Writer's block, an owner's guide: NaNoWriMo research, further update
I presented my recent writer’s block research at the Saybrook research center last week, and here’s a summary of that information. And here’s a summary of the summary: on a productive writing day, people were likely to be feeling purposeful (rather than playful), and motivated by thoughts of competence, of other people and (possibly this one’s because of the unusual research setting) of complying with established rules. Some of this surprised me.
People who did not give up on their novels, while others were dropping out, scored higher on three of these four scales.
Something that surprised me was how strongly regular contact with me was linked to productive writing, and to endurance. I must start renting myself out.
Published on January 27, 2006 at 8:03 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/nanowrimo-research-further-update.html
Writer's block, an owner's guide: Definition of writer’s block
This may or may not seem like a big or groundbreaking thing to everyone but it’s my moment of epiphany, my scientific breakthrough. Let me tell you.
A year and a half after starting to write this, two years and a half after starting to work on the question, and in the course of working on my third research project in the area, I finally have a theory of what writer’s block might actually be. And guess what, regular readers won’t be surprised to know that it came to me in the language of reversal theory.
When we first have the idea of a big project - a screenplay, a marathon, a marriage - we are in the paratelic state. The thing seems worth doing for its own sake. It seems like fun. I’ll write a novel and it will be fun. I’ll climb a mountain because it’ll be rewarding. I know it means some effort, but that doesn’t matter.
When you’re actually doing the work, it’s fun some of the time but most of it is done in the telic state. You have to sit at the desk and write (or you don’t have to - you can use one of your excuses, or just pretend to be letting the story simmer at the back of your mind - and behold, there’s your writer’s block). You have to keep running when your legs hurt and breathing hurts and nobody you know is even watching. You have to live with this person’s moods and opinions day after day even though she hangs the toilet paper the wrong way round. You are in the telic state - you do the thing because it will pay off later, same as when you go out to work.
And I’m suggesting that this is what writer’s block is. It’s not that you are in the “wrong” state. If you switched from telic to paratelic at this moment, it would be the signal to goof off and do something that was really fun. No, writer’s block is the tension between two parts of you - the part that created the decision to tackle this big task, and the other part that gets stuck with the actual work. You can see how each of them might resent the attitude of the other. How they might be critical of each other. Writer’s block is that internal argument.
(This is all metaphor, I’m not saying you are two people, ok?)
But this is my best answer so far to the question “why is it that we want to do things and yet we don’t do them?”
And the cure? The cure is not reversal. The cure, I guess, is reconciliation. And what that means is that the cure is not just a matter of adapting existing reversal-based methods of therapy (such as the use of reversal in sports psychology). The cure is… [to be continued]
Published on January 11, 2006 at 12:46 pm. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/definition-of-writers-block.html
Writer's block, an owner's guide: Achievement motivation
Today and, hey look, a little earlier than I’d planned, we’re getting back to the psychology of procrastination and maybe even to the psychology of writer’s block.
I spotted this in a Psychology Today article by Carlin Flora:
“Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University, has found that people’s beliefs about their abilities greatly influence their performance. When she praised children’s intelligence after they succeeded at a nonverbal IQ test, they subsequently didn’t want to take on a new challenge - they preferred to keep looking smart. When they were forced to complete a more difficult exercise, their performance plummeted. In contrast, some children were praised for “how” they did a task - for undergoing the process successfully. Most of the children in this group wanted to take on a tougher assignment afterward. Their performance improved for the most part, and when it didn’t, they still enjoyed the experience.”
I looked a little deeper into this and basically, Carol Dweck has come up with a theory of internal causality which is reminiscent of Teresa Amabile’s ideas on intrinsic motivation.
This fits beautifully with so much of what I’ve been trying to say here over the months. We were trained, most of us, to work towards a test, pass it and focus on the next test (often in some utterly different subject area). We weren’t trained to work through the tests, to treat them as enjoyable parts of our path towards mastery. And so we didn’t master anything. I wasted two entire university degree programs that way before coming, in my 40s, to psychology - which had been an interest since I was about 13 but, luckily, not one that had been polluted by any mention of it whatever in any school I’d attended.
Anyway, enough about me (joke) and let’s get back to Dweck. Yes, it all fits. This is second novel syndrome again. You write something great; people tell you you’re great; they say that the next product of such a genius will surely be even better - and now you’re paralyzed.
So let’s see, let’s pause to think, because I’m typing ahead of my thoughts again. How (I wonder) would Dweck recommend us to treat successful first novelists? “You wrote really well”? I’m not too sure how different that is.
What I was expecting to do, when I got around to writing this and to figuring it all out at the keyboard, was to connect Dweck to Reversal Theory (reversal alert: there’s a whole lot about RT coming down this pike, probably October) and to self-determination.
I was expecting to hear myself say something like… let’s see if I can say it. Children who were praised for their personal qualities and potentials were put into the telic state (doing a job of work for external rewards such as grade points) and had to be “forced” to complete a more difficult exercise. Children who were praised for their achievements went into the paratelic state (doing the task for its own sake) and were eager to tackle the next level.
This doesn’t entirely make sense. Or it’s a discovery.
Assuming it didn’t make sense, then we could try not talking about telic and paratelic and we could suggest the first group were in an alloic state (trying to please other people) and the second in an autic state (working for themselves). Does that make sense? Yes, it does to me. So a possible conclusion (still using reversal theory as our mental framework, which I realize is just my arbitrary choice) is that I’ve been thinking the wrong way about this stuff all along and that a leading cause of failure-to-perform is our feelings about other people.
Now that would make sense. Thinking about writer’s block, for example; many of the people who become writers are - I suggest, having met quite a few of us - avoidant people. One of the symptoms of pathological avoidance (diagnosis code 301.82) is an excessive concern with what others think of you. So it would be easy to sit in one’s garret writing something ground-breaking for personal pleasure, not really believing it would ever be published, and not worrying about how it would be received. It would be agony to write in the knowledge that the work was going to be scrutinized. One would become careful, cautious, no longer revealing the flair and uniqueness which are, paradoxically, just what the scrutineers hope for. Or if one did try to give them flair and uniqueness, that might turn into self-caricature.
Yes; I believe I’ll try thinking about writer’s block on the autic / alloic spectrum and see how that works for me.
Enough for one day.
By the way, I am now offering psychotherapy not only in my offices in the San Fernando Valley, but also online [link suspended because I'm not offering this currently], both in email and in live chat. Writers, procrastinators in general, and regular adults are all welcome.
Published on August 22, 2005 at 5:55 pm. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/achievement-motivation.html
Writer's block, an owner's guide: Memento / Six Feet Under
Starting with what came into my mind most recently, and then let’s work back until I recall wtf I originally wanted to tell you:
I feel like whining at you again with another semi-apology for not having written anything here in recent days, because of being so pitiably busy. And yes, I do feel overwhelmed by how much I “have to” do.
But three other things are true besides the overwhelm. One thing is that I am enjoying a lot of this busy time, because the job of developing the psychotherapy office I’ve dreamed of for eight years, and of establishing it in Sherman Oaks (also in Woodland Hills) is a paratelic job. At last I’ve been set free to create my own thing, to do my very best for people around me in a fulfilling way, to face my own growth opportunites, and I have a rather smart engraved certificate from Arnold that says all this (in different words, for some reason). The second is that I have nothing much to say about the subject area of this web site these days (”the psychology of writer’s block”) because I am still on a planned six-month break from my graduate research on the subject. The third is that I just finished the new Harry Potter book. As friends told me, nothing happened for five hundred pages but then it became fairly gripping and I had to organize my life so as to take the climactic sections in one bite. And, who dies this time? not anyone I’d predicted but, in hindsight, someone whose absence is absolutely necessary for Harry’s future, and it gives hope that the final book will complete a stronger series than we might have expected. I hope the person doesn’t reappear.
Anyway, the point is, life has not been all work and no play.
And all of that came into my mind because I was thinking about how much of Harry’s and Hermione’s adventuring over the years has turned on searching libraries and dusty tomes to discover forgotten events and long-lost information. And I found myself, repeatedly, thinking “Why don’t they just Google it?”
You know how, after getting used to the TiVo for a year or two, you automatically reach for the replay button when you’ve missed what the anouncer just said on your car radio? And the button’s not there. I guess I am getting like that with Google. If I want to know something, I reflexively reach for the laptop and find it out. Why wouldn’t I. How different from my childhood when research was an adventure in itself. Kids today don’t… excuse me.
And why I was thinking about all that was that I was reading Oliver Kamm’s weblog with interest and enjoyment. He was commenting on British (possibly I mean United Kingdom) current affairs and seemed to take a particular interest in the work of journalists, some of whom he appeared to know personally. But I came across no factual information about who Kamm was.
And I felt like writing an entry here, in my own blog, about something interesting he had mentioned. And when I started to draft the entry in my mind, I noticed that it was going to begin “I’m not exactly sure who Oliver Kamm is, but he wrote something interesting…”
So, in relation to writer’s block (screeching the steering wheel around desperately) the point of all this is: how come I can take the time and trouble to write these 795 (count ‘em, I dare you) words after being inspired by an interesting writer, but I cannot be bothered to Google him and find out who he is and be able to write a more professional commentary for you?
I’m unsure of the answer. One theory would be that the pressure to write here has been building up and I’m aware of you, the reader, wondering if I’m alive. So I’m motivated by guilt and / or embarrassment to do what I’m doing right now, even if I only do it in a half-assed way. The Google research is pure play (afternote: that’s not true. it’s not only play. but it felt true when I wrote it so it’s valid psychology) and can wait until I get a little more “work” done on designing forms for the Wodland Hills office and fun stuff like that. I’m sure there are other theories, though.
And the thing that triggered all of that was what Kamm said about the Plain English Campaign. Simply because it caught my attention and includes some delightful sauce-for-the-goose moments. If it did have any connection with writer’s block, the connection would be, and feel free to think about this in your own time: to what extent is the possibility of criticism, some other day when you may not even be alive, and maybe by people who simply don’t get you, a consideration that impedes the flow of your writing today?
Published on July 31, 2005 at 10:54 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/memento-six-feet-under.html
Writer's block, an owner's guide: A place to write
I’m stilll busy but here’s another quick suggestion on averting writer’s block, this one lifted from David Allen’s newsletter:
“Create, maintain, and nurture a place where you can think and write in a more relaxed mode than where you deal with bills, email, phone calls, and the nitty-gritty of your work flow. Keep a separate set of writing tools, paper, journal, and inspirational reading there. Give yourself permission to sit there and not produce or express anything, but put pen (and/or laptop) at hand so that on the slightest whim you have no resistance to writing something.”
Published on June 7, 2005 at 9:34 pm. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/a-place-to-write.html
Writer's block, an owner's guide: Thoughts on procrastination
Just a quick note to say that the author of Today I Write is alive. I’m busy with the important and urgent psychotherapy project I mentioned. I am not writing. Working on my writing projects at this time would be a way of procrastinating. It would be a kind of block.
But by the way, while we’re talking:
Decades ago when I was getting my first taste of working for someone else, the only management book I owned was Robert Townsend’s Up The Organization. I read it obsessively, a window into another life. I used to know pretty much every word, without knowing what most of the sentences meant (it was written in colloquial American by a senior businessman, and I was an immature serious 20-year-old in Edinburgh).
Today I got my hands on a copy of the book again, planning to share a particular passage with you. And I can’t find that passage. Maybe I simply haven’t found it yet, maybe I misremembered what book I read it in, or maybe it was edited out of the edition I have here (”brought up to date for the 1980s”).
Anyway, the advice I wanted to pass on was that every morning, when you get to work, you should think about what is the thing you least want to do that day. “Chances are,” says Townsend or whoever it was, in my memory, “that’s your priority for the day.”
I still believe that. Once we make the difficult phone call, or whatever it is, the day becomes brighter, and tomorrow becomes brighter too. You know what I’m talking about.
Published on June 6, 2005 at 11:06 pm. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/thoughts-on-procrastination.html
Writer's block, an owner's guide: Structured procrastination
I said I was back from vacation. If you thought that meant I was gonna be writing a large number of deep essays here that would transform your life, yeah, well, I hoped that too.
But for the next few weeks I need to spend a lot of my time reviewing everything I know about psychotherapy (for a reason we’ll talk about afterwards) and most of it’s not relevant to writer’s block. So writing Today I Write takes a lower place in My Priorities.
And that possibly means I will give it more attention than usual.
Does that surprise you? I’ve noticed that I very often spend my time and energy on the second-most-important thing I should be doing. So one way to get myself to do something - like writing - is to make sure I have something else more important to do. Right now, I’m writing because I should be asleep in bed.
John Perry noticed the same thing I did and he has some sensible advice on dealing with it. So if what I just said makes sense in your life too, read his notes on Structured Procrastination.
If it doesn’t make sense in your life, go look around this site for other ideas that do. When it comes to dealing with writer’s block a lot of things are true that (seem to) contradict each other.
The psychology of motivation is like that. One day, when there’s time, I’ll think about the contradictions and some other day the answer, the connection among all of them, will come to me out of nowhere, as answers do when you let things simmer (and that’s a whole other area of creative experience that we haven’t looked at for a while).
Published on May 25, 2005 at 1:45 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/structured-procrastination.html
Writer's block, an owner's guide: Parkinson’s Law
I mentioned Parkinson’s Law a few days back. I’m not sure how well-known the law is to Americans or to you young people (creak) so let me “remind” you that the law is that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
Northcote Parkinson’s essay on the subject may be the first place where I heard about writer’s block. But let me say that more exactly.
Northcote Parkinson’s humorous article in a humorous magazine may be the first place where I realized that procrastination could be discussed in a pseudo-scientific way.
The first place where I realized that when you notice your own odd behavior you can make sense of it in terms of principles that apply to most people in most situations. Childhood experiences like that are probably what nudges us towards being psychologists decades later.
Making sense of your own life in terms of general principles is a great thing. It doesn’t just help you to predict and manage your responses in situations; it normalizes them (it says “perhaps you are not strange”). Good news for a child and for the child in all of us.
But there is a downside to generalization. Ideas like “writer’s block” are conjured into existence.
Instead of saying “I don’t feel like writing this morning” you are allowed to say “I’ve caught a disease, I know it has made a lot of other writers unhappy, so now I guess writing is going to be difficult or impossible for the rest of my life.” And then you are the victim not of a disease but of an idea in your head.
Here’s Parkinson’s opening statement in support of the claim that work expands to fill the time available:
“General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase ‘It is the busiest man who has time to spare.’ Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half an hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar box in the next street. The total effort that would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety, and toil.”
Exactly.
Published on May 16, 2005 at 8:31 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/parkinsons-law.html
Writer's block, an owner's guide: Forestalling writer’s block
I’m still on vacation, but for those readers who share my interest in the science of writer’s block, I’ll note a couple of ideas inspired (in different ways) by the responses to my post a few days ago.
First, this:
“In a movie, if you can’t come up with anything, then everybody waits. But in television, the problem is if you can’t come up with anything, well, there’s really not any time for that. What’s great about having a room full of writers is that they’re also full of ideas. You have other brains to turn to.”
- Shonda Rhimes, Grey’s Anatomy creator, who also wrote Princess Diaries 2, interviewed for WGAw [broken link removed].
Second, this:
Another stimulating post [broken link remo`ved, however] from Merlin Mann, this time reminding us of Hemingway’s advice to stop for the day when you still know what you are going to write next.
Third, where is your response? Yes, I’m talking to you, right there in front of the screen. You have time to read this, you surely have five minutes to give back.
Published on May 15, 2005 at 1:02 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/forestalling-writers-block.html
Writer's block, an owner's guide: If you had to write, you’d write
I was reminded about this when broadcaster Melvyn Bragg wrote in his newsletter from London, “as always, when we record an edition, I stumbled on the intro and had to retake it two or three times and we over-ran. Some day we should do a programme on the psychological difference about (sic) broadcasting live and recording a programme.”
I remember hearing long, long ago that, because of nervous tension, newsreaders never sneeze on air. In the years I’ve been listening since then, they never have.
If you go to a writing workshop with your notepad and pen and you’re given a writing exercise to do, you do it. No problem.
If you sit at your own computer like you’re possibly doing right now, intending to write something, you can be there six hours later without producing a word.
What’s the difference? It’s something inside you. Okay, the circumstances are different too, but that’s just circumstances. It’s something inside you. Partly, I’m sure, it’s Parkinson’s Law (but that’s only a name, a label, it doesn’t explain anything).
So let’s bring the workshop and the computer together. If I asked you to write a passage and email it to me in five minutes from now, we both know you could do it.
In fact, why don’t we prove that right now. You don’t need to give me your real name. Why don’t you scroll down to the Comments box and type your first response to this article. Your very first response, with the embarrassing immature and smutty and clumsily expressed thoughts, will be fine; a polished response will be fine too; or anything else that is on your mind right now will also be fine, unless you want to sell me dirty pictures or men’s medications. The rule is that you must click Post within five minutes from the time you read these words.
Clicking Post does not post your comment on the web site. It just sends it to me privately. I will not publish any of the responses to this article unless the writer says it’s ok. Also, I repeat, you’re not required to give your real name.
Your five minutes already started.
(by the way, if you have a Typekey identity, make sure you are not signed in, and just enter a false name instead; but if you don’t know what I’m talking about, be glad and don’t worry about it).
Responses to this article (2 responses)
Published on May 7, 2005 at 10:33 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/if-you-had-to-write-youd-write.html
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