What if writer’s block is actually on your side?
How to work with writer’s block, and what your reptilian brain has to do with it
Today I'm going to propose something that might seem somewhat controversial.
Because when we think about writer's block, most of us have been taught that it is a weakness to be conquered through focus, strength and discipline. Writer's block is a virus that needs to be cured, eradicated, conquered!
Even if you aren't interested in strong-arming your writer's block, most of us feel our writing would be infinitely better if writer's block would just go away entirely.
I've been reading people's writing for a long time now, spent years coaching clients through bouts of writer’s block, and I've tried most of the touted advice out there for my own writing practice. It's mostly fallen flat. It’s also intrinsically felt kind of gimmicky, too. A lot of writing advice sounds like a thinly veiled MLM: just do this one thing and your writer's block will be cured forever.1
But that's not how anything works ever. Even when we get over a common cold, we understand that we will get the sniffles some time again in the future. So, too, will writer's block return.
Instead of feigning that we can cure writer's block, let’s consider that writer's block will always be ebbing and flowing through your creative pursuits, but there is a way to work with it more productively when it does show up.
A lot of what I'm going to propose to you today is informed by a few things:
my reading of trauma studies;
my direct, ongoing experience with trauma therapeutic modalities;
my own relationship with writing; and
the work I've done over the years as an editor and writing guide.
As I’m writing this piece, I feel like a sort of editorial alchemist2 because I'm pulling together professional training with deeply important personal work that has fundamentally changed how I write for myself, how I move through the world and how I offer writing guidance.
It's important to put a disclaimer here that what I'm proposing is a working theory. And working theories require testing (that's where you, dear reader, come in). I share this today, hopeful it will open the floodgates of confidence, compassion and curiosity for you, and I also ask that you test everything I say against your own direct experience with writer’s block. And toss away anything that contradicts what you know works for you.
What Writer’s Block Is Like For Other Writers
But before I describe a new way of seeing writer's block, I'd like to add a little more stickiness to the idea of what it is and how it shows up. To do this, I reached out on Notes and in Substack chat to see what writer's block sounds like to others.
Because the challenging thing about writer's block is it is a natural shapeshifter. It can be a voice saying you're a talentless hack or a dried-up wannabe; it shows up as endless distractions and this sense that sitting down to write is creatively dangerous; sometimes it creates this sense of dread or even a "freezing" feeling. Just read these descriptions from readers who chimed in.
said that writer's block "sounds like words I used in grad school" and that when academic jargon shows up, it's a sign she's "tired" and needs to walk away. pointed to writer’s block as “the sound of a keyboard being clicked once, and then nothing.” described it as a sort of disorientation. “I’m not just lost in my writing with no idea which way to turn, I’ve forgotten where I was going.” With writer’s block, she says, “the street signs are all in another language, the sun is setting, and the air smells like animal fear.” reflected on writer’s block as “waiting for a connection.” He said he’s never been able to “write to a prompt” or, when in school, write an exam essay. ”Blank sheets of paper terrify me … I’ve learned to be patient and just wait, or go for a walk, or have a conversation on an unrelated subject.” compared writer's block to the "drone and over-fluctuating of bad acting." It's writing that "doesn't transport you to that other world.” “I can tell when my writing is doing this, and when it's just purple words, placed in grammatically correct order, but painfully flat.” described it as “a glob of something good in my brain ... [that's] too thick to swallow.” Like, “peanut butter in my mind.” And sometimes it makes her fear that she's going to choke, so she spits the idea out “into the waste bin.”jumped in and said that he’s experienced two kinds of writer’s block in the 40 or so books he’s written, which were first described to him by his agent: one type is “where you write yourself into a corner and have no idea how to get out” (this is considered “good” writer’s block) and the other is the kind when you’ve “either written too much, written the wrong book, or haven’t read enough to keep going on.” Russell went on to elaborate that with this second type of writer’s block, “there’s usually just silence, or a voice in my head saying to stop.” The first chapter of his latest book can be found here. said writer's block feels like "a breath held" in her chest, where writing becomes the exhalation.’s writer's block shows up as a critical voice screaming, “Who do you think you are?!!” wasn't sure if she's experienced writer's block exactly, but offered: "I know sometimes I just can’t open a document I’m working on and need to put it down a few months ... it feels like fear, fear of being misunderstood, fear of being great, fear of being judged, just ALOT of fear really." Claire described it as "deathly quiet."Instinctually, in my prompt, I asked how writer's block "sounds," but as you can see, everyone's responses involve all kinds of sensory and non-sensory observations.
Except for one person who said writer’s block doesn’t exist and is a “self-limiting monster” of your own making, everyone else said they experience creative blocks!
These folks each had a specific, distinctive way to describe the feeling of not giving the page—and by extension, the world—what they know is living inside them.
I know this block all too well. I know what it's like to feel trapped inside yourself, by yourself and not know how to wiggle free. I've even experienced a dissociative episode where I could barely remember having been an editor. If you asked me to read a manuscript, my eyesight would fog over and I would instinctively push it away, as if you were asking me to do the impossible.
But over time, I learned how to work with myself in this place and let things unfold as they needed to, so that my creativity and I could come "back online.” And with that confession on the table, here's what I'd like to propose:
That the grip writer's block can transform when we start treating it as a friend who's actually on our side and is also sometimes misguided.
And in order to do that, I'd like to talk a bit about your brain.
Join readers who believe in supporting good writing.
The Reptilian Brain and How It Shows Up In Your Writing
I first started exploring neurological stuff about nine years ago when I read a transcribed interview with Bessel van der Kolk. He's a doctor at the forefront of studying PTSD and the neurological/physiological components around trauma. His work stood out to me initially because his studies looked at why some soldiers go to war and come home relatively unscathed, while others come back from the same job, missions, and locale, and they take their own lives because life is overwhelmingly painful.
His work was hugely influential in helping me approach therapy and healing in a different way, which I’ll write about soon in a future post. But I will offer this: a big part of healing my relationship with writing has come from working every week with a part of the brain that we all share: the reptilian brain. While your body is actively taking in information and recording patterns all day, every day, the reptilian brain is analyzing and deciding when we need to respond to a threat.
The reptilian brain is something we have in common with animals—it's how a deer instinctively knows when it's time to scram, even if a bear is dozens of yards away. The deer's body is primed to take in and organize large amounts of sensory information all day long (as is yours), and its reptilian brain knows when all that information adds up to a credible threat to life and limb.
Curiously enough, your reptilian brain is trying to do the same for you, all day, every day. However, it has evolved over time to take in other information that animals do not have via the pathway of language.
Have you ever considered that animals don't believe language? Martha Beck tells a funny story to illustrate this: if you sat in front of an orangutan with a banana in your hand and said, “The stock market has crashed, and all your money is gone,” this animal would look at you, unphased, and try to get the banana from your hand. The threat of language doesn’t register with the reptilian brains of animals because language holds no power to sway them when their bodies know they’re safe.
The relationship you and I have with language is one of my favorite parts of being on this side of the evolutionary arch. I love language! But what I've learned over the last several years is that unresolved or "undigested" trauma can make the reptilian brain rather trigger happy, which means the inputs it’s processing from your sensory receptacles (things your eyes see, your skin feels, your nose smells) can sometimes create a false alarm if they connect back to a traumatic experience. In other words, the reptilian brain, with the best of intentions to keep you safe, can perceive threats built by language when no threats to life and limb exist at all.
There are a few specific places in writing where I see a writer’s reptilian brain click on.
When discussing a sensitive story and a writer has ants in their pants, the reptilian brain can create a sense of jitteriness, where they’re literally jumping out of a chair anytime they try to sit down.
When trying to write, sometimes the writer talks in circles (and more circles, still) about how IF they write this story and IF the story is published, it’s possible that their mother, father, cousin or former priest MIGHT become mad or decide to sue them. In these scenarios, keys to the keyboard or pen to paper (and sharing it with me, their editor) feels akin to a life-threatening proposition.
When trying to write, the story comes out, but only to a certain point. Sometimes writers feel a sense of amnesia around details, or the sense that the story is “held beyond them,” and can’t be tapped into.
So within my position that writer's block can sometimes be a misguided friend, I can see how this can be frustrating. Why can’t my reptilian brain just get it right? Well, it does a lot of the time, but when we introduce things that bear weight onto our bodies (little sleep, lack of nourishment, overworking), the reptilian brain’s resources are dwindling, too.
It’s also very often that when we are getting ready to write—or create, grow, launch—something that is intrinsically tied to the deepest places in our personhood, the reptilian brain shows up with a fog horn. The impulse to run is a sign that you’re treading perilously close to some territory where, yes, things might be tender, but they might also be the richest creative ground you can tap into.
In the context of stepping into the power our stories and creativity hold, I’m here to tell you: your instinct will be to run. The reptilian brain will start banging on every pot and pan to try to remind you of the time you were rejected by that one group; or you were almost sued and taken down by a competitor. The reptilian brain has so many tools in its toolbelt. Because while I’ve been focusing on times in life where it may be misguided, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you really are about to step into significant personal territory. And sometimes it’s not worth the pain. Or sometimes it’s a sign to get help to work through the “why” these alarm bells keep sounding in your mind.
With all this said, how we respond to writer's block becomes very important. In fact, I would say that how you speak to yourself when you experience writer's block is the make-or-break ingredient of letting your creativity come through the surface.
Responding to Writer’s Block
The next time you feel that block, jot down quickly how you experience it. Tell us below in the comments your answer to the question I asked folks in Chat last week, but go one step further. Tell me how you respond to it.
Does your writer's block sound like a person accusing you with words like, "Who do you think you are?" Does it feel like blankness, like your creativity hard drive was wiped clean?
From my seat as an editor, how you experience writer's block is actually never the problem. (Remember: we all have a reptilian brain, and it is there forever, doing its job, day and night. There is no tonic to eliminate writer’s block.) What matters—and where I think transformation is waiting—is what comes next from you when it shows up.
Do you agree?
Do you tell it to shut the f*ck up?
Do you see writer's block as if it's "happening to you?"
Do you walk away, steaming, dejected or otherwise?
Do you strongarm it and make yourself write anyways?
How to befriend writer’s block
When I first began working with the idea that I have a reptilian brain and that it's there for my own wellbeing, I kind of got depressed and also a little curious at the same time. (But mostly depressed.)
Like, I can never escape this? These blocks will always show up for as long as I live? The answer to that is mostly yes but also, things can become gentler, more workable. And what I propose next will take a little imagination and a tweak to the language you use when the reptilian brain shows up. But I find this ongoing exercise worth at least a little experimentation.
Imagine that your reptilian brain is actually a lizard. A real life lizard, whether a photo, a sketch or a cartoon. Find a lizard that feels like the one that is around when writer’s block shows up.
In your imagination (or in photoshop, if you’re so inclined), start to give your lizard some accessories. Hats, earrings, shoes, a vest or a polka dot dress.
Give this lizard a name. It’s important that the name acknowledges that the lizard plays an important role in your life (to keep you from dying!). So, for example, Mr. StupidHead would not be the best fit because if you were approached by a ravenous bear in a forest, your reptilian brain would be the one calling the shots to get you out of danger as swiftly as possible.
Step 4: Finish this sentence: “Hi, Mr. Lizard, I understand you have an important job to do, but sometimes your ‘help’ makes me feel…”
And each time you feel writer’s block starting to circle around, see if you can imagine it talking as this lizard. Consider what the message around writer’s block is today. Is it misguided helpfulness? If so, can you thank it and ask it to rest to the side while you continue writing? Or is the lizard sounding the alarm for an impending literary catastrophe? If so, can you offer it some understanding, take in the information and decide if your living, breathing human body is under real threat?
This is the product of a lot of neurological searching, trauma therapy and trying again and again to befriend myself and my own lizard brain. The reptilian-brain-as-lizard-as-friend stuff, however, is not my original idea. I first read about this characterization in a book by Martha Beck called, “Steering by Starlight,” which I can’t find in print anywhere but is available as a used book on Amazon. In fact, in her most recent book
explores the reptilian brain dynamic, which she references here. (I haven’t read the book yet but saw this post and went aha! She’s discovered the wonderfulness of Martha’s invention, too.)Martha Beck’s book offered me some really instructive language around the last three or more years of reptilian brain work. It helped string together the “through line” I’ve felt in almost every single writer that I’ve ever worked with. When I’m reading someone’s work, there is often an energy that builds upon itself and, inevitably, it falls flat—splat on the ground. And if I ever asked why, the reasons all had the same kinetic energy of avoidance or “lostness.” But it’s so pervasive that it’s something I can’t help but pick up on if I’m reading someone’s words on paper.
Even on Substack, especially in Notes, I can pick up on when a writer’s reptilian brain has just slammed a door shut. Because they always have tremendously creative and sometimes even spiritual reasons for not “going there” with their work or writing. My latest one to catalog and analyze is the different ways that writers debate the merits of going free or paid on their newsletter. There’s usually some sort of “I have to be patient before asking for money for my writing,” or “I need to have more subscribers,” or “I shouldn’t be greedy by asking people to pay for my art.”
If you’ve been on the fence for a while about charging for your newsletter (or any other creative endeavor) and you just feel completely stuck about what to do, I invite you to give yourself permission to go completely free. And then watch happens when you do this.
Do all your creative juices come running back almost immediately? Do you feel footloose and fancy free, like nothing can stop you now? The reason I ask this is because a lot of times this kind of indecision can signal that reptilian brain is feeling very afraid of some potential harm—and he’s got you going around and around in a sort of dance. But as soon as the perceived harm of asking for money for your art is gone, the reptilian brain’s grip loosens and you can go back to writing.
Quick side note about this: Sometimes your reptilian brain is genuinely trying to keep you safe from emotional or mental harm. I can’t stress enough how important it is to create a working, compassionate relationship with this sometimes misguided lizard friend because sometimes you need that protection. You need to leave that project alone. You don’t have the inner resources to take on something that taps at the neglect in a childhood or the mistreatment you experienced at the hands of an abusive boss. This is the frustrating part of the experiment: the lizard isn’t always misguided. Sometimes it’s holding a part of you safe until you’re ready (and that’s what trauma therapy is really good for).
If you choose to give this experiment a chance—this befriending and accessorizing of your lizard brain—I will absolutely be waiting to hear how it goes. I have been practicing this for more than three years, and only now do I feel like I have a working structure to invite others into.
So what do you think? Intriguing? Poppycock? None of the above? That’s OK. I’d love to hear from you no matter what in the comments below.
I grew up with my parents dividing their devotion between church and an MLM, so the MLM reference here runs much deeper than I have time or space to devote to in one essay. To read more about MLMs and swim in an utterly wonderful sea of writing, Anne Helen Petersen (Culture Study) has written about the churn we’re starting to acknowledge within MLMs. And this piece has a great dialogue between Sara Petersen of
and about the intersection of MLMs and the beauty industry.Man, that would make a great name for a newsletter!
It's really interesting to consider that writer's block is a "lizard brain" response, thanks. I'm thinking about it like it's an emotional flashback or dissociation or other body response that is trying to protect myself.
Love this! Saw your call for quotes and I should have known this would be the direction. I would go so far as to say writers block is a total misnomer and I really appreciate where you went with this