Category Archives: Common Writing Block Problems

Common problems with blocking and procrastination

Writing Blocks and Orchid Screenplays: How Do You Do Something You Don’t Know How to Do?

To grow and develop as a writer you need to face challenges and problems that are new. This means plunging into projects that you do not have a clear road map for, and somehow trusting that you will find your … Continue reading

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Famous writers, Mental health and writing blocks, PhD and dissertation/thesis writing issues, Tips for overcoming writer's block and procrastination | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

FDR, writing avoidance and the lizard brain

Sometimes when I contemplate facing a writing task I feel an agonizing resistance in my guts, without really understanding why. The most striking experience of this sort occurs when I am doing taxes or writing checks to pay bills. My … Continue reading

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Feedback and criticism, Tips for overcoming writer's block and procrastination | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

I’ll be teaching a Continuing Studies class at Stanford University, beginning September 24th

I am pleased to announce I will be teaching a five-week class through Stanford’s Continuing Education Program beginning on Monday, September 24, 2012 entitled: “Overcoming Writing Blocks and Procrastination.”  Registration begins in late August. This class will be limited to 30 participants … Continue reading

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Feedback and criticism, PhD and dissertation/thesis writing issues, The Blocked Writer's Book of the Dead, Tips for overcoming writer's block and procrastination | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

TV interview with David Rasch about Writer’s Block and “The Blocked Writer’s Book of the Dead”

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Feedback and criticism, The Blocked Writer's Book of the Dead, Tips for overcoming writer's block and procrastination | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

How success can mess with your writing routine

Success is challenging to some writers, and can actually lead to writing blocks of various sorts. You’d think that experiencing public acclaim, publication, best seller sales numbers or winning awards would feed a writer’s confidence and spur him or her … Continue reading

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Tips for overcoming writer's block and procrastination | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Allen Ginsberg Howl-ed his way out of writer’s block

During a period in the mid 1950′s, after he had moved to San Francisco, poet Allen Ginsberg suffered from a year-long writer’s block. He was profoundly unhappy working at an ad agency, and wasn’t writing. Finally, his therapist recommended that he do … Continue reading

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Famous writers, Mental health and writing blocks, Tips for overcoming writer's block and procrastination | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Czech supermodel annihilates Magnum PI’s gnarly writer’s block in “Her Alibi”

In certain rare instances, an intractable, pernicious writing block that torments a writer is actually serving a greater good. Like sparing the reading nation from enduring additional books from an author who might better have left them unwritten. Tom Selleck … Continue reading

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Famous writers | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Watching New HD Flat Screen vs Writing Something

I just purchased a new gi-normous TV. I really had to get a new one, evidently, because we rearranged the furniture. What else could anyone do? Unfortunately, the quality is significantly better than the old TV. There is now a … Continue reading

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Tips for overcoming writer's block and procrastination | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Multiple dead albatrosses hanging around multiple writers’ necks in the movie “Albatross”

Samuel Coleridge is credited with introducing the phrase  ”having an albatross around your neck” into the vernacular with his poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Interestingly, Coleridge was also one of the first documented cases of severe writer’s block. Coincidence? I … Continue reading

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Famous writers, Tips for overcoming writer's block and procrastination | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A violent, philandering, misogynistic Sean Connery slugs his way out of writer’s block in “A Fine Madness”

One important lesson you learn by watching A Fine Madness , is that you better not mess around with your psychiatrist’s wife. In his portrayal of a wild, rage-aholic, blocked poet named Samson,  Sean Connery does just this (in a hot tub … Continue reading

Posted in Common Writing Block Problems, Famous writers, Tips for overcoming writer's block and procrastination | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments