{"id":2982,"date":"2016-01-27T04:19:25","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T11:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=2982"},"modified":"2023-01-15T12:07:33","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T19:07:33","slug":"untitled-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/27\/untitled-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Overcoming Writer’s Block"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(Self-deprecating note: this blogpost is a rough draft of an essay that I\u2019m later planning to refine for the Write to the End site, but I\u2019ve been asked to share it, so I finished it up and am sharing it as is. When the full article is cleaned up, I\u2019ll link to it \u2026 but in the meantime, enjoy, and try not to wince too much).<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So for way of introduction to the Write to the End group, I\u2019ve been asked by a lot of people recently \u201cHow can I become a better writer?\u201d \u2014 a question for which I\u2019ve generated a bit of stock advice I frequently sum up as, \u201cJust Write!\u201d But, when I dug a little deeper, I found almost half of the people asking me that question were really<\/i> asking the question, \u201cHow can I overcome Writer\u2019s Block?\u201d Well, I have some theories. And I\u2019m going to tell you about them. But more importantly, I\u2019ve got some techniques which I\u2019m going to share with you, and even better, I\u2019m using one of them right now: if you sit down to write and get writer\u2019s block, then write down very explicitly why you sat down to write, and what kind of writing you hope to have produced when you get up again. If you don\u2019t know why you want to write, and you don\u2019t know what you hope to produce before you get up again, congratulations! You\u2019re done. Get up from the page and go have a soda, something really nice, not diet, like with Italian flavoring or an ice cream float. If you do know what you want to write, or what you want to have written, congratulations! Actually writing that down can get you \u2026 um \u2026 on the order of 227 words, according to Scrivener\u2019s count, probably 300 by the time you\u2019re done. The hope is that getting yourself writing ANYTHING will get your pen moving, and saying what you want to write will get you rolling in the right direction; however, if you finish saying what you want to write and remain stuck, then be really explicit about what you want to say next and what you feel is your barrier to writing more. That\u2019s the big thing I want to leave with you: if you have writer\u2019s block trying to write something, you can overcome it by either describing what you want to write, or why you want to write it, and springboarding off that with more questions and answers, until, in the end, you\u2019re just writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huh. A notch over 350 words. I underestimated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I know some of the people who are reading this are technical writers, and so I want to warn you up front that there\u2019s a problem with my approach that doesn\u2019t apply to fiction writers: describing what you want to write is not a substitute for the thought that needs to go into the technical meat of whatever it is you\u2019re writing. For example, if you\u2019re trying to, say, write a design doc for your teammates, you may think that outlining the project, its goals, its problems, and its possible solutions is enough to make a design doc\u2014but it\u2019s not. That\u2019s what a fiction writer calls an outline. While there are fiction stories that are essentially nothing but outlines, and even more that are outlines in narrative, fiction generally isn\u2019t an outline, but is instead people in places, talking and doing things, told in a particular way \u2014 or what we technically call character and setting, dialogue and action, and scene and narration wrapped in that stylistic veneer we call voice. But technical writers, we can get tricked by outlines of technical items into thinking we\u2019ve said something about a problem \u2014 so it is really critical that after you get a rough outline down that you go back over it, extract the important ideas, to think about they fit together, and to identify the key ideas that are not obvious about the problem \u2014 and those key ideas are what should go into your design doc or project proposal or product requirements document or launch announcement or marketing communication or scientific paper or anything else. The value of your document is not the structure of the problem, which is often well known, but the original thought that you bring to the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that brings us to the primary reason for writer\u2019s block, at least for experienced writers, that is: not having thought clearly enough about what comes next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But wait! Because I\u2019m writing this extemporaneously \u2014 a big-ass word for saying I\u2019m pulling this out of my orifice \u2014 I\u2019ve forgotten to tell you about the other kinds of writer\u2019s block, which is somewhat important in case you\u2019re possibly getting bored and want a quick way to figure whether slogging on through the desert of this essay in search of water that will quench your particular search is a vain hope or not, but which is actually far more important because some of those kinds of writer\u2019s block can KILL YOU. Well, actually, no, that\u2019s not very likely, but they can get you to kill your story and end up back at stage one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how can you get blocked? Let\u2019s tick a few of these off so we can hold your interest while I drag out the big red warning sign. First, sometimes writer\u2019s block is caused because you just don\u2019t want to write \u2014 Ayn Rand used to call this \u201cwhite sneakers disease\u201d because she knew a writer who\u2019d\u2019ve rather cleaned their sneakers than write. Ayn Rand thought that, technically speaking, this wasn\u2019t a block, but nevermind, since people have developed a good technique for resolving \u201cwhite sneaker\u2019s disease,\u201d and that technique is called BIC \u2014 Butt In Chair. If you think you want to write, and you are not writing, then stop whatever you are doing, go put your butt in chair in front of a pen, piece of paper and writing surface, and sit there until you get bored enough to write something, or find that you cannot and AHA NOW this<\/i> is writer\u2019s block, congratulations, move on to the techniques for tackling writer\u2019s block proper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, as I said earlier, experienced writers can have writer\u2019s block because they haven\u2019t thought through what comes next. Third, inexperienced writers can have writer\u2019s block because they\u2019re cognitively overwhelmed \u2014 which is the real point of this essay, and which is why I started the essay off with one paragraph specifically tackling this problem in case that was all that you read, but, don\u2019t fear, if \u201cinexperienced writer staring at a blank page feeling just that, a blank\u201d describes you, then hang in there, I\u2019m writing this essay specifically for you and will come back to this in detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the fourth kind is the real dangerous kind of writer\u2019s block, a particular kind of voluntary writer\u2019s block which can hit writers of any stripe, both unmotivated and motivated, inexperienced and experienced; in fact, it almost hit me writing the second section of this essay, and if I\u2019d given into it, I never would have written the words you\u2019re reading right now \u2014 because I would have spent the same time editing<\/i> the first section of this essay, and that right there is Writer\u2019s Block of the Fourth Kind: editing while you write<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trying to edit while you write is particularly dangerous for reasons I\u2019ll get back to when I explain Why Novices Feel Fear At The Dreaded Blank Page, but the more immediate reason is that you can spend arbitrary amounts of time editing without adding to your draft. Now, there are some writers who edit while they write all the time \u2014 especially poets, who may spend as much time working over ten words as it takes me to write a thousand words \u2014but right there that shows you that if you\u2019re trying to cough up a ten thousand word story, it doesn\u2019t behoove you to drill down on a perfect first sentence. There\u2019s a reason we call our writing group Write to the End: it\u2019s because we believe you should finish what you start before you try to edit it, or you will never finish anything at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, that\u2019s a first pass at why Writer\u2019s Block of the Fourth Kind is dangerous: it can stall you out, and worse, trick you into thinking you\u2019re actually writing. But what if you don\u2019t have anything to edit? What if you\u2019re suffering from Writer\u2019s Block of the Third Kind, the Dreaded Fear of the Blank Page? This feeling of blankness is the feeling you get when you\u2019re cognitively overwhelmed, and to understand the reasons I separate it out from Writer\u2019s Block of the Second Kind, AKA Not Thinking Through Your Shit, we need to talk a little bit about cognitive psychology \u2014 specifically, working memory and cognitive skill acquisition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, when a writer sits down at the page, we may imagine we\u2019re creating worlds \u2014 but we\u2019re not gods, and can hold only a finite amount of information in our heads at one time. Our working memories can only manipulate a handful of chunks of discrete information at a time \u2014 famously estimated in cognitive psychology as a short term memory holding roughly seven plus or minus two items. Of course, it ain\u2019t that simple when you dig into the details, but as a rough rule of thumb, it holds \u2014 and that explains both writer\u2019s block for experienced writers and the Dreaded Fear of the Blank Page for inexperienced ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When faced with a blank page, you can easily see how you could get blocked not knowing why you want to write, or what you want to write about, or what\u2019s the meat behind the structure of the idea \u2014 there\u2019s just nothing in your short term memory to put on the page. But why do so many inexperienced writers who know the answers to all these questions<\/i> nevertheless come to me complaining that they feel a blank when sitting down at the page? Well, that\u2019s easy: I\u2019m a psychic magnet for those kinds of problems \u2014 just kidding. The real reason is that inexperienced writers have, by definition, a set of skills which are not fully developed \u2014 and we don\u2019t actually have short term memories that hold information, we have working memories which are both the product of and are used by our skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, that\u2019s right \u2014 I tricked you! I started talking about working memory, then smoothly slipped to talking about short term memory in the same sentence, because for a long time cognitive psychologists made the same mistake. We imagined that humans had a short term memory like a buffer that passively held information, like a briefcase, but when you carry through the implications that model breaks down, and that\u2019s not really how the cortex of the brain is organized anyway. It\u2019s better to think of the brain\u2019s fixed storage capacity as less a passive buffer and more of an active internal dashboard reporting the state all the brain\u2019s cognitive systems. Now, there are no photogenic cartoon characters monitoring that dashboard like in Inside Out<\/i>\u2014in part because of licensing issues with Pixar, but mostly because it would involve an infinite regress\u2014if there\u2019s a little character monitoring your<\/i> internal dashboard, who\u2019s monitoring their<\/i> internal dashboards? Cognitive psychologists call that homunculus fallacy, and so a better image of the mental stage of the mind is an empty spherical cockpit filled with instruments projecting their findings to each other<\/i>. Your consciousness is just the part of your mind that is easily accessible to other parts of your mind. For example, you can recognize a person\u2019s face, but unless there are really obvious features, like Salvador Dali\u2019s mustache that points all the way up to your eyeballs, you can\u2019t describe a face in sufficient detail for someone else to recognize it, because the details of your facial recognition system aren\u2019t accessible to conscious awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most animals, the instruments of the cockpit are fixed by the design of the system, like the gas gauge on your car, which reports the status of your fuel tank, or the flashing light on the fast return switch of your TARDIS, which shows that the Ship is trying to return to its previous destination.What distinguishes humans is that many of its screens are programmable, the same way your car\u2019s GPS can update itself when the manufacturer pushes an update, or the way your TARDIS reconfigures its controls to match your personality every time you regenerate. Over time, the systems of the cockpit collect information, slowly improving over time with respect to the problems for which they were designed, like a GPS picking up new roads. But the human mind isn\u2019t a car, with an army of of engineers designing updates that get pushed to it over a wireless network, or a TARDIS, with a billion years of engineering designed into its architectural reconfiguration system to help it adapt. No, the human mind has to update itself from scratch, often adapting to skills for which it has no evolutionary precedent \u2014 like, for example, writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve got dials on your dashboard for hunger, sound, even speech, but writing is something humans made up from whole cloth. And when you\u2019ve got to learn a skill for which you\u2019ve got no precedent, no inbuilt system that can just pick up new roads, your mind has to fall back on more powerful general problem solving techniques. These techniques involve representing the information we know about a problem explicitly, collecting the implications of that knowledge from our long term memory, and putting all that data together into new conclusions. Once again, the components of your dashboard notice these leaps from information to conclusion, storing it to make it available to solve new problems. This process is called automatization, and it\u2019s called that because it\u2019s transforming explicit information that you\u2019re representing in your conscious dashboard into skilled knowledge you can use automatically without conscious awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019d think that automatization wouldn\u2019t help you, since you\u2019re trying to store new information, but all you have are existing systems – but one of the fundamental tricks of computing is that any sufficiently powerful process can simulate just about any other process, and the cockpit of your glorious machine\u2014in which all the systems you\u2019ve accumulated over a billion years of evolution can talk to each other\u2014certainly qualifies as a very powerful process that can simulate almost anything. SO, if you keep learning basic facts about a new skill, and keep storing them in whatever systems you have that are even remotely compatible, over time, your overall cognitive system will learn a new, automatic skill\u2014but hang on. To represent the information about a problem, to dredge up its implications, and draw conclusions, your mind needs scratchspace\u2014temporary storage to hold this information so your general problem solving processes can work it over, and that information must be accessible your conscious awareness. Learning a new cognitive skill needs your dashboard. It needs your highly limited working memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But wait! Weren\u2019t we using that to hold what we wanted to write about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly. Now you\u2019re starting to see the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a novice writer, you may know how to physically write\u2014how to generate words on the page in response to prompts, like writing down items for a grocery list for your spouse in response to spoken requests, or writing down the contents of a shipment from the Queen of Sheba as it comes off the boat\u2014but when you\u2019re writing an article or story, what you\u2019re actually doing is the separate and more complex task of composition<\/i> \u2014 the task of creating new sequences of words. Take a simple example, composing your Captain\u2019s Log. You can\u2019t just hit a button on the Captain\u2019s Chair and start jabbering about what happened on the planet: the task involves creating a specific set of words in a specific sequence which is stereotyped. You start with \u201cCaptain\u2019s Log\u201d, followed by the stardate, followed by a sentence reporting the location or situation, followed by one or two more sentences discussing the key questions of the mission and whatever red-shirted disposable crewmembers were eaten by the monster of the week. That structure itself is information, information which you need to call to mind, somehow, in order to organize the words that you speak, and if you\u2019ve been rattled by a bunch of red-shirted disposable crewmembers being eaten by the monster of the week, you might have trouble gathering your thoughts. An experienced Starfleet captain like Picard or Kirk, however, will have no trouble\u2014because for them, the structure of the log is automatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way that cognitive skill learning works is through the transformation of declarative knowledge to procedural knowledge: that is, the process of automatization takes information you express explicitly and turns it into information that\u2019s the output of a skill. That means if you are skilled at a task, you don\u2019t need to pay attention to it: the actions of the task will happen, well, automatically; but that also means that if you are not skilled at a task, you\u2019re relying on your general purpose processing power to perform it\u2014and that the information you need to perform the task will compete with what you know about the task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is even worse because the act of writing relies on many sources of knowledge. Let\u2019s review for a moment what some of those are, and I\u2019ll throw in some you may have not thought of yet:<\/p>\n\n\n\n