When Creativity is Blocked

What, Why, How to Help

Hey Wattpad,

Am I suddenly an expert on writer's block? No.

Did I do a research paper on it for a college class? Yup.

What you are about to read began as a paper for one of my classes on what writer's block is, why it can happen, and what to do about it. Some of the stuff I found is pretty interesting so I decided to share my findings with the world.

You'll notice some citations and such in here and they refer to where I got this information in case you're curious.  This paper was also not originally written for a general audience... But I tried to tone down my academic voice and make it more accessible. It's possible I did not 100% succeed. Let me know if you have any questions!

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When Creativity is Blocked

The Why

Other writers on Wattpad will sometimes tell me, "Hey. I have writer's block. Can you give me any tips?" And I can't. Before this project, when I ran into writer's block myself, I would not know how to address it. Having writer's block would be a frustrating experience for me, thus I decided to find out what creative blocks are, what causes them, and how to move past them.

To understand the problem of creative blocks, I conducted an investigation of the available psychological literature on this topic, which was abundant. The literature included several case studies and experiments that delved into helping people overcome creative blocks. Much of the literature explained that there are common psychological reasons that people experience creative blocks.

According to psychologist Robert Boice, "The problem is that successful students have not actually learned how to write" (Boice, 1993).  Besides this lack of tacit knowledge, there can be motivational obstacles to writing. The most commonly mentioned causes of blocking, as Boice discovered, are censors, fear of failure, perfectionism, early experience, and procrastination, which are also cited by several other scholars.

Censors are the imaginary critics inside a person's mind that will reject a project or an idea for a project before it can be written or actually turned into something. This is problematic because it could potentially lead to rejecting a good idea.

Along with this, is the fear of failure, which could stem from two main fears: the fear of not being good enough, or the fear of being successful. Either way, a fear of failure results from being evaluated by others.

Third is perfectionism, which can stem from setting impossible standards due to extreme goals. Some aspects of perfectionism can be helpful for writers, such as having high personal standards and being very organized. Overall however, being concerned over mistakes, doubts about actions, and being attune to parental expectations and criticisms can be unhelpful to writers and contribute to blockages (Boice, 1993).

Early experience with writing, such as the effects of classroom traumas or praises can greatly affect the writer a child grows into. A case study by Margaret M. Voss (2011) specifically examined how a child overcame writer's block when a teacher helped to build his self-belief in his writing. The study focuses on a 5th grader, Jed, who Voss describes as "A kid who is bundle of energy, is in perpetual motion, and who always sets his own agenda." Jed's teacher suspected that he was an intelligent child, but after he barley passed the state test in writing as a 4th grader, Jed resisted writing because he did not want to make a mistake. In an interview with Jed's parents, Voss learned that Jed did not learn to read until he was in the second grade. This made him believe he was stupid and incited a long-standing worry for him about literacy, where if reading or writing something were hard for him, he would not do it. Voss studied Jed through the year as the teacher tried to make him more comfortable with writing. His teacher told Jed to think about his inner critic as he writes, and if it is bothering him, he should tell his inner critic that it is "dark and dreary and wrong." Through the year, as he had a supportive classroom environment and a good relationship with his teacher, his confidence in his writing grew until he was happy to write and turn writing assignments in on time (Voss, 2011).