Quotations 1: Blankety Blank

Once upon a time, there was a writer who had nothin’ to say. She was all out. All she had in her head was that red alert noise from Star Trek. All she had in her fingertips was a broken nail that stung whenever it hit the keyboard. And all that was before her eyes was a blank page and a blinking cursor. Blink, blink, blink. Replace me with words, it said. Replace, replace, replace. But, as mentioned before, she had no words. She had a bit of a headache, but no words.

Fortunately, this lack of words isn’t writer’s block According to Terry Pratchett, “there is no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write.”

That’s comforting.

However, it seems the term was invented by Edmund Bergler in 1947, and he was Austrian, not Californian. His research showed that writer’s block usually involves several components, including the physiological, motivational, and cognitive. Physiological components include stress, which triggers the flight or flight response and thus shuts down the creative process. Motivational components often have to do with a dislike of the topic or the process of writing (and seems to particularly affect students). Cognitive components involve negative self-beliefs and feelings of incompetence.

So, how can the writer get writing again? The research shows that journaling, free writing and brainstorming might help. Improving her writing environment might help too, and it is advised that she splits her writing tasks into smaller pieces to give her more experience of success and accomplishment.

She has a different idea, though. Napping. Napping just might do it. Worth a try, anyway.