Writer's Block and How to Use It, by Victoria Nelson

Writer's block, argues Victoria Nelson in her book Writer's Block and How to Use It can be healthy. Writer's block exists as an instinctive reaction to an attempt at self-falsification, she writes, and it comes in many forms: daydreaming unrealistic fantasies, excessive note taking, obsessive rewriting, excessive self-criticism, focusing on endless potentials, etc.

How to overcome writer's block? Give the unconscious aspect of oneself room to write. Don't force it to write, tell it when to write, criticize or label its writing. Treat it like a child: what makes a child happy, what motivates a child, what is the child skillful at translates into what makes one happy about writing, what motivates one to write, where do one's skills in writing lay?

Treat this child poorly and it will refuse to write, blocking you from making foolish writing attempts, holding unrealistic aspirations, and, ultimately, entering into an unhealthy, stultifying relationship with your writing. While the unconscious is the ultimate creative force behind the writing, it is also the safety valve preventing "self-falsification."

So what ideas for writing themes or topics did I get from this book (assuming I'm not too petrified by writer's block to write anything!)…. Well, maybe I am a little blocked right now; so let's steal from Nelson:

• Writer's Retreat Block: Nelson provides an excellent example of this made into a movie: The Shining, about a writer driven crazy by his writer's block one winter in a mountain lodge.
  
  
• Puer aeternus: Nelson describes Robert Musil's main character in Man Without Qualities as a classic puer aeternus (enternal child), unwilling to take the first step down any path that will lead to his future. This book, Man Without Qualities, is on the reading shelf in Chapter 12 (Fancy Stuff).
  
  
• Prodigal Talent: Nelson gives the example of Milan Kundera, a Czech writer, who uses the fictional account of a teenage poet to provide an example of the "self-imprisonment of precocious talent" in his work Life Is Elsewhere.

Nelson's work is a thorough evaluation of the kinds, and causes, of writer's block. Not a book to beat oneself over the head with; but, a book worth keeping close to remind oneself how keep one's inner writing child handy (and happy) willing to write creative fiction always.