There is no legitimate reason to have a case of writer’s block. According to Hemingway, “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Nevertheless, the phenomenon is real. After all, who can forget Jack Torrance’s attempt to his cure writer’s block one winter at a remote hotel in Colorado? All work and no play made that Jack anything but a dull boy.
In his book, UCLA Social Research Professor, Mike Rose, defines writer’s block as: “the inability to begin or continue writing for reasons other than a lack of basic skill or commitment.”
He also asserts that writer’s block generally falls into one of two main categories: either motivation and distraction or writing anxiety. Perhaps surprisingly, the latter is often the simplest challenge to overcome. By applying Aristotle’s “topics of invention,” a writer can resolve most of his paralyzing anxiety and overcome writer’s block.
Topics of Invention
From the Latin, topoi or topos, we derive our English word “topic,” meaning place. From the Latin word, inventio, we derive our word “invention,” meaning inventory—what can be said about a thing. This is not necessarily “invention” in the sense of making something up. “Topics of invention” literally means “places to find things.”
Common topics of invention include definition, division, comparison, relationship, circumstance, and testimony. Special topics of invention are particularly related to classical oratory: judicial rhetoric, deliberative rhetoric, and ceremonial rhetoric. While the special topics can be helpful in writing, I’ll reserve another occasion for treating them. The common topics, however, are useful for overcoming writer’s block because they provide a framework for considering various aspects of ideas.
For example, by defining terms, one helps to set boundaries around a particular topic or idea to establish what is and what is not included in the term’s meaning. Closely related to definition are questions of division. These questions help clarify the whole as well as the constituent parts of an idea. In this piece, I started by defining “topics of invention” and then explored the constituent parts of the whole (e.g., “topics of invention” include definition, division, comparison, relationship, circumstance, and testimony; these are ways of discovering what can be said or written).
Questions of comparison are next; these explore the various similarities and differences between one idea and an other. For example, what are the differences and similarities between writer’s block and writing illiteracy (i.e., not possessing the basic skills necessary to write)?
Questions of relationship explore causes and effects or antecedent and consequence (i.e., If P, then Q). If it can be determined that one has the basic skills to write, what are the possible causes for writer’s block? Is the writer unmotivated, uninspired, distracted, paralyzed by perfectionism, or anxious about where to begin or how to organize his ideas?
Questions about circumstances explore the feasibility of an idea: Is writer’s block unlikely, possible, probable, or certain? Is overcoming writer’s block unlikely, possible, probable, or certain?
Finally, questions of testimony explore the sources of authority that bring credibility to an idea. Who has studied writer’s block? Who has written about it? Who has overcome it? Who has died from it? If the last question turns out to be “no one,” then we have learned something fundamental about the cunning nature of writer’s block.
Vomit Method
Working through these topics of invention will resolve most anxiety related to “starting writing” but it doesn’t necessarily resolve the problems of motivation or distraction. In my experience, these challenges often can be overcome by discovering what topic or idea interests the writer enough to sustain a prolonged treatment of it. For this, I recommend the vomit method—sometimes more affectionally known as “free writing.”
This method is simple and shouldn’t be overthought. The writer sets a timer for 15 minutes and writes continuously without lifting the pen (or resting fingers from the keyboard). In this exercise, one is literally vomiting every thought that comes to mind onto the page as fast as he is able.
The writer should not worry about clarity, cogency, precision, spelling or grammar. He is only concerned with continuously writing down his streams of consciousness as fast as they gush forth—until the timer goes off. Of course, if the thinking juices continue to flow without contrived heavings after the timer goes off, then by all means, continue vomiting.
In any case, what comes out and how much comes out is often surprising. As Flannery O’Connor once noted about a writer’s subject matter for crafting stories, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” In other words, there’s plenty enough material in the minds of most people who have any experience in life; it’s simply a matter of gaining access to it. Vomiting is an effective means of bringing it out into the open where it is accessible.
At this stage, the writer undoubtedly has a steamy mess on the page he can rummage through. One can now simply pick out the chunks—thoughts or big ideas that give pause—and subject them to the topics of invention where they can be transformed into a word meal others will delight in consuming.
Overcoming writer’s block does require a fair amount of intellectual work. But what has been demonstrated here, I hope, is that it is the kind of work that will bring forth unseemly words, which themselves can be shaped into a culinary delicacy and the writer into something more than a dull boy.
If this was helpful, you can find other posts where I’ve written about writing, here.
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