Goodreads asked Donald N.S. Unger:

How do you deal with writer’s block?

Donald N.S. Unger Obviously, people get “blocked.” But, for the most part, I don’t think we really write “voluntarily,” any more than we eat, sleep, or excrete voluntarily. I’m talking about myself here first and foremost, so I don’t mean this to be nasty, glib, or dismissive. But, really? For a slice of people, we can’t NOT write. And I suspect this is true of “artists” of all stripes. Maybe that’s music or the visual arts; maybe it’s gardening or—for some—the practice of medicine (why do they name some structures “Medical Arts” buildings, after all?).

I’d guess the vast majority of humans get “stuff stuck in their heads.”

For some of us, the “noise” of what gets stuck there just needs to be expelled.

It’s “published,” whatever we think that means this week? Maybe . . .
Anyone outside our immediate circle of friends and family (and even there . . .) notices or cares? Not the best bet to make.

It’s profitable? Hah!

But we need to get it out.

I understand, of course, that there’s also “working on deadline,” whether that’s a poem, a short story, a newspaper piece, or your doctoral dissertation. In those situations I think our greatest enemy is our own egocentric conviction that “if I only wait . . . forever, I’ll be able to get it perfect,” which almost always translates into getting nothing done--ever.

I doubt that "Dare to be Bad!" is a slogan likely to be stolen any time soon. But I think misguided perfectionism is one of the primary building blocks of writer's block. And . . . we put it in place ourselves.

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