I don’t often think about writer’s block. It seems to me like an abstract term for an imaginary problem. It presupposes that writers should always be writing. Why would anyone think such a thing. Should talkers always be talking? Of course not. It doesn’t seem to me that writers should always be writing any more than talkers should always be talking.
Writing is a form of speech. It’s silent until read, yet it is still speech. Writing has one advantage over talking: it can be rewritten over and over until you get it to say what you intended it to say. When talk stumbles, nothing can be done about it.
I write when I want to say something, or when I think something should be said, or when I want to clarify my own thoughts about something. If someone reads what I’ve written and finds it agreeable, or entertaining, or true, that’s a bonus. If what I’ve written seems right to me, that’s satisfaction enough.
There are times when I don’t feel like writing, just as there are times when I don’t feel like talking. I don’t think of those times as writer’s block. Nothing is blocking me, at those times I’ve nothing I care to say. So I don’t. Silence is better than talking to no point.
When I do write, I imagine myself speaking to people who are not there. I imagine my invisible audience as friends who have interests similar to my own. Dialogue is impossible, but other than that, I think of my writing as a conversation with friends.
I further imagine that some of these friends may not be listening at all, and that some other of these friends may listen years or even centuries later. I imagine this because I have read so many writings by writers long dead. Writing outlasts the living writer and often connects generations over long periods of time.
Time is always on the side of the writer. Downtime may be needed to recharge.
The term writer’s block is relatively modern. Wikipedia tells me it was coined by Austrian psychologist, Edmund Bergler, in 1947. I’m not surprised. Psychology is responsible for many useless labels that misdirect cogent thought. Labeling an anxiety does nothing to fix an anxiety, it probably makes it worse.
All that I’ve said applies to discursive prose. Discursive prose doesn’t require inspiration, only an idea worth talking about. “Creative” writing is much more in need of inspiration.
Homer called on the muse to sing through him the wrath of Achilles. Every writer of artful fiction is well-served by a muse to guide their words. Unfortunately, the muse doesn’t always feel like helping out.
I suppose that lack of help might be thought of as writer’s block. What a dreary phrase to describe an absence of inspiration. What’s the hurry, anyway?
If the muse is unavailable today, tomorrow may be different, or perhaps some tomorrow later yet. Some days the sun shines, some days it doesn’t.
So what!
I wouldn’t be surprised if the muse is annoyed by anxiety. It may be that the best cure for writer’s block is to stop worrying about it.