Marjorie Liu has a post on “Writer’s Inhibition” that, I think, is right on the money. This is exactly what I suffer from, and what usually keeps me from writing when I have the time to do it. It’s not block, exactly. I know what needs to happen next, usually. I just can’t get my head into a space where I can see how it happens, and I freeze up. And the longer I sit there, frozen, the louder my voices of insecurity become.
My voices of insecurity are screechy and annoying, and they really need to shut up.
The really stupid thing is, that nine times out of ten, if I just ignore it all and start writing, even if I just type a sentence over an over (all work and no play makes Jean a psychopat–um, I mean, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog), just getting my fingers moving engages the part of my brain where the story is trapped, and I thaw, and warm up, and pretty soon I’m on fire. And writing a lot of cliches that I’ll have to go back and edit later. But at least I’m writing.
Knowing this, I don’t know why it’s such a constant battle. I don’t understand why I let myself freeze up so often, when I know where the defrost button is. I just don’t GET me, man! I guess it all comes back to insecurity–fear that if I start typing, the story WON’T come, or that if it does, it will be crap, and I won’t be able to make it better on the next draft. Stupid fear. Stupid me.
Writer’s Inhibition. That’s an excellent name for it. And I’m the second most inhibited person I know.
By the way, if you haven’t checked out Ms. Liu’s novel The Iron Hunt, you need to do so right now.