But procrastination is actually a learned behavior that can be unlearned. There may be light at the end of the tunnel, and the cure can sometimes be as easy as engaging in personal reflection — making a list of the numerous distractions in your life that keep you procrastinating, and then working to change them.
A great deal of procrastination is due to the brain’s reward circuitry: We gravitate toward the things that have the quickest payoff, despite whatever guilt it may mean for us later. That much-needed cup of coffee in the afternoon seems more promising than finishing your chapter, or even starting that outline. A study by Timothy Pychyl and Fuschia Sirois at the University of Sheffield suggests that it isn’t necessarily the task itself that you’re afraid of — it’s the unpleasant feelings that may come into play once you get started. Without realizing it, your subconscious could be shifting back to the day you got your first rejection slip (which arguably is something to be proud of — it means at least someone took a look at your work).
Rather than procrastinating, dive in — going after the long-term goal — and you’ll feel better when you do. While clearing off your desk may seem like an easy way to procrastinate, perhaps you can break down the entire creative task into simpler jobs, so that by doing a gradual outline each day the overall project will become more and more detailed, and a month’s worth of writing several chapters will end up being reduced to the work of a few days.
Mood may be something worth paying attention to when dealing with writer’s block, as a decadelong case study by Yale University psychologists Jerome Singer and Michael Barrios suggests. For years, they followed several writers who had burned out, and found three different moods prevalent among the group: One reported feelings of anxiety and stress, another feelings of anger and hostility about being unable to write, and the third reported feeling indifference and apathy. All of them had more difficulty than their peers when it came to visualizing and describing new imagery, and also reported having fewer dreams.
It soon became clear that each writer abstained from writing for different reasons — that perhaps the craft itself was responsible for their frustration. Turning to writing full time, after all, requires writers to spend long periods of time alone with their thoughts, and with few other people to help work them out — an environment where it’s easier to second-guess yourself.
Extended isolation can have its own negative effects on your psychological well-being — leading to various forms of depression, with creative block being just one of its symptoms. On the other hand, as humans are social beings by nature, a network of either supportive friends or fellow writers can often be the cure for any prolonged bouts of creative inhibition. Sometimes it’s only when you hear your work read aloud, or have someone else critique it, do you begin to realize how it needs to be changed. If you’re as self-conscious as some of the writers followed by Barrios and Singer, all you need to do is listen and take in the work of other people.
Having sat in on a number of writers’ group meetings without sharing work, I can say firsthand that you’ll hear at least a dozen different ideas that you may be tempted to try on your own — and that’s one of the main reasons to write in the first place: To discover and try new things. It’s also beneficial for the brain, as interacting with new people and hearing new ideas forges new connections between neurons that weren’t there before.
Graham Greene, another famous 20th century writer, was also prone to bouts of writer’s block, which he warded off by keeping a dream diary — a way that let him voluntarily write each day and examine the things that were on his mind. Regardless of his novel’s deadline, he got to write for himself on a regular basis, producing material that only he would read. It was a way of writing for himself, jotting down stray ideas, and, at the same time, staying free of the inner critic that drives so many people to abandon their projects prematurely. He needed a place to create freely, to convince himself that he was still capable of creating, regardless of what obstacles he faced daily. It also provided some distance between his work and his own thoughts — which is crucial in the creation of any work of art.
Most importantly, he knew that he could stave off creative block if he just kept going. The magic may be lost, but never gone forever — it’s just waiting to be rediscovered and used for creating something that can be shared with the world.
This article was originally published in the Summer 2016 issue of Brain World Magazine.
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