Blockbusting: Understanding Writers Block
Understanding the Causes of Writer’s Block
by Christopher Edwards
Abstract
Writing, whether for a thesis, grant, or research paper, is a skill required of all scientists. Sometimes just getting a rough draft started can be a major hurdle. In this first of two articles on writing productivity, the author discusses the psychology behind writer’s block and the myths about writing that act as obstacles between scientists and their word processors.
You’re stuck, damn it. You can’t even imagine starting to write your grant or article without a twinge of terror or resentment. Even if you can manage to drag yourself to the computer, the words just don’t flow. At one time or another, most everyone who needs to write suffers from writer’s block. It’s a devastatingly painful experience, and it can kill a career. I have known research professors who left academia for industry to avoid writing, professors denied tenure because they could not publish, and Ph.D. candidates who bailed out of graduate school because they could not write their dissertations.
However, both the scholarly literature and my own client work convince me that most scientists with basic language competence can overcome writer’s block. This article will identify some major sources of writer’s block, particularly the most harmful attitudes toward writing, and will suggest a few solutions. In a follow-up article, I will describe some detailed strategies one can apply to break or avoid writer’s block. I will also suggest instances in which writing coaches or even psychotherapists can be helpful.
Anxiety and boredom are two major emotional sources of writer’s block. As with other productivity problems, overcoming writer’s block requires that scientists work within the zone of emotional arousal where they are neither bored nor overly anxious, setting realistic goals they can accomplish with concentrated effort. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a productivity specialist at the University of Chicago, defines this zone as the dimension where people experience pleasure, productivity, and flow in their work. [1] As with laboratory work, success with writing depends upon having enough challenge to stretch one’s abilities, but not so much that one lives in fear of failing. [2]
If you struggle with the task of writing, take a close look at unrealistic, crippling attitudes you may hold. Psychologist A.C. Jones concludes that writer’s block occurs when grandiose but fluctuating expectations of success combine with a vaguely planned project. [3] Perfectionism may be the greatest of all attitudinal blocks. I have seen scientists labor over every single word of the first draft, crawling toward the end of each paragraph by constantly switching between writing and correcting. If you lower your expectations about earlier drafts and stop editing while you write, you can raise your productivity. Outline the main ideas and use the first draft to test what you will include in the submitted work. A writer invites paralysis by expecting anything close to a finished product in early drafts. With scientific writing, as with other writing, there is never a perfect text. To paraphrase poet Paul Valery, an article is never finished, only abandoned.
Writer’s block can be a reaction to boredom as much as perfectionistic fear. Boredom can occur when scientists view writing as merely a mechanical transmission of their truly creative work. If one feels this way, the challenge is to create enough novelty and interest to finish the writing task. As writer Dorothy Parker quipped: The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. [4] Writing up research can be an interesting way of refining as well as communicating one’s science; if you can treat it as a challenge, it can sharpen your thinking. For example, I have watched scientists develop a better sense of the larger significance of their work through their writing, since composing and editing force one to confront what may be important for others, not simply oneself.
Task inflation can be another source of writer’s block. It occurs when one makes a project seem more daunting than it really is. Two types of task inflation can plague scientists when they write: overvaluing the importance of getting a current article published, and overestimating the role of one’s prose in the work’s acceptance for publication. No matter how important an article may be, it is only a limited communication of a portion of one’s lifetime scientific achievement. Many excellent papers are published in Nature, Science, and Cell, only to be added to the list of hundreds of good scientific papers published each year. When one does publish in top journals, the writing is far less important than the science about which one writes. In reality, good journals accept even very poorly written scientific papers, if the science is novel and significant. One can conquer task inflation by learning to focus on the work one is reporting, instead of on imagined reactions to the paper.
When the above-mentioned attitudinal problems are combined with major misleading myths about writing, writing becomes a painful, frustrating bore of a chore. Three of the most debilitating myths, well described by Jerrold Mundis, are: writing should be fun and easy; one can only write when one is inspired or otherwise feeling enthusiastic about a manuscript, and writing requires some type of special genius. [5] Scientists who write as a part of their jobs can learn something about the fun and easy myth from full-time writers. Many of the best professional writers dread writing. [6] It is never easy. For many, the real pleasure of writing only comes with submission of the text - there is a sigh, a moment of relief from the tension of composing and revising that has been mounting for weeks, months, or years. Writing is lonely, hard work with few intermediate rewards. It can become more enjoyable over time, but only if one is willing to sit in front of the blank screen and plug away at a draft in the midst of fear or boredom.
Interestingly, the act of writing is rarely, on its own, the source of agony. Avoidance of the task, along with the cycles of fear and guilt that follow, is often the greatest cause of frustration.
The myth of inspiration is a second, related obstacle to good science writing. Our culture tends to mystify the notion of inspiration as a source of writing. In fact, you don’t need any inspiration or enthusiasm whatsoever to write an article or grant. Novelist Ernest Hemingway, writing coach Mundis, and poet Donald Hall have all emphasized that writing should be viewed simply as a craft. It is a physical and mental exercise, a developed skill that improves with practice - like woodworking, sewing, or dancing.
The myth of genius, sister to the myth of inspiration, can afflict writers in any discipline. The legacy of European Romantic poets and novelists - which often portrays the writer as a lonely, misunderstood genius whose words arrive from on high - even affects modern scientists. Scientists at their writing desks may unconsciously compare themselves to a Stephen Jay Gould without understanding the long and difficult apprenticeship strong writers must undergo. Great science writers are made, not born, and outstanding writing is not the goal of journal publication or grant submission. As with much scientific work, persistence is often more important than genius. In fact, sparkling writing talents can be an obstacle to success if one doesn’t harness them carefully. One must conform to the standard conventions of grants and journals, which severely limit vocabulary and format for the sake of precise communication.
The emotional, motivational, and attitudinal factors mentioned here are not the only sources of writer’s block for scientists. Blocks can be related to purely cognitive problems, such as the inability to artfully manipulate the linguistic rules of the language in which one writes. Sometimes people can’t write simply because they lack the know- how. However, these cognitive strategies can be learned. Other types of blocks require self-observation to understand the nature of the problem. In my next article, I will outline some simple rules that writers can follow during the planning and drafting stages, to help them become productive and stay productive. When these strategies don’t work and the block is terribly severe, writing coaches or therapists can apply empirically validated methods to supportively help scientists break writer’s block. I will also describe when and how these professionals can help the scientist’s written work.