Blockhead

I’m pretty much spending all of my days writing full time now. I get up, I fire up the laptop and I start typing. After about an hour or so my Beloved awakes and we have breakfast together. And then I write again. Maybe I’ll break for lunch, maybe I won’t. I’ll continue writing until my evening meal. I write because I love to, but also because it’s my job.

I have so many different projects whirling around in my brain that it’s difficult to concentrate on just one and I find myself with half a dozen documents open at once, inefficiently flitting from one to the other, inserting a word here or editing a sentence there. One thing that I have to learn to do is stop that and actually finish something. I’m not great at finishing things off but I never have trouble starting a piece of work.

The point is that I never run out of things to write. They may not all come to fruition but the ideas are constantly flowing.  I’ve trained my brain to think that way, to play ‘what if?’ in every situation. Yet some authors – including quite a few well-known and respected ones – apparently find this difficult.

The Oxford English dictionary defines Writer’s Block as ‘the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing’.

It must be true; it’s in the OED. But with all due respect to those learned chaps and chapesses at Oxford, it’s complete and utter rubbish.

How many times has an accountant complained to his wife, ‘I don’t feel like going into the office today dear, I think I’ve got a dose of accountant’s block’?  No construction worker ever moaned of having Builder’s Block, and I’m pretty certain that if there were such a thing as Student’s Block then schools and universities up and down the land would be quite empty. Apart from student bars, obviously.

Your friendly neighbourhood plumber who has to pay his gas bill and buy new shoes for his children can’t afford to cite Plumber’s Block as an excuse for letting your toilet cistern continue to overflow for weeks on end. ‘Ooh, sorry mate. That looks nasty. I’d love to help but I’ve got Plumber’s Block at the moment. Maybe at the end of next month?’

If he tried it he’d never work again and I suspect that he’d find it difficult to claim on his health insurance for it. ‘Hello is that BUPA? Ah yes. Am I covered against loss of earnings due to Plumber’s Block?’  Yet writers seem to think that it’s OK to miss deadlines and assignments due to a problem that’s so aligned to one industry that it even has it’s own specific name? I think not.

I have my own definition of this so-called affliction of Writer’s Block: ‘a fabricated condition created by idle would-be writers who want an excuse to avoid getting down to work’.

(Shaun now sits back and waits for the flaming to begin...)

© Shaun Finnie 2011 – Don’t forget Shaun’s website – www.BooksAboutDisney.co.uk