 'aren't thinking'. :)

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    1. So as long as the dream primed the pump, so to speak! :-)

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  7. Nice little bit of history there. I don't have a dream journal but I do have a random thoughts journal.

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  8. I've always been interested in dream interpretation, so maybe writing down my dreams would be interesting!

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    1. I have volumes of psychology texts on dream interpretation. They make for fascinating reading! :-)

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  9. Like you, Anna, the slowdown for me is when I try for a surprise twist, yet try to make it logical when readers think back on what went on before! :-)

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  10. Fascinating blog post. I thought I was the only one who found inspiration in dreams. This was informative and inspiring.
    Happy New Year!

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    1. Some of my most vivid nightmares have translated into some of my novels. Brrr! :-)

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  11. I've only had writer's block once in my life and it was during my November writing last year. SO odd. It was only a block against the project and not in general since I wrote on something else that day with no problem. A weird feeling when your creative juice well dries up.

    Teresa

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    1. Teresa, writing when done not in the mood can derail me, but when, like you, I switch to an idea I like, the muse is unleashed. :-)

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    1. I bought the 3 volume complete collection of their strips I loved them so much, Damyanti.

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  13. I like the cartoons you used, and my favorite quote you used is from Louis L'Amour.

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    1. Lena, one of my favorite author is Louis L'Amour. Westerns are no longer in vogue but I still write fantasy ones. :-)

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  14. An interesting post, Roland. I'll have to try writing down my dreams. I recently read Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock." I wouldn't be surprised if he tapped a dream or two in writing it. All the best to you in 2020!

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