Writer’s Block

                                    Writing is easy.

All you do is stare at

A blank sheet of paper until

Drops of blood form on

Your forehead.

Gene Fowler

 

I just hit a writer’s block as a fair chunk of unsaved brilliant writing disappeared when I rested my wrists on my laptop.  But that particular problem is not included in the “Changing Minds” authors’ list of reasons for sitting and staring at that virtual sheet of white paper.  They mentioned procrastination, perfectionism, fear of criticism, or—just plain old Eeyore’s explanation—"what’s the use”. 

They cite the sagging of motivation and energy in older writers, simply “lacking the stamina for the sustained cognitive effort that writing requires.” Reminds me of how I used to zip a health newsletter out without fail every week when I was twenty-some years younger.  Phillip Roth, when asked if he missed writing as he aged, replied, “I was by this time [about age 77] no longer in possession of the mental vitality or the verbal energy or the physical fitness needed to mount and sustain a large creative attack of any duration on a complex structure as demanding as a novel.  Not everyone can be fruitful forever.” (But he was certainly still able to spit out a complex sentence!)

Speaking of complexity of language, author Iris Murdoch had an unfortunate condition that her final book was called “a mess” by the NYT reviewer, “Strewn with imprecisions and blatant redundancies…pet words [scattered] like so many nails in the reader’s road.”  Not yet diagnosed with dementia, she was already struggling with cognitive impairment, and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease two years before her death at 79.

When machine-readable texts and sophisticated linguistic analysis tools became available, researchers began analyzing the works of various authors, including Murdoch and other writers known to have developed dementia.  Vocabulary size notably shrank in those presumed to have or diagnosed with dementia as compared to nonimpaired authors whose word usage either stayed stable or increased over their careers.

Have you read “Aging with Grace:  What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives”?  I strongly recommend it.