Hitting the nail on the head

For the past couple weeks I’ve been looking at some of the baseline causes for writer’s block: a lack of focus, negative emotions, or self-talk. For a few decades I thought I would find a solution to my writer’s block at that level.

These things have an effect, and there are ways I can improve focus, build a positive experience, and stop beating myself up. But I didn’t start beating writer’s block until I started fixing my process. As I fixed my process, the focus, emotions, and self-talk became easier to deal with.

Cults of Personality

I’m not really a fan of personality tests like Myers-Briggs, CliftonStrengths, or Enneagrams. They’re products, not science. And they promote the idea that people have fixed traits. Even if they don’t mean to, people read them this way.

Do writer’s love to identify with their writing process? Boy, do they ever! And right now, CliftonStrengths is working its way into the writing community.

But here’s a little secret. Every writer uses the same basic set of tools.

There are some differences in the particular tools in a particular writer’s mental toolbox, and differences in how well they use those tools. These differences – along with random chance – lead to different writers developing different writing processes.

If those processes work for them, no problem. But sometimes there’s a mismatch between what the writer wants to write and what they’re capable of doing with the process they’re using. In those cases, they can either change their expectations, or change their process. CliftonStrengths would tell them to lean into their strengths. And that may be the answer for some people. But there is another path. They can do the hard work to retrain their brain.

Parable of the Sawyer

Let’s say a young girl watches her grandfather in his wood shop, and she starts helping him out. She tries to use the saw and that goes well. But when she tries the hammer, she misses the nail, hits it askew, taps it too lightly, and finally smacks her thumb. She throws down the hammer and sulks in a corner.

Her grandfather could say, well, I guess your more of a sawyer than a hammerer. And she decides to become a lumberjack.

Or, he could line up some nails on a piece of scrap wood and have her practice until she either gets good enough to hit a nail on the head or she loses interest altogether.

Or grandpa could realize that her issue is with her hand-eye coordination. He could play ping-pong with her, and seeing how much she loves piano, buy her a small xylophone. He could challenge her to a Whack-A-Mole contest. And then, he could ask her to try hammering nails again. This time, she’s much better at it and she grows up to love woodworking.

Same thing for writers. If they understand their tools and their uses, they can change their process to suit their needs. This may require them to develop capacities and skills in areas where they don’t feel capable. This can be a painful process. But, there are also ways to target the specific mental pathways in ways that will transfer to writing.