On Writer's Block, Perfectionism, NaNoWriMo ... and Blogging

Heading into this summer, I expected to write a lot. I was eager to make headway on both a nonfiction essay collection and a speculative fiction duology—and to write several posts for this blog. Instead, I faced an unprecedented case of writer's block.

"Ack! What's that?" the chorus reverberates, echoing a recent trend to deny that such a condition exists. To which I reply, "Please don't torture me with semantics!"

Writer's block, creative standstill, artistic barrier, mental block, imagination drought, or just plain burnout ... whatever you choose to call this frustrating state of mind, I know what it feels like to stare at a screen and experience a tangle of thoughts, none of which can find a path from my brain to my fingers. Sure, there are plenty of ways to push through this feeling: like writing prompts, freewriting, changing locations, or trying a good old-fashioned notepad. But sometimes these techniques only move the needle slightly, and it feels nearly impossible to let my words flow freely.

The more I struggled to write this summer, the harder it was to try. Fortunately, I've now eased back into some semblance of a writing rhythm, and I'm beginning to understand that my stuckness was due to a combination of overwhelm and perfectionism. To start with, my family completely uprooted ourselves when we chose to move from the small town we'd called home for twenty years to the nearby metropolis of Vancouver. I spent much of the summer sorting and packing stuff, working on minor renovations, and figuring out where we were going to live this fall. But despite the logistical and emotional challenges the move presented, I now realize the main thing standing between me and my words was me. That is: my own mounting sense of writerly perfectionism.

For years I considered myself a prolific writer. Much of what I wrote was not worth publishing, and most of it needed multiple rewrites before I would share it with the world. I never shied away from this iterative process, and until recently I fully embraced the notion of a "shitty first draft" (followed by subsequent drafts, each of which became a little less shitty). But somewhere during my journey from a literary novice to a creative writing grad student—somewhere in the heart of my mid-life return to university—I began to question every word I wrote. I went from stream-of-consciousness braindumps to self-conscious wordsmithing. And I let the words of others—like Canadian writing legend Alistair MacLeod or my first writing professor, John Vigna—reverberate in my head, rather than letting my words flow to the page.

Alistair MacLeod wrote the first book that I ever considered to be a truly great read: No Great Mischief. I was fortunate to see him speak at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts in 2013, shortly before he passed away in April 2014. I recall being inspired by his meticulous approach to planning a story, but also a bit thrown by his rejection of the "pantser" (seat-of-your-pants) style that I employed. I'd heard enough other well-regarded writers endorse the pantser approach that I took MacLeod's comment with a grain of salt, then carried on as a pantser through two novels and the first draft of a third. Along the way, I learned about the value of rewriting, and about embracing feedback from editors and readers.

I didn't question the panster approach again until I took two undergraduate fiction-writing courses at the University of British Columbia from John Vigna. John taught me a great deal about writing craft—about topics like conflict, subtext, emotional arcs, and active grammar. But my most memorable takeaway from John's courses may have been the day he introduced our class to the four stages of competence—a theory that American film theorist and moviemaker Noël Burch introduced in the 1970s, which states that there are four stages to learning anything:

1. Unconscious incompetence: when we lack the skills or understanding to do something and don't even realize the deficit in our skillset;
2. Conscious incompetence: when we understand that we are incapable of, or lack understanding about, a skill or subject;
3. Conscious competence: when we understand something, but it requires concentration to perform or articulate what we know; and
4. Unconscious competence: when we've developed sufficient skill or knowledge about something to do it naturally, without significant concentration.

This theory prompted me to pay closer attention to my own deficits, and to gradually move some of my writing skills up the ladder. I began to recognize weaknesses or habits that I hadn't previously noticed, like my frequent use of dialogue tags followed by progressive verbs (e.g. "he said, eating a bagel"—which I might now replace with "He chewed his bagel"). I also honed skills that were raw or underdeveloped, like identifying and developing the conflict within each scene, particularly through the use of dialogue subtext. At the same time, my growing knowledge of my deficits began to undermine my creativity, and to bring out a latent perfectionism that had been masked by my naivety as a writer.

I know so much more about literature than I understood at the start of my mid-life academic journey. I've honed valuable skills, but I've also grown more critical of my own work. Not only do I now want to rewrite both of my published novels; I've also developed a tendency to file away drafts of my stories as "not good enough"—complete with copious notes about how much editing they require—rather than submitting them to publishers and trusting that editors will see the potential in my work.

When it comes to spilling our minds and hearts onto the page, there is something to be said for self-restraint. Lord knows there's enough mediocre content in the world. I also believe that editors, instructors and mentors offer tremendous value—so much so that I aspire to join their ranks. But when we subject our words to critique too early in the process—especially when we allow our own inner critic to filter our writing before it reaches the page—we risk losing passages that are raw, unfiltered, perhaps even profound. It is these sorts of passages—these unconscious ramblings—that can often become the best part of a work ... if we only choose to let them out of our heads.

I certainly don't question the writerly wisdom of the late, great Alistair MacLeod. In fact, I now believe that he wasn't trying to quell creativity at all. He was merely stating—and rightly so—that to create a great story, a writer needs to understand where it's going. I also value the many lessons I learned from John Vigna, who challenged me to refine my writing and to make conscious decisions about every word on the page. I've had several great teachers since John first opened my eyes to the four stages of learning, and I have no doubt that I'm a far better writer for the education I've received. But somewhere in all this learning, I've perhaps sanded off a hint of what caused me to write in the first place: the feeling that I had something to say, and a unique voice with which to say it.

Sometimes we just need to let our words pour themselves onto the page, which brings me to NaNoWriMo (otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNo for short). This global event, held each November, invites writers to let their stories out, with a focus on quantity over quality. The most common NaNo goal is to write at least 50,000 words of a novel (something akin to a "shitty first draft") without allowing oneself to become bogged down in editing.

I've tried NaNo once, back in 2020, when I managed to put down 40,000 mediocre words toward my speculative fiction duology. I've since thrown away at least half those words, but the experiment helped me to learn a great deal about my characters and their motives, to build a substantial portion of my near-future world, and to test-drive multiple threads of a convoluted plot. Writing many scenes, set in several locations with plenty of character interactions, gave me an abundance of ideas for refining (and completing!) my story.

This month, I'm using NaNoWriMo to blow away any remaining shreds of writer's block. I'm aiming to write 50,000 words—an average of 1,667 words per day—without tying that goal to a specific project. On any given day, I might write a draft chapter of my nonfiction book, some fresh content for my duology, an essay for a grad school course, or—you guessed it—a blog post. I won't overuse this channel, but I am going to write with less inhibition than usual, posting raw content rather than waiting for perfect ideas to form perfectly in my head (which, it turns out, rarely happens). Rather than trying too hard to produce fully formed essays, I'll be returning to my original goal for this blog: to share thoughts before they're fully formed, as a sort of canvas for testing new ideas.

I hope you find some value in my NaNoWriMo musings. I'd be even happier if you feel inspired enough to contribute a few of your own words in the comments section below. (Raw and unfiltered thoughts are welcome, of course!) I'd love to turn this imperfect monologue into an imperfect conversation!