fourth year jacob porter

INT. WHITE ROOM - NIGHT (3 AM PROBABLY)

A girl sits down at a table— let’s call her JENNY— with papers strewn all over it. She stares, pencil in hand, at the desk for a little bit. She puts down her pencil and begins scribbling, before stopping once again. She stops. She erases.

JENNY

Terrible. Terrible.

She considers the paper for a minute, slams her pencil down, and storms out of the room, disgruntled, leaving nothing on the page.

If this sounds familiar, congratulations: you know what it’s like to feel genuine rage!

There’s no use describing what Writer’s Block is— if you’ve written anything in your life, you know the exact feeling of what it’s like to not be able to write something when you really need to. Sometimes it’s the complete lack of ideas— when it’s time to crack down and write a paper, it becomes really hard to think about what topics haven’t already been covered before. However (at least in my experience) when it comes to more creative topics, it can be the exact opposite: having too many ideas.

READER

But Jacob, isn’t Writer’s Block about not being able to-

Shh. I’m getting to that. Calm down. When you’re writing and have ideas, this is usually considered a good thing— but sometimes you can get overwhelmed with just how many of those you have. In a script or a narrative, you know that your character has to achieve some goal. Hypothetically, let’s say Jenny has to tell her little brother that their mom is in the hospital. Immediately, several different scenarios spring to mind. Where are they? What does she say? How does her brother react? What are the exact words? Is the dialogue realistic? Does what I’m writing make any sense? Will this enrich the lives of others? Is there even a point in writing when the inevitability of climate change means we’ll all be dead soon any—

Shhh. Calm down. Again.

Sometimes, Writer’s Block is your brain’s way of telling you (nicely) to shut up. Sometimes we can get bogged down in our own questions that ultimately don’t serve us, or a narrative— all they fuel is paranoia for questions that, a lot of times, no one is even asking. Sometimes, that inability to choose between ideas creates such an infinite array of possibilities that you might as well not have any. When I get to this point, it usually tells me that it’s time to stop writing. Cliché as it is, go outside. Take a break. Stop thinking about what you’re working on entirely. As a matter of fact, stop fucking thinking in general. Sometimes ideas don’t come. And that’s okay— it has to be. The ideas that I’ve gotten as a result of shifting gears because I couldn’t write have actually been some of my best. In a way, Writer’s Block has led to some of my best breakthroughs when it comes to writing, and can actually leave me feeling more inspired than I was even in a normal period of writing prior to the Writer’s Block. The very article you’re reading came after a fit of Writer’s Block, too, if you can believe it.*

*it didn’t, but wouldn’t it have been so nice if it had?

Why Writer's Block Isn't The Worst Thing In The World