I recently had a request to give a talk to graduate students about writer’s block. This term is frequently mentioned in the context of graduate writing, presumably because of the general sense that something is inhibiting the writing processes of students at this level. While I was explaining why I didn’t want to give a talk on writer’s block, I realized that I spend quite a lot of time telling various people that I’m sceptical about the concept of academic writer’s block. Having recently read two interesting takes on writer’s block in academia in the past year (from Helen Kara and Julia Molinari), I decided that my own disinclination to use this concept might be worth exploring here on the blog.
In general, I am resistant to identifying common graduate writing difficulties as writer’s block. Most graduate writers who are struggling with their writing are actually struggling with their thinking. That isn’t just a semantic quibble: it matters that we grasp exactly what is inhibiting our writing processes. When we diagnose ourselves as having writer’s block, we can start to believe that we aren’t currently able to write. If you find yourself with a sore leg, it may well be that avoiding walking is a sound strategy. If you find yourself unable to write, might it be a sound strategy to avoid writing? The answer to that question is almost always no. Not writing has little-to-no curative power, in my experience. I’m not saying that we don’t need to take breaks; there are many things that we can do away from our desks to clear our minds and loosen up our ideas. But when we are committed to working, the act of writing is often the most immediate way to tackle the problems in our thinking. The risk of identifying inevitable writing challenges as writer’s block is that doing so can lessen the chance that we will use writing to move our ideas forward.
The idea of writer’s block can thus be seen as having the potential to detach writing from its broader intellectual context. When we treat writing challenges as psychological rather than intellectual, we run the risk of minimizing the conceptual work involved in graduate writing. I have, of course, encountered graduate writers who appear to have a disposition towards writing that is so fraught that they may need some sort of psychological shift in order to develop an effective writing routine. But for most graduate writers, writing is being hampered primarily by the challenge of sorting out what they think (or what they think they should think or what others think or what their supervisor thinks about what they think). In other words, they don’t have a psychological block; they simply have the intellectual confusions endemic to the process of communicating sophisticated research. Those intellectual confusions are real, and they can have deleterious consequences for writing. But when we treat these problems as conceptual problems in our thinking, we create the space to use writing as a strategy to solve those problems. Writing can move from being the problematic thing to being a means to solve the problem.
To use writing in this way, I suggest introducing a new font that will signal that you are writing in an exploratory vein for your own benefit. The variant font will remind you that your eventual reader need never see these ruminations, thus lessening your own reticence. Using this new font, try writing something like this: “I’m worried that what I’m saying here …”
“… is inconsistent with what I said on p. 37.”
“… might be confusing the cause with the effect.”
“… may lead the reader to think that my research is less significant than I’ve claimed.”
“… is the sort of thing that annoys my supervisor.”
Staying in this provisional, for-your-eyes-only font, try writing a follow-up sentence or passage: “To figure this out, I need to …”
“… re-read the sections on and around p. 37 and decide which formulation works best. Does this shift represent an actual shift in my thinking or just a different way of expressing things?”
“… satisfy myself about the direction of causality in my argument and think of a way to flag all the places where this may have become confused.”
“… revisit my initial claims for significance to see if they are affected by the current line of reasoning.”
“… decide how I feel about that potential reaction, whether that annoyance is something I want to withstand or something that should guide me in a different direction.”
The key, for me, is that this writing is just that: writing. We can’t, arguably, have writer’s block when we are actively writing. Instead, we may have unresolved issues that are making us want to avoid writing. Using writing as the means of addressing these issues gives us a strategy for inevitable conceptual hurdles. Even in those cases in which writing-about-writing highlights serious problems, we have still made progress by identifying what is wrong. In the end, my concern is simply that the writer’s block label may be further alienating us from our own writing. While it may not be possible to write our way out of all problems, I’m convinced that it is near-impossible to solve writing problems without using writing as our central strategy.
Explorations of Style 
I love your post’s title… It makes me think of Alexander Hamilton.
Very interesting, and certainly rings true. Also could be applied to any form of writing work procrastination. I have a block release course to prep for and feeling as though my brain is just not ‘in gear’, but this has helped remind me that the getting started (somewhere, anywhere) part is often the most challenging.
Reblogged this on Cecile Badenhorst and commented:
Excellent blog post from Explorations of Style about writing blocks:
Oh! I love this distinction between psychological and intellectual blocks. This is very useful. I developed my own hack for this problem in grad school, similar to you idea of using a different font. I wrote emails to my supervisor outlining all the different reasons why I could not write what I was meant to be writing, and then I didn’t send it. I just printed it out and treated it like a series of solvable research problems. Often the prose from the “email” would go right back in the draft itself.
That’s interesting–I’ve heard others talk about emails to supervisors that were never really meant to be sent. It’s sounds like such a good strategy for clarifying one’s own ideas. And getting things off one’s chest (even if nobody else reads the things we write) can help us move ahead.
Similar to using a different font, I’ve been using the comment feature in Word and Google Docs to comment on my own writing when I get stuck. However, I haven’t been clearing this self-commentary and follow-up’s up before sending to supervisors. So I end up with too much writing that’s supposed to be (mostly) for myself and not enough of the actual final-product writing for the audience. (probably some additional factors at play)
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Thank you for writing this, Rachel – I agree with you whole-heartedly.
I’ve found that blogging helps me with getting back to my thesis-writing as does having supervisors who do not expect polished pieces as part of the process of writing. But between your and Helen Kara’s post on this issue, you’ve managed to identify some of the intellectual causes of not being able to commit to paper, and this is really helpful because what it does is differentiate between reasons for not managing to write, rather than fuelling the myth that it is due to a single identifiable and ineluctable psychologcal trait.
However, it is also the ‘committing’ ideas to paper, and therefore scrutiny, that can be inhibiting. Research writing is a form of personal exposure that then requires accountability and engenders all kinds of consequences, meaning you need confidence to stand by your claims, and in that sense, I think it does invest you psychologically, too, not just intellectually.
Thanks, Julia! In the first draft of this post, I divided “writer’s block” into “thinker’s block” and “sharer’s block”. I ended up leaving the second half out of the final version, but perhaps that meant giving short shrift to the important ideas that you’ve outlined above. I think that many writers suffer the inhibitions of writing for an audience. Here is my post on that topic: https://explorationsofstyle.com/2011/09/30/audience-and-anxiety/. I absolutely agree with you that there are meaningful psychological issues involved in the sharing of a piece of writing. The strategy of trying to write through those challenges is still valuable, I believe, because a better grasp of the challenging parts of our writing can help us to be prepared for critical feedback. Thanks for your comment!
Thank you, Rachael! Another excellent post.
Reading this post and evaluating my own struggles with writing my dissertation in the past two months, I realized that I haven’t been thinking much. When I face difficulties with putting down my ideas, I just give up and never take up those ideas again.
My problems have never been sitting down to write but not thinking through my writing enough when I come to a standstill. I am definitely going to take your strategy of shifting to a different font to navigate the hurdles of a blocked mind.
Thanks, Grace. You may also find it helpful to try a reverse outline: https://explorationsofstyle.com/2011/02/09/reverse-outlines/. People who write freely often find themselves with texts that are unmanageable–a reverse outline can help you do the big-picture thinking that often eludes all of us when we are writing.
A previous exchange between the two of us on this topic: https://explorationsofstyle.com/2016/08/12/a-productive-process/#comment-28601
Thank you for remembering that, Sam! Your carpentry metaphor is really helpful in this context.
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I also frown upon the concept of an academic writer’s block. My suggestion to deal with it, albeit a psychological or intellectual block: strong coffee and a homemade waffle topped with Belgian chocolate. Because I do believe in taking breaks from writing – but never more than a day, though. It’s still better than forcing yourself to hit computer keys until you’ve reached your required word count.
While you’re taking a break from writing, talking helps. Talk to someone on what you’re writing about. Tell your partner, spouse, a friend. Call your favorite uncle if you have to. And even if the latter might have no clue what you’re talking about, you will be mirroring your thoughts. And new ideas will come up. Great blog, Rachael!
I think it makes perfect sense to divide writer’s block into “thinker’s block” and “sharer’s block”. The two might be hard to distinguish at times, but I think they do originate from different places, and they probably need separate tactics. These will differ per person, but I think the advice in this post will help a lot of people at least with making a start.
Very interesting blog, will come back here!
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