There is a saying. “Prevention is better than cure”---Unknown. Prevention is the best cure. We live in a world where diseases, viruses, etc pop up and the doctors are always pressured to find a cure. For example, the swine flu emerged from out of thin air and it is already being labeled an epidemic. Sometimes medication is found and vice versa.
Unfortunately, writer’s block cannot be prevented, but it can be treated. What is writer’s block? This is when a writer has difficulty thinking of the next word or line to write. Writer’s block can last for more than a week, a month, even a year if you are not careful. It causes writers to think to deeply about the subject they are writing and it leads to frustration. Hours and hours of pondering can be very time consuming.
Musicians often struggle with this harder than writers. The reason why they struggle more is because lyrics contain rhyme, rhythm and the melody. The thought process is different. Some musicians turn to drug substances under the assumption that it can cure their writer’s block. This method might cure writer’s block once or twice. Eventually, the more drugs one uses will gradually destroy their creative process. This explains why some musicians loose their inspiration and forget what made them good in the first place. They become more about the drugs than the music itself.
Composers like Ludwig Van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had to be impacted by this the hardest. The reason being that writing music using musical notes is not a walk in the park. Unconsciously, one would have to know what the notes sound like without playing it on the piano. Music cannot be arranged in any way. There is a system that musicians follow to make it work. Imagine how big of a block it was for these men. In the end, they wrote a lot of musical scores that you still hear today.
Writer’s block can happen to anybody holding a pen. I bet William Shakespeare encountered a few blocks during his successful career. One would disagree with me, but the human mind is not immune to this block. If I remember correctly, Shakespeare was human. A legend who made literature what it is today. He wrote a lot of plays and stories. He was a head of his time, but it wasn’t a walk in the park for him either.
So how does one cure this infamous plague? Simple answer, you don’t. You have to walk away from what you are doing and come back to it. Turn on the television or go out for a few hours. Leaving your work and coming back is the best way to treat writer's block. The reason is because hearing a word or phrase can revive your thought process. Seeing something can also revive it. Inspiration is the key. Inspiration has a fuel tank. Sometimes the tank will get empty, and you need to refill it to keep going.
Instead of wasting time thinking about what to say next, let it come to you. What do you do when you approach a road block? You either u-turn or go around it. This is the same thing with writer's block. You can't break the block no matter how hard you think. Just come back to it later that day or week. Doing this allows your mind to breathe and inspiration will find you even when you are not looking for it. Plus, when you go back over your work after a while, you can find errors or fix any loose ends. This is the only way to treat writer's block.
