Writer's block, an owner's guide: Writer’s Block (by Leader)

As I threatened earlier, I read Zachary Leader’s book on “Writer’s Block.” I skimmed most of the chapters on psychodynamic psychology but here’re my notes on the rest of it. This isn’t really a book review, more my personal list of quotes I might want to use some day.

Pointing out that Edmund Bergler [to do list: Bergler] was a prolific writer, Leader says “that Bergler should have coined the term writer’s block and become its foremost theoretician is richly ironic.” Is that true? I’d have thought that if you want to read about writer’s block you want to read the thoughts of someone who is not its helpless victim.

Arguing for the psychodynamic approach, he objects to all attempts to attribute writer’s block to cognitive errors or deficiencies. The objection is that blocked people are, by definition, writers and therefore they do not lack (as cognitivists suggest) “basic writing skills” such as outlining, time management and so on. And so the problem must “involve,” apparently mainly or exclusively, willing and feeling.

I think this could be too broad. First, many writers welcome additional or improved strategic and tactical skills; as one’s craft grows the toolbox must be augmented. Secondly, the problem seems to me to combine substantial cognitive and affective elements.

An interesting quote from Coleridge, one of the earliest blocked writers, shows that he was unblocked while writing for newspapers and journals; (something that I was interesetd to note because it fits with the research I am working on currently).

Following Ong, “Orality and Print,” Leader says “the inability to finish work… can be connected to a bias towards… oral culture. This is because it is only with texts that closure becomes a defining characteristic of communication.” (p.230) Print culture is the source of inhibiting Romantic notions such as “originality” and “creativity.” This too fits with my own developing understanding of writer’s block and of how techniques like blogging can help us bypass it.

“Writer’s block is a term that… has its uses… as long as it is carefully restricted, to begin with, to genuine writers… When such writers find themselves unable to write because of obstructing internal actors… or internalized external factors… - they are blocked.” (p.251-2)

The three major themes of the book:
(1) “Blocked writers fail to negotiate rival or opposing claims, variously associated with pairings such as inner and outer, primary and secondary processes, emergence and embeddedness, independence and incorporation, inspiration and elaboration, defusion and merger, subject and object, written and oral, ‘male’ and ‘female’… Writing asks of writers, even those who feel most alienated, that they be at home in the world, by which is meant using and shaping it, as well as recognizing its otherness and integrity.” These may be post-Kleinian object relations notions but they fit well enough with my postmodern constructivist ideas.

(2) As we said a few days ago, “there is a historical dimension to the problem” …a tradition of Romantic self-consciousness.”

(3) “Blockage itself can bring insight, and with it the power to write… The obstructing factors in composition - the blocking agents - are not so much dissolved… as sublimed, by being seen from a higher perspective; and the knowledge gained from this new perspective is knowledge of something more than just writing… Also, the great paradox of creative impairment is that it can be a necessary precursor to health, that blockage and breakthrough can go together.” Yes, breakthrough follows breakdown, we know this, Rollo May said it. When you acknowledge that you can’t make things go the way you planned, they often start to go an astonishing better way. Books change as they are being written. So does the story of your life.

That’s all for today, folks.

Published on August 13, 2004 at 12:18 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/writers-block-by-leader.html

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