Given how the three of us can't ever seem to post, I thought it would be interesting to write a general inquiry into the concept of writer's block.
The act of writing is a solitary activity. You write alone. Necessarily. Writing is the process of having a conversation with yourself. You think. You type. You revise. You rethink. You refine. You create. When you look up from your computer screen, you realize that no one has heard the discussion in your mind. A tidal wave of changes may befall the world of text in front of you, but your immediate environment is completely static. You're still sitting in the same coffee shop on the same street. Your seat in the shop has not changed. The same baristas are serving drinks at the counter. When you entered it was light and although it's now dark, the street is illuminated by lights. Time has passed, but the landscape is overwhelmingly familiar. This sort of self-induced déjà vu is a common occurrence for those people who associate themselves with writing.
You need a certain silence to be able to write. This isn't a literal silence; authors everywhere have an affinity for background noise. And yet, that's precisely my point - that the noise itself falls into the background. Though an author may hear it, he or she never engages it while writing. The concentration required for writing is unforgiving. It separates you from your surroundings. Authoring thoughts is the same creative process as authoring words.
Writer's block is a state of being - specifically, when a writer is incapable of writing. If that seems intuitively obvious, then you're probably taking the project too lightly. "Writer's Block" is NOT the same as "Writers' Block". If you take a second to think about what the distinction between the two would be, you'll find the answer to be incredible.
"Writer's Block" is the mental block that a single writer has.
"Writers' Block" is the mental block that writers have.
The linguistic difference is profound. It is the difference between "THAT writer has writer's block" and "THOSE writers all have writers' block". It is only possible for the single writer to be blocked. Even if writer's block can be described as a unifying experience within the literary community, it doesn't occur to the community itself.
If ever there was definitive proof about the solitary nature of writing, such proof exists in the concept of writer's block. Writer's block is unique to the writer. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. There is no underlying impedance which affects the entire writing community. Even if there was, it would be extraordinarily difficult to call that impedance a "block", given how writing is always occurring.
I haven't even attempted to describe what writer's block actually is, primarily because that discussion could be endless. Writer's block could be a physical thing, an experience, or a discursive object (think Foucault), but this post isn't about metaphysics. I did, however, suggest that writer's block is a state of being. I will make one more suggestion: writer's block is a certain kind of alienation from your own thoughts. I'll leave you to think about that one.
