No Payne No Gain: Writer's Block

When you allow tension to get to you, your fingers and your arms stiffen and finally the brain tightens. You now have a case of nerves and, in extreme cases, writer’s block. Writer’s blocks are mind spasms that impair thinking and the actual physical movement of moving a pencil or typing. Writer’s block is an occupational cramp experienced by musicians, surgeons, actors, and golfers as well as authors.

Writer’s block commonly occurs when an author believes they should and must write something. Cigarettes, aspirin, Alka Seltzer, and whiskey are of no benefit. The great entertainer W.C. Fields once said, “I took a cup of booze to quiet my nerves. I repeated the treatment until my nerves got so quiet I couldn’t move.”

Desperate writers seeking advice on what to do when suffering writer’s block are often told to do “nothing”. The response of “nothing” is a little tongue-in-cheek humor sprinkled with a bit of wisdom, because what is implied is that the nervousness and writer’s block are in the head. It is all psychological.

The simplest solution is to clear the blockage out of the head by not thinking at all. However, the brain is a workaholic. It works day and night, when awake and asleep. One solution is to take control of the subconscious by programming the brain into seeing and feeling success.

Authors experiencing writers block try to consciously write, and the more one tries to consciously free one’s the greater the blockage. Writing is a subconscious activity. Ideas come without conscious thought.

Olympian athletes program their subconscious mind through words, pictures, and emotions. Before skill execution, Olympians talk out loud to themselves, explaining their success as if it is happening at that very moment. Next they visualize, in high definition, what they are telling themselves, but the key is emotion. They feel the success prior to the execution of the skill at the same intensity they will feel after the skill has been successfully executed.

Programming the subconscious to overcome writer’s block is identical to programming the subconscious of the Olympian for superior performance. In Writers Block II, the vital role of emotion is explained so you can begin to program your own subconscious and athletes get back to being the productive, creative author you really are.

Dr. James Payne, a nationally-recognized scholar, educator and speaker, is a professor of Special Education at the University of Mississippi and a Fulbright recipient. He is the developer of the PeopleWise Event Management System and the PeopleWise Profile System.