Writer's Block as Liminal Space
One of the gifts of age, for me, has been in becoming less didactic, more tolerant… and certainly less prescriptive. And thank goodness for that! But not so very long ago I was telling students, clients, and audiences alike that I didn’t believe in “writer’s block.” I (probably sneeringly) said that it’s what people use as an excuse to give up when the ideas or words won’t flow.
If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that words like those come back to haunt you. Every. Single. Time.
And maybe we do use it as an excuse—but that doesn’t mean it’s any less real. Though I have a slightly different take than I used to on what it does and what it means.
In my novels and my poetry alike, I tend to come back over and over again to the theme of liminal spaces. (My own favorite author, Phil Rickman, uses the liminality inherent in borderlands, both physical and metaphysical, as plot devices and atmospheric backgrounds to great effect; I’m merely taking a page from his myriad books.)
These are spaces between the “what was” and the “what will be.” Liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in some sort of middle stage. It is transitional and transformative; it halts you on the threshold and forces you to take stock, to take a breath, to take a chance.
Think of the physical spaces where we experience liminality: airports and train stations, hotel lobbies, waiting rooms, stairwells and corridors, borders, places of exile. There’s a lot of discomfort inherent in these places—they point to impermanence, insecurity, dread of the unknown. We place doors and thresholds in buildings to close off their liminality, to define our rooms of living. We create rituals and rites of passage for our life transitions to declare new beginnings and give closure to what we are leaving, but we’re all eager to hurry through them. Liminal spaces are places we don’t want to stay—and, in fact, we will often make bad decisions or hasten events in order to ease the fear and discomfort we’re feeling.
Instead of seeing it as an excuse or a curse, it might be helpful to see writer’s block as a liminal space. Something caused us to stop writing—out of ideas, out of time, out of flow, out of inspiration—and we’re finding it difficult to re-enter the zone, to reconnect with the love. It’s uncomfortable. It’s scary. It’s challenging us to confront fundamental beliefs and fundamental truths—our sense of our own competence, talent, ability, value. What if I cannot ever write again? What if I never have another great idea? Where will my next inspiration come from? Am I writing what really matters?
I’ve never advocated stepping away from your writing practice; I don’t think that’s particularly helpful. But what if you could integrate this liminal space into your practice? What if you could see writer’s block as a threshold moment, uncomfortable in itself, but daring you to identify and move toward the next chapter, the next project, the next poem, the next words?
I think that’s something worth exploring.
In one of my favorite songs, the late Dave Carter writes, “And should you glimpse my wandering form out on the borderline/between death and resurrection and the council of the pines…” I think “wandering” is a good image to go with the liminality of Carter’s “borderline” and our own writer’s block. We may experience it as a feeling of being stuck or out of control, but if you start to see it as a dynamic space, then you can begin to absorb what it can teach you. It’s in between… but you can still wander there. You can explore. You can try something out, experiment, color outside the lines.
But to do that, you have to take the time. You have to take a deep breath and dare to plunge into it instead of just waiting it out. You have to allow the discomfort to transform your ideas, your words, even the direction of your writing. You have to live inside the uncertainty, experience every moment of ambiguity with openness and humility.
In a TED Talk on liminal spaces, Sarah Thomas says, “The benefit of sudden transport into unfamiliar places affords us the urgent opportunity to re-orient, to learn, to rise, and even transform.”
I wish you all that transformation.