“Writer’s block is life block.”
Last weekend, I listened to a recent podcast episode of That Sounds Fun with Annie F. Downs. The interview1 was with author, speaker, and coach Ally Fallon, and I have to say that, as a writer, this was one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard. (If you’re a writer or want to be a writer or just want to write something, I highly recommend listening, then downloading the 37 pages of show notes and sifting through them a few times to absorb it all. Don’t ask me how I know.)
Ally said, “Writer’s block is life block,” and this struck me in a different way than anything else I’ve ever heard about writing. We tend to hear that writer’s block occurs when we don’t have anything to write about, when the inspiration runs dry, maybe when we’re physically tired or our minds are weary.
(Funny thing is, for these very excuses, I haven’t written here in two weeks and not because I don’t have things to write about but because it felt hard to start, and it felt like it would take so much time. The problem is, I made a goal to write here once a week, and while I know that no one else is holding me to that and that there is nothing wrong with cutting myself a little slack, I know how easy it is to skip one week and then another and then another and before you know it, years go by and you realize you haven’t been pursuing the things God has placed in your heart. So, I knew today was the DAY to write. I sat down this morning while my son was at tutoring, tapped one sentence into my phone, and within 30 minutes, the rest of this all came together. Writer’s block LIES – the first step is always the hardest. Just get started.)
So I think there’s really something to all of the writers who say they write something every day no matter what. It’s too easy to say, “I’ve run out of things to write about” or “I’m just too tired to write today” or maybe more like “I’m so busy. I don’t have time to write . . . ” when in reality it’s more like we know that writing is going to require effort and maybe even take us places we don’t want to go. And honestly, I’ve found this to be true whether I’m writing personal thoughts in my journal that no one will ever read, writing for my blog or a social media post, writing thoughts that may one day resemble a book, or writing curriculum for work. Sometimes, avoiding it just feels so much better.
So I avoid writing and blame it on writer’s block instead of being honest about the fact that writing takes energy and faith, and exploratory writing often leads me to places I never thought I’d go or wanted to go.
At large, I’ve seen this whole avoidance thing in myself a lot this past year. I see how I avoid things that I know are going to require emotional and/or mental investment, and I think that’s part of the struggle I’ve had with depression especially. Getting into the ring to fight is hard. Like it-is-the-very-last-thing-I-want-to-do HARD. As wild as it seems, it’s easier to stay in the pit sometimes than to put forth the “Herculean effort needed to make mental corrections.”2 It’s easier to avoid than to face what’s really there, especially when you aren’t sure what you’ll find and you’ve no interested in being exposed. Or when you know what’s there, and you know how much work it’s going to take to deal with it all, and work or not, you really just don’t want to get into the mess.
If y’all have been around the church block even once recently, you’ve surely heard about The Chosen. For its popularity, I was against it at first because sometimes I’m stupidly stubborn like that. But I also knew that visually experiencing the life of Jesus would be emotionally challenging, exhausting honestly. Of all the goals I could set for myself, maybe watching a show doesn’t seem that important. But I recently made a decision to sit with the show after several people recommended specific episodes to me. I watched the first episode of Season 1 last week, and I wasn’t wrong about why I was avoiding it. Episode 1 was gutting, though not for any ways I thought. I won’t spoil it for you here in case you’ve not watched it, but let’s just say, it felt like watching my life on the screen, and I cried ugly tears. It was easy to avoid watching this show and just chalk it up to me being stubborn about popular things; it was a lot harder to watch the show and realize that what I’d been avoiding are some of the very things I’ve needed for my healing.
At some point in our lives, I think we all hit a block of some form or another. And it’s easy to excuse that away by saying we’re tired or we just don’t want to deal with it or it’s not that big of a problem or even a problem at all. But when Jesus calls, when His whisper gets too much to ignore, it’s time to step into those waters and find out what’s there.
We don’t necessarily have to pick apart every part of our lives and (over) analyze them. (l will do that for you for free. You’re welcome.) But maybe there’s a point where we have to get at the roots of our anger, our short temper, our fear, our panic, our resentment, our obsession with independence or our overt dependence, our lack of effort or motivation, our stubbornness, our need to control our children/spouse/environment and other people, our tendency to laugh things off or make everything “no big deal,” etc. If we’re going to grow, we have to be willing to push into that block and find out what’s behind it all.
Or maybe the block is because Jesus is calling you to something, and you’ve got every excuse in the book about why you can’t, why you don’t want to, why you won’t, why now isn’t a good time, why you don’t have the resources, why you’ll maybe think about it . . . in a few years. (Oh man, I’ve been there before. That makes me think of another story for another day.)
Surface level existence or relationship is one thing. I’ve lived there long enough. But I’m finding that Jesus wants to take us so much deeper, if only we are willing. Turns out, it’s not as scary as I thought it would be but it sure is uncomfortable and it takes a level of courage and commitment far different from what I expected. To go deeper, we’ve got to stop blaming the block on other things and stare it in the face for what it is: my unwillingness to get into the mess or discomfort I already know is there or that I might find.
Are you willing to face your life block today? It probably (almost definitely, sorry) won’t feel like how you want for a while, but there’s SO MUCH GOODNESS on the other side. I promise.
Footnotes
- “When You Want to Write a Book with Ally Fallon – Episode 892.” That Sounds Fun, 6 June 2024, https://www.anniefdowns.com/podcast/when-you-want-to-write-a-book-with-ally-fallon-episode-892/.
↩︎ - Welch, Edward T. Depression – The Way Up When You Are Down. P & R Publishing Company, 2000. pg. 10. ↩︎
Cati Grape 