Can Unpublished Writers Get Writer's Block?

 Sometimes  real  writers--- published  writers--- deny there is any such thing as writer's block. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, they argue. They just go to work in the morning when it is time to go to work. Writers need to get over themselves and go to work writing every morning the way plumbers do, and it will all work out.

Other published writers have experienced writer's block themselves. These writers sometimes say that a beginning writer, a would-be writer, an unpublished writer, cannot say 'I have writer's block'. How do we even know these people can write at all, blocked or not, they argue. It can be nothing at all like what I, a writer who is published, who writes for a living, experiences as writer's block.

But some published writers--- the ones I agree with--- believe that even inexperienced writers can have writer's block. The experienced professional writer may have a somewhat different experience of it, since he has learned many tips and tricks to move the writing forward. And the anxiety level will be greater in the writer who currently writes for a living than in a writer who has yet to make money at the trade.

My own experience is that I have been plagued since childhood with writer's block, or something like it. Sometimes it can be overcome for awhile with willpower and determination. Other times enthusiasm for some new writing trick or technique makes the dragon go away for awhile.

The most basic sign of writer's block is to sit down at the keyboard, and find the words won't come. Other people report staring at a blank screen for a long period of time. With me, I can get a few words out, then I stop, not able to think of what comes next. (It's happening right now, as I write these words.) A few more words come, then I am stuck again. I end the writing session after an hour with a word count that on better days could have been accumulated in seven minutes.

Another sign is perfectionism. I sit around and kvetch to myself about needing the exactly right word to use in this next sentence. The more important the word is to my story as a whole--- as in a word for a magical gift in a fantasy novel--- the more I give myself permission to halt until just the right word is found. I leaf through my dictionaries and my thesaurus, I look through the novels of other writers to see how they handled it, and get determined to do something very different. And though I know, intellectually, that the right way is to pick a good-enough word to use for now, and be confident something better will come to me in time, I still stay stuck.

A different sign of writer's block is when I spend a day or two or three at the keyboard, my fingers flying and my story advancing. Then I decide that something in those pages just won't do, and start over. I may end up writing two or three beginnings for the same novel. Then I decide that the whole project isn't any good--- or perhaps that it is so good I will have to read a half-dozen books for research and spend a month on outlining and planning before I begin the novel yet again. So far, what happens every time is a hopelessly stalled novel, and more negative thoughts about me-as-writer.

These bad experiences lead me to avoid the keyboard altogether for days and weeks on end. Then I tell myself I'm bad, I'm a procrastinator, I'm not a hard worker but a lazy bum, I never finish anything I start and don't do anything the right way anyhow... And then I can tell myself I don't  really  have writer's block because procrastination and writer's block are different things.

That may be so--- but it only stands to reason that if you have writer's block and have been having bad experiences at your keyboard, you will learn to avoid the source of those bad experiences, writing. In the same way a child who touches a hot stove and gets burned learns to avoid touching the stove again.

The avoidance habit can go back very far. When you wrote something in school as a child, you may have had your paper come back covered in corrections. Or, in some schools, you may have gotten the same insincere praise every child got, to build up your self-esteem. And then you discovered on your own how full of mistakes your writing was, as you learned more about spelling and grammar. 

You may also have teachers who misunderstood or disliked what you were trying to say in your writing and let you know about it. You may have been singled out for correction in front of other children and been embarrassed by it. Come to that, you may have been singled out for praise and have experienced that form of being singled out as an embarrassment, or even a humiliation. The praise involved you might not even have been able to internalize, since you may have seen it as just one more bit of the insincere teacherly praise that all children get in many schools for any work they do, regardless of the quality of that work.

The avoidance that may be a part of your writer's block may be made stronger by another factor--- distractability. If you have ADHD, or if you have an autism spectrum disorder, such as Asperger Syndrome, and executive function deficit is part of that, If you have an image of yourself as a procrastinator, distractability from such causes may also play a part, and must be dealt with.\par
Many writers find that when they are blocked as regards one kind of writing, they can still do another. If you can't write the next scene in your novel, perhaps you can write an essay about your story's world, or a character in it. You might turn your attention to writing a good post for your blog, or an article for a magazine. If nothing else, compose a status update for a social media site, or a grocery list. Every bit of writing you can do will be a help.

Both writers and psychologists have ideas about what may cause writer's block. It may be caused by overwork, or factors in your life such as financial worries, health issues, and fights with family members. It may mean that you are not yet ready to work on the particular piece of writing that you are dealing with. Perhaps you need to do a bit more pre-planning or research. Or perhaps you need to organize your writing area into a less distracting place, or make changes in your writing routine to help you concentrate and produce more.

One thing that may cause very many writers to experience a block is the almost universal negative belief, 'I'm not good enough'. This false belief may be almost paralyzing in certain areas of your life. Is writing one of them? If 'I'm not good enough' is something you have internalized, made part of your picture of the world, you may not be able to make much headway against some of your problems until you deal with it. You might deal with it by means of therapy, or by means of the power of positive thinking, or in other ways. The important thing is to start to internalize ideas such as 'I  am  good enough' and 'I  am  a talented writer' to counteract the negative beliefs that hinder you.

Have you ever experienced writer's block? How did that make you feel about yourself as a writer? How did you cope with it? If you are experiencing writer's block right now, what can you do, today, to deal with it?