Writer's Avoidance

I've never fully grasped the concept of writer's block. We've all heard of writer's block, a phenomenon where when you sit down to write nothing happens; your mind goes blank, you struggle to start a sentence, you have absolutely no thoughts to put on paper or type onto a screen. I always have thoughts going through my head, sometimes cogent and sometimes absurd but always there. Sometimes I think that writer's block should be renamed writer's avoidance. It's not that you are mentally blocked and don't have ideas, it's just that you do everything in your power to avoid sitting down your butt down and getting to work.

I can relate because I have been a writing and art-making avoider for many years. Once I sit down and get started everything flows effortlessly and I get lost in time but getting started, what a battle! I'm a person who really, really needs deadlines to get motivated. I thought that this was just another one of my many peccadilloes but avoidance seems to be relatively common in the art world. Julia Cameron, author of the hugely popular The Artist's Way, has dedicated a wonderful and sweetly illustrated book to the topic. Her How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) holds a prominent place in my studio in case of emergency. I also just finished reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, in which he labels blocks and avoidance as Resistance with a capital "R" which gave me further insight into dealing with this phenomenon.

Somehow, I don't think that accountants suffer from "number-crunching avoidance" or that fireman have to deal with "saving people from burning buildings" block. They view their work as necessary and important. Maybe that's the answer--write like IRS is chasing you and make art like a person on fire.