Writer's block
Writer's block is a non-medical condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author is either unable to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown.
Writer's block has various degrees of severity, from difficulty in coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce work for years. This condition is not solely measured by time passing without writing; it is measured by time passing without productivity in the task at hand. Writer's block has been an acknowledged problem throughout recorded history and many experience it.
However, not until 1947 was the term coined by the Austrian psychiatrist Edmund Bergler. All types of writers, including full-time professionals, academics, workers on creative projects, and those trying to finish written assignments, can experience writer's block. The condition has many causes, some that are even unrelated to writing. The majority of writer's block researchers agree that most causes of writer's block have an affective/physiological, motivational, and cognitive component.
Studies have found effective coping strategies to deal with writer's block. These strategies aim to remove the anxiety about writing and range from ideas such as free writing and brainstorming to talking to a professional.
History
The affliction now known as writer's block has been recognized throughout history. Writers who are known to have struggled with it include authors F. Scott Fitzgerald and Joseph Mitchell, Joseph Conrad, composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, and songwriter Adele. Another possible example is Herman Melville, who stopped writing novels a few years after writing Moby-Dick.Early Romantic writers tended to attribute writer's block to a power that no longer wanted them to write. Its interpretation became less mystical during the time of the French Symbolism. During this age, renowned poets would give up writing early in their careers on the grounds that they were unable to find the language to convey their messages. Such was the case for Arthur Rimbaud, who, after producing the bulk of his literary output during his late teenage years, completely stopped writing at the age of twenty. Though still, during the Great American Novel period, the affliction was construed as something that stopped writers and caused them emotional instability.
The condition was first clinically described in 1947 by Austrian psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler, who identified it as being caused by oral masochism, mothers that bottle fed, and an unstable private love life. The growing reputation of psychiatry in the United States made the term gain more recognition. Research concerning this topic was done in the late 1970s and 1980s. During this time, researchers were influenced by the Process and Post-Process movements and therefore focused specifically on the writer's processes.
Causes
Writer's block may have several causes. Some are creative problems that originate within an author's work itself. A writer may run out of inspiration or be distracted by other events. The writer Elizabeth Gilbert, reflecting on her post-bestseller prospects, proposed that such pressure might be released by interpreting creative writers as "having" genius rather than "being" a genius.A fictional example can be found in George Orwell's novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying, in which the protagonist Gordon Comstock struggles in vain to complete an epic poem describing a day in London: "It was too big for him, that was the truth. It had never really progressed, it had simply fallen apart into a series of fragments."
Physiological and neurological basis
Physiological and neurological bases of writer's block have been suggested. Under stress, a human brain will "shift control from the cerebral cortex to the limbic system". The limbic system is associated with the instinctual processes, such as "fight or flight" response; and behavior that is based on "deeply engrained training". The limited input from the cerebral cortex hinders a person's creative processes, which is replaced by the behaviors associated with the limbic system. The person is often unaware of the change, which may lead them to believe they are creatively "blocked".In her 2004 book The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, the writer and neurologist Alice W. Flaherty has argued that literary creativity is a function of specific areas of the brain, and that block may be the result of brain activity being disrupted in those areas. Flaherty suggested in her writing that there are many diseases that may impact one's ability to write. One of which she refers to is hypergraphia, or the intensive desire to write. She points out that in this condition, the patient's temporal lobe is afflicted, usually by damage, and it may be the same changes in this area of the brain that can contribute to writer's-blocking behaviors. Not to be confused with writer's block, agraphia is a neurological disorder caused by trauma or stroke causing difficulty in communicating through writing. Agraphia cannot be treated directly, but it is possible to relearn certain writing abilities.
Brain trauma
Other research identifies neurological malfunctions as a cause. Malcolm T. Cunningham showed how these malfunctions can be linked to trauma both mental and physical.Physical damage can produce writer's block. If a person experiences tissue damage in the brain, i.e. a stroke, it is likely to lead to other complications apart from the lesion itself. This damage causes an extreme form of writer's block known as agraphia. With agraphia, the inability to write is due to issues with the cerebral cortex; this disables the brain's process of translating thoughts into writing. Brain injuries are an example of a physical illness that can cause a writer to be blocked. Other brain-related disorders and neurological disorders such as epilepsy have been known to cause the problem of writer's block and hypergraphia, the strong urge to write.
Writer anxiety and inhibition
Another cause of writer's block has been due to writer's anxiety. Writer's anxiety is defined as being worried about one's words or thoughts, thus experiencing writer's block.From a composition perspective, Lawrence Oliver said in his article "Helping Students Overcome Writer's Block": "Students receive little or no advice on how to generate ideas or explore their thoughts, and they usually must proceed through the writing process without guidance or corrective feedback from the teacher, who withholds comments and criticism until grading the final product." He said that students "learn to write by writing", and often they are insecure or paralyzed by rules.
Phyllis Koestenbaum wrote in her article "The Secret Climate the Year I Stopped Writing" about her trepidation toward writing, claiming it was tied directly to her instructor's response. She said, "I needed to write to feel, but without feeling I couldn't write." In contrast to Koestenbaum's experience, Nancy Sommers stated that papers do not end when students finish writing and that neither should instructors' comments. She urges a "partnership" between writers and instructors so that responses become a conversation.
Student motivation
Herman A. Estrin in his article "Motivation in Composition Writing" writes: "When freshmen are assigned such topics for a research paper as ... they have no real background of the subject for an in-depth paper ... they prepare a mechanical, lifeless paper with no creativity, imagination, or originality". According to him, freshman students write well about topics they are passionate about. Marshall Moore, in his article "Articulate Walls: Writer's Block and the Academic Creative," thinks similarly by writing: "...his or her practice is paralysingly out of sync with the syllabus; and teaching from a state of creative depletion may engender a cascade of self-doubt. This paper will look at the process by which these practitioners attempt to navigate this zone of creative disconnect.". Saying having assigned, planned out, and required papers is contributing to loss of motivation.Aline Alves-Wold, in her article "Assessing Writing Motivation: a Systematic Review of K-5 Students' Self-Reports" states that there is a general lack of research on the motivation of students to write in the first few years of education, which is problematic when one considers how important initial experiences are in motivating students to write. Success generally enhances one's belief in their efficacy, whereas failure weakens them. "These mechanisms are particularly evident in early phases of skill development where failure typically occurs before a sense of efficacy has been firmly established. This implies that children in their first years in school have writer self-beliefs that are particularly malleable and dynamic". Writing development is therefore both enhanced and endangered during the first years in school.
Negative self-beliefs and feeling of incompetence
stated that writer's block can be caused by a writer's history in writing, rules, and restrictions from the past. Writers can be hesitant about what they write based on how it will be perceived by the audience. Guangming Ling states that there is a negative correlation between self-efficacy and avoidance goals in studies on writing apprehension and writer's block, which suggests that having hesitations about writing may lead to less effort and thus less success.Similarly to Ling, Dana Driscoll and Jennifer Wells explain writing dispositions in their essay "Beyond Knowledge and Skills". Driscoll and Wells argue that dispositions toward writing play crucial roles in determining whether writers are able to transfer their knowledge of writing into other contexts of life. Related to self-efficacy, Driscoll and Wells suggest that writers who have a positive self-belief are more likely to produce work than some with a negative self-belief. Self-efficacy is especially important for a writer when it comes to an unfamiliar learning or writing setting because it may seem overwhelming.
James Adams noted in his book Conceptual Blockbusting that various reasons blocks occur include fear of taking a risk, "chaos" in the pre-writing stage, judging versus generating ideas, an inability to incubate ideas, or a lack of motivation.
In "Motivation in the Writing Centre: A Peer Tutor's Experience", Leonie Kirchoff states that "The concept of 'amotivation' describes a lack of motivation due to an individual's feeling of incompetence and helplessness." Demotivation is the process of reducing or diminishing motivational basis for behavior or ongoing actions through external influences. An external factor such as feedback may affect demotivation, whereas an internal factor, such as pessimistic expectations, may cause amotivation. Even so, both concepts have similar effects on writers.
For tutors to provide students with the most appropriate feedback, scholars like Jared Featherstone from James Madison University suggest that tutors should be well educated in mindfulness strategies to combat a student's fixed mindset. He argues that tutors or instructors should be mindful enough to be grounded and focused solely on their student so they can pick up on the feelings, stress, or fixed mindsets their student might have. An unmindful tutor might accidentally reinforce a student's negative thinking patterns.