On Writing: Psychological Barriers to Writing

What's Stopping You Writing?

Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash

There are countless reasons not to write a novel, and only one to actually do it.

Because I must.

Here are some of the barriers to writing that I have had to face down and that most writers will also have to confront. I list them here, not to discourage anyone, but for any writer to understand that they are not alone when they face them.

Guilt

One of your main enemies as a writer is guilt.

I used to spend a lot of my writing time consumed with guilt -  because I didn’t seem to do much work.

David Mamet once said that writing feels very much like goofing off – and that’s where the guilt comes from.

He said this was because although you might only work for an hour in a day, you never knew which hour it was going to be.

That isn’t quite true, because you do have to set yourself a schedule and stick to it.  If you spend all day waiting for ‘inspiration’ you probably won’t get much work done. Waiting for inspiration is a kind of excuse for not getting down to business.

However, I know what Mamet means.   A writer working is very different from other kinds of work, because it does involve waiting, and proscrastination, and dreaming.  Most workers in an office, they say, only really do 2 or 3 optimal hours in an 8 hour day, they spend the rest pretending to work or playing on their computer.

Writers don’t have anyone to fool but themselves, so they have to learn and accept that there may be a lot of time that appears, as it were, to be ‘dead’, ie, not useful. Times when you’re not writing, but staring out the window,  or writing what appear to be bad, unimaginative words.

The trick is to work out what you are capable of, I think, and what time of day is right for you to get optimum performance ( though some writers, who are pressed for time, will write anywhere, at any time, and hope for the best)

When I started, I would sit down for six hours a day to write, and I spent most of the time doing nothing.

Then I went through a period when I did admin in the morning, go out for a decent lunch, come back, have a sleep…then by about 3pm I’m ready to go..and with luck, I’ll write until 5-6, in 45 minute chunks.

Nowadays, because I have a flat to write in, I tend to wake up, do an hour or so, maybe do lunch, then work for a couple of hours more.  But I consider that if I’ve done my three hours, I’ve done a good job.  I try not to beat myself up about the fact that most other people work much harder than me, and for rather less money.  To sit and read a novel, or think about an article that interests you, is in a way, all part of the job.  Writers tend to divide themselves between reading and writing, though I personally read relatively little fiction when I’m writing. It’s more as if I spend the day trying to get ready to make the leap into the unknown.

I also go away on writing retreats in nice hotels if and when I can afford it. Lucky me. Once this would have made me feel guilty, because my work ethic feels so slack. Now I realize that it is part of the ‘work’ of the writer. I see things that people can’t see in their everyday life because they are too busy living their everyday life. What is obvious to them is not obvious to me.

Writing is a bit like meditation.

Because we live in an extrovert dominated world, a world that values activity and goals and busyness, you are going to feel yourself to be on the back foot.  But you have to find a way of entering a space that most people don’t allow themselves to enter, because it’s a bit disturbing.  People don’t like quiet, being by themselves with their thoughts, they like distraction.  You are trying to get away from the distractions and see things clearly.   This may feel like ‘doing nothing’ but it is doing something that is different from that which most people do, a kind of active, purposeful dreaming.  And it’s valuable.

The thing is, if you are going to feel guilty, be forgiving of yourself.

You are not doing something self indulgent, you are doing something heroic, trying to build a castle out of nothing at all. It is a real and worthwhile task. Take a pride in it.

Lack of Confidence

If you are lucky, there will be dozens of times when you read back over what you have read and think to yourself, ‘this is absolute hollow empty boring nonsense that no one could ever want to read five pages of let alone a whole novel that they have to pay for.’

More normally, this experience will happen scores of times, or even on a daily basis.

Don’t worry too much about it. Dealing with crises of confidence is very much a large part of the struggle of writing.  It is often said that if you think you are a good writer, you aren’t.  That’s not quite true, because in reality good writers know in their very waters that they are good. But they often are scared, superstitiously, to acknowledge it to themselves. Furthermore, they often don’t believe it until the book is set in print, which gives it a weight and a power that it doesn’t have on a computer screen.

‘Self confidence is given to writers without talent as compensation’.

Above all, don’t panic ( but you will anyway)

Honesty

The most common comment I get about my books ie that they are honest. It is a compliment I take very seriously and I’m very proud of.

I believe that the novelist is not someone PRIMARILY who plays games with the text, or makes pretty phrases or can manage poetic description or is trying to win admiration.  

The writer is someone who is struggling for The Truth.

‘I’ve never seen good results from people trying to speak about things they don’t know firsthand. They will talk about Afghanistan, about children in Africa, but in the end they only know what they’ve seen on TV or read in the newspaper. And yet they pretend—even to themselves—that they know what they’re saying. But that’s bullshit. I’m quite convinced that I don’t know anything except for what is going on around me, what I can see and perceive every day, and what I have experienced in my life so far. These are the only things I can rely on. Anything else is merely the pretense of knowledge with no depth. Of course, I don’t just write about things precisely as they have happened to me—some have and some haven’t. But at least I try to invent stories with which I can personally identify’ - Michael Haneke.

This is an old fashioned and outmoded convention, but I believe it absolutely. Or at least in the quest for it if not the thing itself.

Which is to to say I do not believe in absolute truth, but I do believe in personal truth, honestly expressed.   What makes sense to you, given your experience and observations – as opposed to what you have been told is true by your parents or your society or your friends or your peer group.

It is as hard to be honest as a writer, as it is is to be honest as a human being. Harder because your truths are out there for all to inspect and criticise. Sometimes truth is welcomed by people because its refreshing and because you learn in reading a truth that you are not alone in believing what you believe.   Dennis Potter said ‘I write what people know but don’t know that they know’.  But also truth can make you unpopular – some truths are unpalatable, or unpalatable or the time they are in.   Truths have been surpressed since the dawn of Western Civilisation - look what happened to Socrates - , and in literature it is whatever taboo that is in fashion that will make you unpopular – many people thought DH Lawrence and Henry Miller vulgar and obscene for instance. If Catch 22 had come out five years earlier, I am sure that Joseph Heller would have been monstered.

But honesty, truthfulness is all.  Without it you will never be a real writer. You may be successful writer, which is a different thing. Successful writers are almost by definition dishonest – the happy ending, the mythological structure of the fairy tale, the unconvincing character that reassure us rather than challenge us.

A real writer faces uncomfortable truths.  Having said that, many writers just fall in with the truths of their time.  A writer who writes a book that asserts, war is bad, slavery is bad, racism is bad, is not a writer, they are a propogantist.  A writer who seeks to explain war, who seeks to understand what makes a racist a racist, ad how that racist resembles us and our darker selves is a writer.

Being a good writer is in that sense inseparable from the kind of human being you are.  The writer is the person. A book is a personal statement, which is why writers take it so hard when their book is criticism, because it is they who are being criticised.

And that is why honesty is so hard.

 The idea of truth central to the writer.  What is the truth? How do you find it? I don’t know.  All I do know is that you have to be honest.  And that it isn’t always easy.

Fear

The amateur believes he can do his work once he’s overcome his fear. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. – Stephen Pressfield.

What is there to fear when embarking on writing a novel?

A lot.

Starting:

Once a student came up to me and said to me after a lecture, ‘I’ve got a great idea for a novel but I’m afraid to start’.

I got it. Because once you start writing a novel, there are only two possible outcomes. 1 - You give up, thus accepting once and for all that you will never write a novel. 2. You don’t give up which means you are faced with the deeply intimidating problem of actually writing the damn thing.

Which is why I admire people who begin to write a novel, even if they never finish it.

Finishing:

The film, ‘The Wonder Boys’, based on Michael Chabon’s novel, is about a university professor who can’t finish a novel. His first novel was a big success and he’s terrified that the second one won’t be as good. So he just keeps writing and writing, thousands of pages, so he never has to show it to anyone.

Eventually the manuscript gets blown away in the wind. Which is what happens if you don’t have the courage to finally put your work ‘out there’ to be judged.

Reputation:

A lot of people are scared of the reputation of English Literature – you are entering the arena of giants. How dare you put yourself up against Dickens, Austen, Henry James?   This certainly put me off for years – who are you kidding, after all?

But you don;t have to be a great writer to be a writer. To be any kind of writer is a great acheievement.

The Unconscious Mind.

Writing is really all about harnessing the power of the unconscious mind. But there are monsters down there as well as angels. Mortality, confusion, dark desires, the Shadow. You have to have the courage to face these things down - or at least acknowledge them.

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This is why becoming a writer is as much a test of personality as anything else. You have to have certain qualities as a human being to write a novel. These are not the same as virtues - I’m not talking about being a good person, or anything like. I’m talking about having the cussedness, determination and relentless desire for truth that a true novelist possesses.

At Ease.