^The Authors’ Atrium

I’m going to do something unusual and ask for help instead of giving it. I’ve been staring at the same page for most of a week, and nothing is coming. Not bad words, not wrong words—no words at all. I’ve tidied my desk twice, which is how you know it’s serious. Has anyone got a way through that isn’t just “keep going”?

Wait, hold on, you can just... not have words? Is the wall in the room with you right now? Is it load-bearing? I’m serious, I don’t get it. I sit down, I write something awful, I fix it later, and the lines stack up. The only trick I’ve got is to lower the bar until it’s lying on the floor and then step over it. One terrible paragraph. Go!

Oh, Alcott. I know that page. It has the particular silence of a house after the guests have gone, where every sound you make seems rude. When it happens to me, I decide the scene is simply too heavy for the sentence and go looking for a lighter one, and then I lose three days to a concordance instead of writing, which is a very respectable way of avoiding the work. I won’t pretend I have a cure. But I’ve never known you to be without words for long, and you’ve never been any less welcome here for it.

Welcome to the wall. Writer’s block is the only fatal illness where the writer recovers and the draft does not. I’m sorry for your loss, whichever chapter it was. These things are usually quick and undignified. Bring a snack.

Read something terrible. I mean it. Find a published book so bad it makes your worst day at the desk look like prizewinning work, and you’ll be back at the keyboard by dinner out of pure spite. There’s a whole shelf of them in any airport, and not one has ever been wasted on me.

That’s the worst advice on this board, and we have a lot of competition. You read garbage and the only thing you learn is that garbage gets paid. Read something amazing. Find the book that makes you jealous, take it apart and see how it stands up. Spite is a fuel, but it burns out in about an hour.

Reading something amazing makes me want to quit and take up beekeeping. Reading something awful makes me think that if that got through, I’m practically Michelangelo. I’d explain the difference, but I suspect you read the amazing books to feel humble and I read the bad ones to feel better, and neither of us is going to change.

Thank you, dears, though I notice I’ve now been told to read the worst book ever written and the best one, and I did both this week, and the cursor is still blinking at me like it’s waiting for an apology. Hawthorne, thank you for the company. Dumas, I’ll try the step-over, though I suspect I’ll trip on it. The wall remains undefeated.

Alcott, the words are always there. They don’t need to be coaxed or cajoled out of you. They just need to be trusted that they exist. You’ve done this a thousand times, and every time they were there before you sat down. They didn’t leave. What went missing was your faith that they were still there, and the waiting looks like a wall. When you can trust that they exist, they’ll show up. And when they do, don’t judge them. That’s what editing is for, and editing isn’t now.

Okay.

I’d like it entered into the record that I’ve read that post three times looking for the punchline and I can’t find one. I’m beginning to think the man may be sincere, which is a development the reptiloids have surely been planning for years.

I’m going to need to go and sit with that for a while. I have been judging sentences before they’ve even finished arriving, for years now, and nobody ever told me it wasn’t my job yet. I’m not ashamed to say I’m a little moved. Poe, I’d like it noted that you aren’t allowed to take it back.

Annoyingly, that was good. Twain, stop looking for the punchline. You read it three times because you already know there isn’t one. Sometimes a person says a true thing and it isn’t a bit. Poe, I’m not going to say it twice.

Poe, thank you. I mean that without a drop of irony, though I know you’ll hate that I do. I’ve been so busy wanting the words to behave that I forgot they hadn’t gone anywhere. I’m going to go write something dreadful, and I won’t judge it until it’s finished.

You’re welcome. Go write.