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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28279
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28279
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I have an old [Shoe cartoon](http://www.shoecomics.com/) somewhere in which Shoe has his feet on his desk, smoking a cigar, and staring off into space. But when Cosmo interrupts him, Shoe exclaims furiously, "Can't you see I'm writing!"

There are two parts to writing, composition and transcription. Sometimes transcription flows with the act of composition. Sometimes composition requires extended staring off into space before there is anything to transcribe. Sitting down in front of a keyboard and demanding instantaneous transcription is a great way to prevent any kind of composition from taking place. It is your attempt to transcribe that is blocking your ability to compose.

It is common to suggest that you just start writing -- by which people mean that you start transcribing trivialities. The theory seems to be that this will somehow break the psychological stranglehold of the blank page, and maybe it will, but it won't actually accomplish any useful work.

You are not actually going to begin any useful work until you begin the act of composition, and if that requires a few hours staring into space, that's fine. Stare into space and compose. Start transcribing when the impulse to transcribe takes hold of you.

This is rather like the advice to insomniacs: don't go to bed until you are ready to go to sleep, otherwise you will come to associate your bed with wakefulness, and that will just make your insomnia worse. Similarly, don't sit down at the keyboard until you are ready to transcribe. Otherwise you will come to associate the keyboard with lack of inspiration and make your writer's block worse.

I believe, by the way, that there are many writers for whom composition comes as easily as breathing, but for whom the discipline of transcription is hard. For them, the daily writing habit makes perfect sense. But if your case is that composition comes with more difficulty, the demand to spend X hours a day transcribing seems likely to do more harm than good.

Original score: 9