Thoughts on a Writer's Block

I’ve been blocked since November last year. I was in the middle of NaNoWriMo. For a couple days, I locked myself in my bedroom, faced my laptop, and tried to will out the words onto the screen. After this failed, I decided to take a break and work on other things, such as what I’ll be doing for work in 2015.

Since then, it’s been difficult to write blog posts and journal entries, much less fiction. I’ve had a break today, though. I thought that one problem might be my environment. I had been cutting sugar lately and trying not to spend too much money in coffee shops, and at the same time my writing output was negligible. So I gave myself a break, hit up the bookstore, bought some chai tea, and prayed I be able to write anything.

I wrote about 2000 words.

On the one hand, if this is the way out, I’ll take it. If all I need to write is isolation in a crowded place and some caffeine and sugar, that’s what I’ll seek. On the other hand, I’m still considerably overweight, and at one point I was consuming 1/3 of my daily calories in drinks. I’ve cut all sugary drinks and sweets to lower my calorie intake. I’d have to make an exception for only when I’m writing, and that’s harder to enforce.

At Viable Paradise, one of the instructors talked about chemical dependence. There was a writer who smoked when he wrote. He tried to quit smoking, but his output stopped completely when he did, so he kept smoking to keep the words flowing. Well, chai tea is my drug of choice, and I love to make Dune jokes about chai spice, but I know dependence when I see it.

I’ll try again tomorrow. If I’m still writing, I’ll know my solution works. Maybe all I needed was time, not chai.