A Story Without Words.

It's happened to all of us.  From the lowly writer of an essay for class to the finest novelists the world has known, we've all shared a common experience.  Writer's block.

Now, I consider writer's block to be a separate entity from the lack of a muse- in fact, I consider it to be just the opposite.  In my mind, writer's block is about having an idea but being unable to articulate it.  My problems range between the two (it seems block strikes me more often in prose, while academic writing leaves my mind startlingly blank of ideas).

But recognizing that you have writer's block, however one may define it, and getting past it are two entirely different things.  Typically my methods involve distraction and procrastination, or the more innocent sounding "I'll give my mind a break and come back to it later".  Such efforts have been more effected in some cases than in others.  But the more I get into writing (and subsequently reading about writing), the more interesting ideas I find.  Take this thought by author Orson Scott Card, for example:

“Writer’s block is my unconscious mind telling me that something I’ve just written is either unbelievable or unimportant to me, and I solve it by going back and reinventing some part of what I’ve already written so that when I write it again, it is believable and interesting to me. Then I can go on. Writer’s block is never solved by forcing oneself to “write through it,” because you haven’t solved the problem that caused your unconscious mind to rebel against the story, so it still won’t work – for you or for the reader.” 

 It's not a way I've ever approached tackling writer's block, but certainly one I'm willing to try.