If People in Other Professions Got Writer’s Block

A long-suffering reader of mine asked me if I ever struggle with writer’s block. I told her that when it comes to writing, I struggle with many things—laziness, lack of focus, a well-stocked refrigerator just down the hallway—but writer’s block isn’t one of them. That’s because writer’s block is a luxury for people who don’t have deadlines. I’ve been self-syndicating a humor column in the West and Midwest for more than 20 years and I don’t think any of my editors would have accepted writer’s block as a valid reason for missing a deadline. I’m not denying it’s real, I’m just saying I better not get it.

I can’t help wondering if people in other professions suffer from their own version of writer’s block, the psychological condition in which a writer finds herself unable to create. Her muse has abandoned her. I’m not sure if accountants and emergency medical technicians have muses so it’s possible they don’t experience block—thank goodness. But I think it’s worth exploring the possibility.

Certainly people in all career fields regularly face deadlines and I think most would grudgingly agree that deadlines are a gift, a practical but not necessarily welcome gift—like getting socks for Christmas. Without some cut-off date, I doubt some of us would ever finish anything.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but a deadline forces me to engage in the two most effective writer’s block prevention techniques there are: A regular writing routine and writing crap. I don’t know what the equivalent of writing crap is for blocked pilots and brain surgeons and I never want to find out.

Ideally of course the writer shouldn’t stop at crap—and neither should the brain surgeon. The writer must keep polishing until what they’re writing becomes, if not a piece of inspired genius, at least somewhat less crappy.

All my newspaper columns follow a very predictable pattern from “crap” to “less crappy” to “the deadline is here so I’m sending it whether it’s still crap or not.” I have an idea I love. I think it’s brilliant. I think it will be the best thing I’ve ever written. I’m excited, inspired and motivated — for about half an hour.

But sooner or later everything degenerates into work. This is the moment when, were it not for a deadline, I would succumb to a serious case of writer’s block or a rousing game of computer solitaire. While they may or may not experience block, I know plenty of people in other professions play solitaire at work. You know who you are.

When I get to this point, I begin to doubt myself. I wonder why I ever thought the idea would work. I wonder why I didn’t pursue another line of work. Hopefully appliance repair people and trial court judges don’t have to deal with this every time they begin a job.

My deadline is looming so I must resort to writing crap until there’s a beginning, an ending and around 500 properly punctuated, grammatically correct but still fairly crappy words in the middle. I’m not happy with what I’ve written, but I could send it off to my editors if something serious came up, say my appendix burst or I had to go to jail for a few days.

Thankfully neither of these has happened thus far, but if you ever read something I’ve written and think it isn’t up to my usual level of mediocrity you can safely assume I’ve either had emergency surgery or I’ve been arrested.

Getting to this stage is always a comfort to me. At this point I can start polishing, moving things around, exchanging one thing for another. I hope mechanics and orthopedic surgeons don’t do this. But for me, this part of the process is so fun that if I hadn’t had deadlines for the past 26 years, I might still be working on my first column.

I resent that every single time I have to suffer the angst before I get to this phase, but I suspect that attempting to go from brilliant idea straight to deadline would cause a severe case of writer’s block. That’s why as I work I constantly remind myself that I’m not writing a column, I’m writing a rough draft of a column. Admittedly, this probably won’t work for people in other professions. You never want to hear your dentist mumbling repeatedly, “I’m not doing a root canal, I’m doing a rough draft of a root canal.”

But it works for me and at last I reach the final stage: the deadline. Ready or not, time to send. This is the equivalent of April 15 for accountants, who if they do indeed experience block, have an option available to them that I don’t have. They can file an extension.

Dorothy Rosby is an author and humor columnist whose work regularly appears in publications in the West and Midwest. Subscribe to her blog elsewhere on this page.