I am new around here and I would have to imagine this topic has been discussed, but I have to throw it out there anyway: I occasionally suffer writer's block of varying degrees of severity, and reading Ray has always been a sure fire way of shaking off that mental impotence...

Ray has claimed there is no such thing as writer's block, but I loved it in one of his books, either "Death is a Lonely Business" or "A Graveyard for Lunatics" when he talked about the writer main character going through "Dry Spell, Arizona." It makes me feel better to think about.

Hey Dandelion! It's almost like Instant Messaging!

Dryspell,Arizona is in Death is a Lonely Business.

Writer's block is very real, but maybe one should call it writer's fatigue or sluggishness.

There may be almost as many reasons for writer's block as there are writers, and maybe Ray didn't really say there was no such thing in those words. I don't have the quote in front of me, and, if I did, there's a good chance he'd say I misunderstood his meaning by it.

Writers block? Don't really believe in it. I think sometimes we dry up, a number of reasons is that we don't read enough of anything or just go out and participate in life. We all have dry spells.

I once ran into the wall.
It happened after I took a completed manuscript and dumped it into a garbage can outside of Las Vegas. I had a whim that the whole story was crap...which it was definitely not.
For some reason, this action began a block that lasted three years.

In the end, I rewrote the entire book and then published the thing. Haven't had any problems since. But, writers' block is very real. Getting out and about helps. Trying to work on a new project, a smaller project than the one you are currently working on can help.

I posted some thoughts about writer's block last week at my blog MERE WORDS:

http://chidder.livejournal.com/10840.html

Your comments are welcome. Enjoy!

Your blog is good, but the accompanying graphic will probably give me nightmares!

I too, dug the blog.

Here's what Ray Bradbury had to say about writer's block:

"What if you have a blockage and you don’t know what to do about it? Well, it’s obvious you’re doing the wrong thing, aren’t you? . . . You’re being warned, aren’t you? Your subconscious is saying I don’t like you anymore. You’re writing about things I don’t give a damn for. . . If you have writers’ block you can cure it this evening by stopping what you’re doing and writing something else. You picked the wrong subject."