A Kernel on Writer’s Block versus Writer’s Resistance

and how shifting your perspective can get you writing

When I think of writer’s block, I think of an immovable mound plopped in front of me that I don’t have the directions to proceed around. It’s external, an obstruction. Outside of my capabilities! I must wait for the mound to move or disintegrate or poof, vanish. Then, and only then, can I step forward with my writing practice…until the next block seemingly appears out of nowhere. 

If this description sounds mysterious, mercurial, and maddening, join the club.

I’ve never liked the phrase “writer’s block” because it feels mythologized—and it connotes something separate from yourself, something passive, which makes overcoming it hard. How do you progress through writer’s block if it’s out of your control? But that’s just it: writer’s block is not out of your control; it’s not passive! Maybe we’re just approaching it from the wrong perspective.

Years ago, I happened upon Victoria Nelson’s On Writer’s Block in a used bookstore, and it has since become a book that I return to again and again because it puts writer’s block into the perspective that my brain craved. Nelson catalogs writer’s block as a “resistance to writing,” as in something that’s active and internal, something that’s well within your reach to change. “[Resistance] is a block between the conscious self and its sources of material in the unconscious,” Nelson writes. She goes on to explain that there’s always a reason behind being blocked, but you have to be willing to excavate the nooks and crannies of your mind to figure it out. 

So what are the reasons¹ you might be resisting? Glad you asked.

1) Unrealistic or harsh expectations

Nothing stops me from writing like a daunting daily word count. If I tell myself I have to write 1,000 words a day, I will become paralyzed and do nothing because achieving a goal like that happens for me once in a blue moon. Realistically, I can achieve 300 words a day, which is my current goal—and I hit it more times than not because I’m not demanding something outrageous from myself. 

In On Writer’s Block, Nelson says, “[T]iny acts of will, as we shall see, get you where you want to go much more efficiently than great big acts of will that are hollow and unsupported by desire. Contrary to stereotype, art lives in the modest effort, not the grandiose one.”

When I approach my practice with the gentleness of a kind friend, my creativity rewards me.

2) Perfectionism

Creativity thrives on playfulness, on the space to explore and meander and spend time with what feels fun. While perfectionism might seem like a positive quality, it’s a stealthy form of resistance. If your sentences, paragraphs, scenes, etc. have to be perfect, you could spend a lifetime tweaking them instead of finishing your draft, instead of making it to a second, third, final draft, instead of sharing your work with the world. Perfectionism traps you from moving forward.

I loved Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg. It was a great read! But I would not recommend this book to a perfectionist. For months after reading it, I found it difficult to write. Klinkenborg talks about how the easiest sentences to write, those that seem to flow out of you, are usually bad and need to be revised. So what did I do instead of maintaining a playfulness to my writing? I hyperfocused on the sentence I just wrote and fiddled with it until I was satisfied and could move to the next sentence. Two things occurred: 1. I was definitely not having fun, and 2. I was making very little progress.

As Nelson writes in On Writer’s Block, “You know you have crossed the border from persistence into paralysis when every fragile word or idea withers under the glare of disapproval and faultfinding from your demonic interiorized judge and executioner, the insidious voice that whispers that your best is not only not good enough but is awful, worthless, ridiculous.”

Being perfect isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be! Don’t let it hold you back!

3) Challenging or conflicting emotions

Sometimes resisting writing has nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with what you are feeling. Take one of my all-time favorite movies, Not Another Happy Ending, for instance: The protagonist Jane Lockhart (Karen Gillan) is on the heels of a successful debut novel, working on the sequel. But what’s that? She’s blocked! At first glance, it would be easy to attribute her resistance to the fear of rejection (see below). Will the sequel top the debut? But as the movie progresses, you learn that she’s unable to write because finishing the novel means that she’s one step closer to the end of her contract with her current publisher who she has romantic feelings for. If she writes, she’s closer to him being out of her life forever. 

Likewise, maybe writing about a character’s childhood forces you to confront the difficult relationship you had with a parent. Or your protagonist’s lesson to learn is one for you as well, except you’re not ready to face it yet. While untangling your emotions can be a tricky task, it’s an important one—and it could lead you to the answer for your blockage.

4) Lack of consistency or routine

As I’ve touched on in this kernel about momentum, maintaining your writing practice is imperative for progress, which naturally helps stave off resistance. In On Writer’s Block, Nelson talks about how we often forget how to play. She says, “If I wait five months or five years to have fun—whether to climb a tree or run down a beach or write—my muscles will be stiff and resistant. I will have throttled my spontaneous desire to play by not giving it free rein on an immediate, regular basis.”

Allowing yourself consistent access to playful creativity thwarts the writer’s block that would creep in if you only wrote intermittently and demanded a great deal from those sessions. Nelson says, “A person who is out of shape is in the same boat as a person who has never been in shape. You cannot impose expectations from a writing past, when you were fit, onto the present, when you are not.” While this idea also touches on expectations (have you noticed that these reasons all overlap and intersect?), it really highlights the downfall of not consistently making time to play—to be creative, to write.

5) Fear of rejection

You’ve got a brilliant novel idea—so good you just know it will become a New York Times Best Seller. Oprah will pick it for her book club. Netflix will turn it into a movie. The novel exists perfectly in your head…and if you don’t write it, it will continue to live up to its potential. 

But if you write the novel, you’ll have many opportunities for it to be rejected. While any writer will tell you it’s a numbers game, rejections still sting. To be vulnerable in our writing, we have to be receptive and open to our emotions—the opposite of having thick skin—which can cause rejections to hold a greater impact on our value than they should.

If you let it, being rejected can feel like everyone in the world is telling you that you won’t make it as a writer and to quit now. If you’re a people pleaser, you might want to appease everyone, which can make writing a difficult task. How are you supposed to write a story, after all, that everyone likes? The fear of rejection is a valid self-defense mechanism, but if you want to write, you have to accept that rejection will come—whether you’re a beginner or seasoned writer or somewhere in between—and once you acknowledge that, the real magic will happen.

Get out of the corner and sit with the discomfort

In a recent post from

Becky Tuch

at

Lit Mag News

, she talks about writing yourself into corners and finding your way out from them. “I’ve heard several fiction writers talk about crying while they write,” Tuch says. “Not crying because of their character’s emotion, but crying because of the difficulty of the task before them, that corner pressing in every passing day.” 

While these corners Tuch writes about might not inherently feel like a resistance to writing—But I want to understand my character’s motive so I can move the plot forward! you might say—I’d argue that a resistance is happening on some level. And maybe the fix isn’t writing, but increasing your creative input. When’s the last time you went for a walk or browsed an art gallery or made friendship bracelets for fun? Creative activities that aren’t directly tied to your writing will still get your juices flowing and help with your writing.

But at the end of the day, for any writer to be a writer, they have to write. As Jeanna Kadlec shares on an Instagram Reel, “It becomes how well can you sit with discomfort.”

My kernel of advice: Identify which type of resistance you’re experiencing and work through those feelings. Like life, there are no shortcuts. 

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Inspiration, Information, & Insight

• Shelby read

  Sophie Vershbow
  ’s interview with Fran Lebowitz for Esquire and couldn’t help but chuckle when she got to Lebowitz’s comment, “I have to tell you, I have never been bored a minute in my life unless I was with other people”—which she finds super relatable. She also enjoyed
  Leigh Stein
  ’s examples of audience “personas” for her novel Self Care, which Stein shared in a recent
  Attention Economy
  newsletter. It gives Shelby something to look forward to when she wraps up her novel draft and can start thinking about its prospective audience.

• Natalia finished Veronica this week and is so happy to share that she has her next kernel idea and a lot of novel inspiration because of it. She set the bar high and is aiming to write 2,000 words a day this week. So far it has been a bit over 1,000 words a day, but she can’t complain after so much time of no words at all. 

• Neidy has been listening to Amber Sparks's short story collection And I Do Not Forgive You. She is enjoying the blend of different genres. 

• Sarah’s life has been riddled with family emergencies and childcare snafus for the past two weeks, so she has not been doing any writing at all. Luckily, she can still read on airplanes and in waiting rooms, where she has passed the time admiring Kurt Vonnegut’s stylistic innovations in Welcome to the Monkey House, particularly “Report on the Barnhouse Effect” and “All the King’s Horses,” as well as Tessa Hadley’s brilliant domestic dramas in After the Funeral, especially “Funny Little Snake,” and “Coda.”

1. These reasons are inspired by and reimagined from Victoria Nelson's On Writer's Block. For an in-depth exploration of why you might be blocked—or resisting writing—I highly recommend her book.