on writer's block (Patreon)

didn't really feel like writing today.
did anyway.
2.5, and i had fun with it.

what i was working on was a couple connecting pieces from the stuff earlier in this week.
i'm trying to get from point A to point B, and I wrote the interesting part of the journey, and realized later I wasn't quite at point B yet.
but somehow, those connecting pieces just felt dreadfully, dauntingly boring to me.
it's in fact, exactly why i didn't want to write today.
had i not been encouraging myself to set minimum time aside to write daily, i probably would've handwrung over it for gosh knows how long.

anyway, i think that's just how i experience the feeling that other people know as writer's block.
i just don't want to write it.
it's not interesting to me.

the advice i adopted for this some time ago is that writer's block usually means you're trying to write the wrong thing.
more recently, there's been a post on tumblr circulating about how "if you're getting stuck writing a part, the problem is probably not the sentence you're stuck on, but the last sentence before that."
i think that is basically a more acute application of the same broader concept.

writing-wise, i feel like my life got way better when i adopted the first above advice.
like i said, the way i experience writer's block is just being bored by what i (think i) have to write.
and if i, the writer, am bored, then like, yikes
why should anyone else be interested in reading whatever i'd make?
it is a good sign to me that i need, for my sake, to do something more interesting with the writing.
i have to find something that's going to excite me.
this is what i was able to do with the connecting pieces today, and i why i was able to write them.

the work is better for my excitement, and so is my experience writing it.

.......but that is to say, since enthusiastically adopting that over the past handful of years, i have realized that most people have a fundamental misunderstanding of what "writer's block" is.
writer's block is a syndrome.
subsequently, i feel like most people misunderstand what a syndrome is.
people use it synonymously with 'disease' or 'disorder', but speaking literally, a syndrome is just "a collection of symptoms that often go together".
it's the Frequently Bought Together of problems.
sometimes it is useful to talk about what is bought together, patterns of problems can preclude patterns of solutions,
but you have to realize that a syndrome is not like a disease where you just Have it in and of itself.

you do not Just Have writer's block.

writer's block is something one experiences, but it is also something in one's control.
it is a name for a set of symptoms, or problems-- feeling stuck, bored, not being sure how to write a thing, etc.

it is a problem that you can and have to take it on yourself to solve by acknowledging the feeling of being blocked as valid emotional feedback about your project.
if you think you have to write something, and you feel bored by the idea of doing so, then you probably should not write it.
by calling this Writer's Block, or by saying you Have writer's block, you are invalidating your emotional feedback under the pretense that the problem is you rather than the fact that you're writing something emotionally uninteresting to you.

emotions are aggregate information-- including both boredom and excitement
if you deny or repress them, you shut yourself off to uncountable amounts of information that can help you both with your writing and as a person.

if you want to cure writer's block, listen to your heart.

c: well someone read my post