Writer’s block is considered worse than terminal illness. But perhaps there’s more to it than that. Maybe your writer’s block is a gift from God.
My heart overflows with a goodly matter; I speak the things which I have made touching the king: My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Psalm 45:1
Fr Stephen Freeman’s Talk on Creativity
I was watching a lecture by Father Stephen Freeman—you know, the priest from Glory to God for all Things blog …
During that talk he said something that made my back straighten up.
He said, in that way only Fr Stephen Freeman can say it (and for those who love him like I do, you’ll know what I mean) …
“Ya know … sometimes God gives us writer’s block as a gift …”
As a gift??
Isn’t writer’s block a bad thing, I thought?
Isn’t writer’s block the bane of the writer?
Isn’t writer’s block the whole focus of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art?
Doesn’t writer’s block spell the death of the writer?
I mean, look at Reiner Maria Rilke: how long was his writer’s block? Thirteen years or more?
Who wants writer’s block?
A Gift From Heaven
Indeed, contrary to those and many other sources around ‘creativity’ and ‘the creative process’—for which any kind of block to infinite creative output is worse than a terminal illness—Fr Stephen provokes us to ponder that maybe writer’s block is a good thing; indeed, even a gift from God.
I have a friend who’s a writer. He’s written several books, and has been an active writer, writing every day for as long as I’ve known him. His name is Paul. Paul came to me one day to tell me that he didn’t know what was happening, but that he had not been actively writing for almost a year.
“What do you mean you haven’t been writing?” I asked.
“I haven’t been writing anything substantial … No books, no manuscripts, nothing.”
“But what about your routine? Haven’t you been following your routine?”
“My routine’s gone … I have no routine. I used to get up in the morning and pray and then write for at least an hour. But for whatever reason, I haven’t been able to write.”
“So what do you do?” I asked surprised by this shift in Paul’s routine. I mean, he had that thing locked in for years … How could it have changed so much?
“I’ve been focusing more on prayer … The writing has just slipped into the background and I’m not going to push it. It seems forced to give myself only a certain amount of time to pray and then heed the alarm and switch gears to sit down and write. Prayer’s taken over. Right now I’d rather stand before the icons in stillness. I prefer silence to sitting down to write. It’s changed for me—I don’t know what else to say …”
“Do you see yourself going back to writing?”
“Well, I’ve got some projects I’m thinking about, but there’s no urgency right now. Maybe I just need to be quiet and do nothing. Maybe this is something I need to accept and not fight. Maybe the writing can wait … I don’t know … It’s never happened to me before … not like this.”
Writer’s Block Leading to Prayer
As I reflected on my conversation with Paul, I could see something else was going on in his life. I could see that what he was engaged in wasn’t the ‘classic’ understanding of writer’s block, but rather he was in a process of entering deeper into a loving union with God. He was putting God before the writing. He was re-centring, re-aligning his soul with his true Source of life, with Life Himself. He was making room in his heart for God; he was opening himself to what God wanted to do in his life through this seeming gift of writer’s block.
“What does prayer look like to you then these days?”
“Sometimes I sit, sometimes I pray the Agpeya prayers, sometimes I make prostrations—I don’t know. One thing I do know is I’m not writing at that usual time.”
“So you’re not freaked out? I mean … that’s a huge shift for you. Aren’t you afraid of … you know … (gulp) … writer’s block?” I could hardly get the words out—it’s my nightmare too.
“I was for a while, thinking I was a total failure. If I’m a writer how can I not be writing? And if I’m not writing, how can I call myself a writer? But that’s a bad track of thought. ‘Writer’ is NOT my identity—at least, that’s what I’m learning through all of this. Maybe the mask is burning away, and I’m finding out who I am before God—you know, His kid … And when I look at myself, at my identity, like that, then maybe I won’t get so depressed when the writing isn’t coming hot off the pen.
The Disease Revealed as Medicine
It was here that Fr Stephen’s comment about God’s gift of writers block struck a chord with my conversation with Paul. That what to ‘the world’ appeared to be a disease was actually a kind of medicine.
A medicine to remedy what?
I don’t know …
Pride? Ego? Self-reliance? Self-actualization? … All the selfie diseases.
All the things the ‘creativity gurus’ tell us we need to have to become a success.
But for Paul, I know that he’d rather be a failure in the world’s eyes, and in relationship with Christ, than some kind of banal representation of ‘success’.
Made me think about what we pray in the divine liturgy of St Basil …
“We give thanks for what is Yours,
For everything,
Concerning everything,
and in everything”—
even writer’s block!
Fr Stephen Freeman is right.
Glory to God for all things …
