Monday, February 06, 2006

Writer's Block

Here's a good NPR show on writer's block and some ways to deal with it from the series "The Infinite Mind."

One of the most useful parts of the show is the quotes from writers like FLAUBERT, CONRAD, DANTE, etc. talking about their problems with blocking. It's encouraging to know that they had this problem and managed to do pretty well anyway.

Then there's best-selling satirist Fran Lebowitz, who could put most writers' writer's block problems into perspective: she had a multi-year phobia of going into the room where her desk sat.

For me, the songwriter Aimee Mann was the MOST USEFUL. One of her ideas for solving the problem is to write out how you're feeling. She wrote a song about "calling it quits" that got her to writing songs again.