How to Overcome Writer’s Block: A Lesson from Augusten Burroughs | Big Think

How to Overcome Writer’s Block

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Writing is a "corrosive acid," says memoirist and novelist Augusten Burroughs, but in the best possible way. Blockages can be dissolved by writing — subconscious creative blockages — which puts our creative endeavors and the persistent menace of writer's block into a new context.

The worst possible solution to writer's block is to put your writing aside until the block "passes." Blockages occur for a reason, says Burroughs, and that reason isn't likely to go away if you just sit on your hands.

By actually writing about your writer's block, you'll uncover the real reasons you're unable to write. In Burroughs's case, he had predetermined what he wanted to write about, and ignored what was bubbling up inside him — he put his publisher's interests ahead of his own interests as a writer. In hindsight, it was a mistake, but one he uncovered by writing about his writer's block.

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AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS:

Augusten Burroughs was born Christopher Richter Robison in Pittsburgh, PA on October 23, 1965 and raised in Western Massachusetts. Augusten's parents struggled with alcoholism and mental illness and they separated when he was twelve. Augusten stopped attending school and his parents' longtime psychiatrist became his legal guardian. At seventeen, he moved to the Boston area and graduated from Control Data Institute with a diploma in Computer Programming and System's Analysis and Design but never worked in the technology industry. Instead he moved to San Francisco and at 19 became the youngest copywriter in the city. His work attracted national acclaim and in 1989 he was invited by Ogilvy & Mather, New York, to work on their flagship American Express account. Augusten found great success in the Manhattan advertising community, eventually working for many of the top agencies where he created global ad campaigns for worldwide brands. Almost eighteen years after accepting his first advertising job, Augusten left the industry to pursue a career as an author. Two years later, his 2002 memoir, Running with Scissors, became a publishing phenomenon, spending over three consecutive years on the NYT bestseller list. It was made into a movie starring Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin. All of Augusten's subsequent books — Dry, Magical Thinking, Possible Side Effects, A Wolf at the Table, You Better Not Cry & This is How — were instant NYT bestsellers. In 2013, Augusten married his literary agent and best friend, Christopher Schelling, received a Lambda Literary Award, and was honored with a Doctorate of Letters from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Augusten is also a self-taught gemologist with a special interest in jade. He collects and sells vintage and estate jewelry, photographs people, and recently directed his first music video. Augusten and his husband Christopher live in a 200 year old house in rural Connecticut with their three dogs.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Augusten Burroughs: Is there such a thing as writer’s block? There are some writers who don’t have writer’s block and there are some writers who definitely do have writer’s block. In my experience the solution, the cure for writer’s block is to write about the writer’s block because you need to dissolve it. Writing can be like a corrosive acid. If you’re tense and you just don’t know why and you’re just in a bad mood and you’re just angry – if you write about that feeling what does it feel like? It feels like chopping at something made out of ice. It just feels very much like you will eventually get to why you’re angry. You’ll dissolve the feelings. You’ll corrode the sort of feelings around that anger and get to the reason why. So with writer’s block if you write about the writer’s block you’ll understand what it’s about. I think, you know, for some writers it’s like a symptom of your truest instincts, your very best nature trying to course correct you, you know. Trying to tell you you really don’t want to go that way. It’s trying to sort of say wait, something isn’t right about what we’re doing here. It’s your sort of creative unconscious or subconscious way of saying to you stop, stop, stop. There’s a reason why there’s a block. It’s just like a roadblock. The road is blocked for a reason it’s, you know, usually not just arbitrarily blocked. A road is not usually blocked because someone decided you know what, I think I’m going to block this road today.

So you’ve got to kind of trust that that same basic .......

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