Writers at all levels talk about writer’s block in one form or another.
After years of experience in the writing trade, I maintain that the phenomenon called “writer’s block” doesn’t actually exist.
Oh, there are situations in which a writer just can’t get the words to come: either on any writing on their project docket or on a specific project.
That’s particularly true of inexperienced writers.
What I maintain after years in the writing profession and a considerable amount of time in self-study on a variety of topics is that “block” exists, but that it’s a misnomer to refer to it as “writer’s block.”
I look upon it as a more generalized phenomenon I label as “creative block.”
Over the course of my technical writing career, I’ve worked with programmers, systems levels developers, and scientists. And by “scientists” I mean of the technical nature of the folks who deal in nuclear submarine matters.
Nary a one of them that I ever knew didn’t suffer the in-their-profession equivalent of “writer’s block.”
I’ve even met a few executive types who faced that same kind of experience in the context of a major planning decision.
In the course of self-study, I’ve read about mathematicians and inventors who faced the same issues.
As in the case of Elias Howe, a pioneer of the sewing machine: who had to dream about sewing machine needles with the eye in the tip by way of spears so constructed and wielded by cannibals attacking him.
Sometimes the subconscious just needs to do its work for an interval.
And writers do not have a monopoly on that.
So, here’s to creative [writer’s] block: and making the most of it.
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