Where does writer's block come from?

As a writer I would have to say that I think not writing is the natural state. I would have to ask where writer’s nonblock comes from.

I don’t know but I wish it would go back there.

From what I have experienced, writer’s block comes from a variety of sources, depending on you, your project and your life. Some factors include simply running out of ideas, physical illness, depression, the end of a relationship, financial pressures, a sense of failure, working on a badly conceived project, working too fast, working in a style or genre that doesn’t naturally resonate with the writer, or feeling intimidated by a previous big success. Sometimes all it means is that you need to write something else for a while.

Apparently, “the writer and neurologist Alice W. Flaherty has argued that literary creativity is a function of specific areas of the brain, and that block may be the result of brain activity being disrupted in those areas.” (per Wikipedia).

I think it comes from a variety of places, all conflicting with one another: having several conflicting ideas about what to write, not being sure how to begin or which idea logically precedes another, procrastination and laziness.

From the Literary Quarry.

Ummmmm….....
(beats head against keyboard)

My writers block either comes from a point in the story that has conflicting paths, or characters don’t behave in the way I want them to, nothing worse than characters I create suddenly developing a damn mind of their own! or a sudden lack of creative juices.

I even have a name for it, I call it blowing a hole in the crankcase of creativity.

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@ththththth Welcome to Fluther. Lurve.

Either I’ve never had it, or I have it all the time. I can’t write on my own. I’ve started a hundred things, and never spent more than a couple days on any of them. Most only one day. Fluther is good for me because I can write a few paragraphs in response to ten different things, and it’s done. Not that any stuff I write here is worth anything anywhere else besides here.

On the other hand, if I do not have writers block, it’s because I let the movie (story) unfold inside my head. I just picture what’s happening, and something always happens next. I don’t even have to think about it. It’s when I plan or try to make something happen that shit gets in the way.

I say let the characters take over. Then you don’t have to work at all. Just follow them around. I say don’t try to make things happen. The story will fight you to a standstill. Let it go where it wants to.

I was leading some improvisational dance over the weekend. I was leading the workshop and the musicians. I really, really wanted to step things up and get out of this deep interior space everyone had gone into, and I couldn’t do it. It was like trying to get a balky horse to trot. You kick it and finally it goes into a trot, and then you relax, and the horse is walking again.

Sometimes you gotta give in to the theme of the evening. Or of your writing, if that’s what you’re doing.

What I want to know is can we bottle it, and somehow give it to dalepetrie?

Sobriety