Writer's Block and Depression
I want to switch it up a little, and instead of talking about "doing" of writing, look at about the "being" of writing--specifically, writer's block and depression. A longtime client wrote to me after a while of silence, asking a heartfelt and anguished question: "I can't hear my characters anymore. What can I do?" The problem, she said, stemmed from a difficult bout with depression. She finally started taking medication that helped her feel better, but it seemed to close the door on writing any more novels.
This has to be every writer's worst nightmare: to wake up one day and not be able to do it anymore.
It got me thinking about the stigma against mental illness, and the fear that comes with "writer's block," and the unique self-awareness writers need in order to do their work. The mind is like a three-ring circus, and that's on a good day. When anxiety and depression complicate the relationship of a person to their own brain, what then?
I told her that I was sorry to hear that she struggled with depression. My caveat was that I could only speak from my experience with my own difficult situations over the nearly 20 years that I’ve been writing, which did not include mental illness. Living in a medical household, though, where my wife works daily with people dealing with anxiety and depression, my sense of it was that when depression hits, there was really no comparison to any other kind of struggle. So, all that was to say: I couldn't talk about mental illness and medication (though this really good article, "The Medicated Woman: A Pill To Feel Better, Not Squelch Emotions" does a great job of it). I could, however, talk about writing.
Here is what I told her.
Basically, in all these years of writing and working with manuscripts, the thing I’ve grown to appreciate about the craft is that you never, ever master it. There are so many writers, and so few masters, that the rest of us can say with 99.9 percent certainty that we will never, ever run out of room to grow. You reach milestones in your development: seeing how all the pieces fit together (voice, plot, character, etc.), then how to develop an idea to the end and finish a manuscript, then deepening the clarity of your vision, hearing characters better, then working in different genres—there is always something new to pay attention to. At those places, we can rest and appreciate the distance we’ve come in our personal journey.
I don’t believe that writer’s block is real, and I don’t believe we lose anything we gain along the way—not unless we literally stop writing for decades and fall out of practice. I say this having been stuck, and sad, and shamed out of ideas many times, sometimes for a year or two at a time. It’s frightening in a deep, identity-threatening way, like the kind that steals the colors from the future. Not writing is like not being a person anymore. It’s what keeps me from walking away from the craft; but I’ve learned that at least for me, thinking about “writer’s block” as an external problem that is somehow infecting my own abilities or whatever is just a way of scaring myself, and not using the fallow period for something productive.
When creativity stops, I believe that it’s for a good reason. The energy isn’t gone, it’s just somewhere else inside of you right now. Slow down, go easy on yourself, pay attention to YOU and listen to YOUR voice. Writing is as much of a left-brained, technical task as it is an emotional one. When the emotional, empathetic, imaginative part of writing goes dark for a while, it’s a good time to
read delicious fiction;
think critically about why you love this or that author and what they do right and how;
free write every day. Even if it’s a page of literally, “Blah blah blah can’t write blah here I am with the pen blah blah not giving up, etc.”;
be diligent about keeping a notebook of thoughts and images and snippets of overheard dialogue.
Basically, do left-brained stuff as you can and just keep reminding your right brain that you’re not going to give up on it and will be ready to listen when it’s ready to speak again. Just show up.
Changing your mode as a writer—whether it's because you're taking medication, or because you're adjusting to another big change—is ALWAYS going to be disorienting and worrisome, for anyone. It's natural. Writing is and will be there for you. Take good care of yourself and do what you can and what feels good, fun, and rich. This is one of those times when paying attention to experience counts as “writing.”
Over a period of time, however long, some of the anxiousness about the change in mode will start to dissipate. Maybe a new character’s voice will pop into your head out of the blue. Or maybe when you feel the nudge to work on something again, it will be a completely different approach.
The craft is big—just one long experiment in the direction of mastery. Like this article? View the archives for more, or follow me on Twitter (@threepenny) for writing-related news and advice.