writer's block revisited (Patreon)

2k today, and nothing more to say for it

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following my post on writer's block, lua brought up some points about the more general usage of writer's block.
they argue that Writer's Block is a more general term, not just the specific feeling I described, but encompassing things like perfectionism, needing a break, not having the emotional or physical capacity to do writing regardless of the content, and so on.

i admit it's not an application of the term that i would personally have thought to choose for it. i consider the other listed issues more distinct and reserve the term Writer's Block for the specific acute issue that i described before.

the wikipedia article on the matter, which i here take as representative of the colloquial wisdom on the matter, supports that reading.
it outlines a handful of causes and effects, including, notably, brain trauma resulting in a physiological inability to write. personally, i feel very strongly this ought to be regarded as something outside of the domain as Writer's Block as we know it, but regardless of my personal opinion, it is clear that there is a wider application than i had given credit for.

but from that page, this catches my attention:

Early Romantic writers did not understand much about the topic; they assumed writer's block was due to a power that did not want them to write any more

going back to my post about objectivity, i prefer to approach language with a sense of pragmatism.
we are not just making noise or random block print patterns; we are trying to communicate.
so, i would argue that it is Useful to have a word for the specific phenomenon of, as I described, trying to write the wrong thing, and it is also probably Useful to have an umbrella term for the phenomenon widely understood as Writer's Block.
either of these uses of the term are valid and we should probably sort that out more specifically as a culture someday.

but this shit about "a power outside of you"?
oh that grinds my gears.
we can imagine this in the popular historical notion of waiting for inspiration, or trying to listen to A Muse.
i think that notion really encapsulates the particular pattern of behavior at which my diatribe was pointed.

but it's not just limited to early romance.
people still talk about waiting for inspiration all the time,
and there are certainly at least some people who talk about writer's block in the same outside-of-self sense-- they have writer's block.
only it's reversed. instead of waiting for inspiration to come, they are waiting for "the writer's block" to go away.

that, more than anything, is the point i would like to drive home when i argue too-broadly that you do not Have writer's block.
grammatically, sure, you can.
and okay, certainly it can be useful to have a word to describe a problem before you know it's cause.

we have to be clear that, whether it is a specific or broad term, the cause is Inside of you.
It is not some outside force-- a muse, inspiration, an affliction--
it is practical and diagnosable, and the onus is on you to solve it rather than waiting for it to go away.

i believe there is a more appropriate term for the phenomenon of feeling like you have to wait for some outside force to attach or release you before you can write:
it's called learned helplessness.