Writer’s Block is a real thing. Trust me – I know. What causes it? I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s real. People have laughed when I’ve said, “I can’t come up with a single word, not even a thought…Oh, Lord, I’m blocked.”
But it’s not funny.
I remember well the first time I ever experienced it – when I began to write TIP THE PIANO MAN about forty years ago. And, when it struck, it struck with a vengeance. I’ve never been so terrified in my whole life. My family had just been through a crisis of epic proportions and I knew I had to write about it… but how? Writing about it meant I’d be bleeding all over the page, exposing myself in a way I’d never done before. It meant I’d have to live among evil characters, in an evil world, day in and day out, with no chance of reprieve until I was finished. But, if I could do it, I also knew it meant that I’d used this God-given ability of mine for good. It meant I’d make a difference if there was any way I could.
So, I opened a clean document, stared at that proverbial blank page…and stared at it some more. I stared until my eyes crossed, watered, and gradually lost focus entirely. I had more material in my head on what my book was about than most people could ever learn or want to learn in their lifetimes, but now it was gone. Vaporized. Whoosh!
And, suddenly, I was empty.
I kept staring at that white page, willing a sentence – any sentence – to appear. But there were no characters, no names, no settings, no dialogue, no nothing. Only the title, TIP THE PIANO MAN, and, right then, that seemed unrelated to my story.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country… Write that 500 times, fast.
Start building family trees for the characters you know… An old trick of mine that had always worked in the past – but not this time.
Give them names… Another time-honored game I liked to play with myself. But my characters were faceless, voiceless, free of vice or personality or quirks.
Listen to music… No dice. Didn’t work.
And then I understood what was happening: I was afraid. Of failure. Of me…failing…
It’s one thing to tell a fictitious story, to create a fantasy world and people it with characters you don’t know and will never meet. But it’s altogether different to deliberately tell the truth about something that happened in your life that changed everything you thought you knew about yourself and the people you love the most. To fail after being so publicly vulnerable – that was terrifying.
But, once I’d confronted that fear and faced the worst consequence I could think of, the story came to me with such force and in such a rush that I could hardly keep up with it. I’ve never experienced anything like it, before or since.
TIP THE PIANO MAN was published in 2024, finally – I’d put it away several times until I knew I was strong enough to finish it. But those early days spent wrestling with my writing demons turned out to be by far the most constructive working days of my career. I learned to step out of my comfort zone and welcome the challenges that come my way.
And I learned that Writer’s Block, far from being a joke, is just your brain’s way of helping you clean out the clutter of fear and insecurity and self-doubt so you can think straight again.
Now, when I’m blocked, I sit back (after I’ve played all the games and tricks with myself) and relax. I don’t worry about it. I’m not afraid of it.
When it’s time, it’ll come. It always does.
*You can buy TIP THE PIANO MAN here, or at several other reputable online outlets:
https://www.amazon.com/Tip-Piano-Rosetta-Diane-Hoessli/dp/1509254412/