This excellent article presents a very interesting – and new – way of regarding that old bad boy of writing – Writers Block.
by Alexander Chee
Ideal with writers’ block several times a year, usually in the form of other people’s writers’ block. Specifically, I find myself every year with a few students trying and failing to write their stories for class. Teaching creative writing inside of a liberal arts institution means putting creativity on a clock — the quarter or semester — and over the 25 years I’ve been teaching writing, I’ve learned my blocked students are usually high-achieving young people who are used to being able to power their way through a paper, get the answers, get the grade and move on. Fiction writing doesn’t really work that way.
That said, we know clocks can work. To wit: the number of people who say they thrive on a deadline.