So, you have to write this paper. Or this letter. This email. This essay. This story. This something. But you can’t. You’re stuck. 

In chapter 24 of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance he mentions this thing called “stuckness”. What he means is writer’s block. That brick wall that you’re bashing your head against. The blank page or screen. Staring into the abyss. It is emptiness. Darkness. The opposite of writing is not writing.

The question is how to you beat it? How do you break free?

Today let’s talk about writer’s block. What is it, where does it come from and how to get unstuck according to Robert Pirsig and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Currently, I am on Chapter 14 of my story FDR and I’m stuck. After five days of not writing, the pressure is building. I need to write this story. I hate being stuck. I want to write, but I can’t. Is it me? Is it my story? What’s the deal?

What am I supposed to do to get unstuck?

There is hope. Pirsig tells us that “no matter how hard you try to hang on to it, this stuckness is bound to disappear. Your mind will naturally and freely move toward a solution.”

Terry Pratchett also reminds us:

“It is hard to understand nothing, but the multiverse is full of it. Nothing travels everywhere, always ahead of something, and in the great cloud of unknowing nothing yearns to become something, to break out, to move, to feel, to change, to dance, and to experience – in short, to be something.”

from the beginning of Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

So, don’t panic, I tell myself. You’ve been here before. (Many times. Queue the music ‘hello darkness my old friend’) You are not alone in this fight.

I was not expecting to find writing advice in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He wrote the travelog/philosophy book in 1974. I was reading it for the semi-fictional travelog part of their trip. It thrilled me when they visited Montana and places I was so familiar with. The philosophical discourse was also interesting, especially looking at it from a historical perspective. In the book Pirsig ruminates on technology, and I couldn’t help thinking — oh, you have no idea the way technology is going to change everything.

At one point in the book Pirsig is talking to his son Chris about how to write a letter home. Chris doesn’t know what to write. He is frustrated and surly. (I can totally relate.)

He tells Chris, “Your mind gets stuck when you’re trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force the words to come … You’re trying to think of what to say and what to say first at the same time.”

His advice? “Make a list of what you want to say in any old order.”

Put words on the page. Anything. If your problem is not writing, then the solution is to write anything. That’s easy to say and harder to do. Because there is nothing easier than not writing. I’m very skilled at not writing. The hard part is always the writing.

So, there’s your solution. You’re stuck? Well, too bad. Go have your pity party somewhere else. Start writing anyway.

This is terrible advice. I’m right here. I’m writing this blog post instead of my story. I don’t feel so hopeful anymore. But, let’s continue this discussion and see what other advice Pirsig offers us. Perhaps if we understand the stuckness we can escape from it.

Setbacks and Hangups

Somewhere around chapter 26, Pirsig begins a discussion of ‘gumption’ and its importance within motorcycle maintenance. Gumption is the motivation you need, the interest, your enthusiasm toward the project, the dedication you feel, the focus you must have to be successful. Losing your gumption is going ruin your chances at moving forward. Pirsig discusses the various ways you might lose it, or how you can get stuck. The interesting thing is how easily these apply to writing.

So, I ask myself. Self, why aren’t you writing? What is the problem?

Well, if you want to get philosophical about it, let’s consider where the problem is coming from.

Setbacks

You’re going to face setbacks. There is a problem with your motorcycle and you don’t know how to fix it. You’re stuck and what’s the next step to take? Is something about in the room making it difficult for you to concentrate? Is there noise outside the window, down the hall, or upstairs where your roommate is watching TV?

Setbacks, according to Pirsig are external problems.

In writing this could means a problem in the plot. The characters acting, or saying something that doesn’t fit. Your outline is going in the wrong direction. (Do you even have an outline, or are you panthering like a black panther?) Or perhaps you’ve given your characters a challenge, and put them in a really difficult spot (They’re trapped, facing down a monster, in the middle of a fight, or a situation) and you have no idea how to get them out of the spot. Something is wrong within the story.

Or a setback could be as simple as you haven’t saved or backed up your story and you lose a bunch of progress on it when your computer dies. Now you have to write that chapter all over again.

Or a setback could be your neighbors moving, or the baby crying and the noise is making you crazy. Maybe you need to go to a coffee shop to finish working.

These are setbacks preventing you from writing.

Hangups

So, there’s the external, and then you have your personal hangups. Pirsig describes these as the internal problems and he focuses on four possible ‘traps’.

• Ego
• Anxiety
• Boredom
• Impatience

By ego, Pirsig meant the inability to admit you’ve made a mistake during your maintenance. Your pride, your ego won’t let you acknowledge there’s something wrong, and this is holding you back from actually making progress. In writing, not wanting to admit you’ve goofed up or that something is wrong will get you in trouble. The outline that you worked so hard on isn’t working and admitting that is the first step so you can fix it and get back to the writing.

Anxiety is a trap where you can’t do anything because “you’re so sure you’ll do everything wrong that you’re afraid to do anything at all”. He warns that this causes excess fussiness with your motorcycle. The fear of failure is keeping you from acting.

In writing this one catches me all the time. I call it the editor mindset. I want to write the perfect description, every word exactly right and I try one, delete, try another, delete. Then, I’m busy looking up words in my thesaurus. I check facts on Wikipedia. (Don’t dive into the internet black hole if you can help yourself.) Nothing works. It sounds stupid. It’s so badly written. And suddenly, I’m afraid to write anything at all.

Boredom – If you’re so bored that you can’t focus, then what’s the point of working on your motorcycle. Or your story. Or anything. Let’s just go watch YouTube.

If your story is boring to you, then it’ll be boring to your readers. If you’re not interested how do you make yourself interested? Nothing is worse than a boring story – no one wants to read it. Is it something in the story that’s boring you? Can you add a little spice, or drama or make the stakes higher? Introduce a new character? An explosion?

Or do you need to take a break? Go work on something else for a while. Take a walk. Sleep. Drink some coffee to wake yourself up and get your energy back.

Impatience, Pirsig warns, is very deadly when you’re working on your motorcycle. You need to allow plenty of time for your project, especially when you’re working on a part you’ve never taken apart before. You could mess up, or get frustrated and then angry and then something gets broken.

Writing a novel takes time. Set certain goals for yourself, but if you make those goals impossible, then you will fail.

I try to write 1000 words a day. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could write 2000 words a day! I would love to be able to write that many words a day. (I know I can’t. I don’t have the experience, I’m not that fast of a writer, whatever the reason.)

But hypothetically, if that was my goal — then every day I’d fail. With constant failure I’d quickly lose faith in my writing. Eventually, I might not want to write anything. I’d feel irritated, ready to quit before I even tried. What’s the point of writing even 100 words? Why bother writing at all? Those kinds of thoughts kill my enthusiasm. My gumption. So, I try to keep my goals reasonable, and attainable. I write 1000 words a day, it usually takes about 2 hours. I try for 25 minute sessions with 5 minute breaks in between. This lets me focus on what’s immediately in front of me, so eventually I’ll have a finished story. Step by step, word by word I keep writing until I get to the end.

That’s the ideal. The reality is I get stuck sometimes. 

Next up? Well, it looks like I’m still in Chapter 14, huh? They’re trapped in one of those giant enclosed Ferris Wheels – how do they get out? I still have no idea. In fact, I’m starting to think they can’t escape, so I’m just going to let them ride it around to where the bad guys are waiting for them. Or maybe I can have them sky dive off or something. Ha, flying carpets would be fun.

I’ll get back to you on how this goes.