Book Review - Around the Writer's Block

I will begin with a book that resonated with me until I heard a pitch fork humming every time I read it.  It brought the self-help standard fare of the ever nebulous, arty-farty, inner child, pabulum crap, sharply into the real world.  The world I happen to actually inhabit.  The one we all do.  The one of flesh and blood, physiology, brain workings and biology. 

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Around the Writer’s Block
by Rosanne Bane

I have never felt so … normalized, as when reading this book.  All the quirks, the “failings”, those inexplicable behaviors and sabotage I just couldn’t get through, all explained here with brain science in simple, insanely normalizing language.  Avoiding writing?  Nonsense – you are simply in the incubating stage.  Necessary, essential.  Doodling instead of writing?  Good!  You’re allowing creativity – more parts of the entire brain, not just the survival or logic systems, to speak.  Experiencing “writer’s block?”  Nah, you’re just in the middle of a limbic system takeover because that primitive system can’t distinguish between a wooly mammoth and modern day anxiety and stressors – like a dreaded blank screen or page.

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Rosanne Bane starts by explaining flat out exactly what’s going on up there in all that grey matter, why we have what she terms as “resistance” to writing to begin with.  The validation from this section alone is worth any price of admission.  What I’ve been doing and haven’t understood all my life – no, flagellated myself with – is normal?!  Others have this?  I am not alone.  Profound.  From the limbic system takeovers to brain basics to the new frontier of the plastic brain – it’s served up in easy to read and understand language for the hungry, lost, and self-defeated soul like I was.

It’s amazing to me that as writers, we have understood very little what the process of “writing” actually is – from a scientific, behavioral perspective.  All of the ‘how to’ writing books I’ve read valiantly try to explain this mystery, each using their own particular language to do so.  And I do believe in each and every one of them.  Why?  I make it uncomplicated for my poor ol’ brain.  I simply believe that they are all really saying the same thing.  It’s just marketing – a different label for your particular bent.  It becomes a matter of finding the language that speaks to you.  But we do mystify the process, the art, as if it really is a magical, unexplainable process.  Maybe we even believe that.  The “voices”, the stories, they just come from somewhere.  We can’t really explain how.  Until now.  Around the Writer’s Block actually enlightens us to what is really going on, and doesn’t just couch it in some metaphysical, magical concept.  And this language just so happens to work best for me.  It makes perfect sense.  I can hear it clicking into place.  Ahhh.  Nothing like a perfect fit – that one thing that just makes sense, makes the rest of the world make sense. 

Probably the most profound epiphany I took from this book is the assertion (with proof!) that writing isn’t just the actual ‘writing’ part, the putting pen to paper and producing words one after another in magical sublime order the first go-round.  Writing is in fact, according to my newest hero, a series of fluid stages and each are equally and essentially vital to the process.  This book expanded the whole concept of writing for me.  I firmly believed if I wasn’t physically writing, putting that pen to paper, fingers to keys with words showing up, then I wasn’t writing.  Well, that’s just not so.  There are critical components, essential processes, that we paradoxically try to repress so we can ‘write’!  Do you ever feel guilty for staring out the window “daydreaming” as we call it?  Did you ever get in trouble at school for daydreaming, doodling, not “paying attention”? 

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Information gets stored in many, many different ways in the brain, and is accessed by just as many.  Understanding what it actually is that we do, normalizing that process and harnessing it, instead of feeling guilty about it and building cottage industries to “cure” writer’s block, is revolutionary to me. 

So let’s take that ‘writer’s block’ and look at it through this lens.  There is nothing but negative and harshly judgmental attribution that goes along with that phenomenon.  But per Ms. Bane, “You are not being weak-willed, thin-skinned, oversensitive, underdisciplined, or lazy.  You are reacting to a subconscious awareness of a potential threat.”  Hah!  Take that!  Then you learn there is actually something you can do about it and she teaches you, step by step with direct instructions, exercises and homework.  This is a complete ‘wrap-around' book and course.  She gives you everything, explains it all.  It’s not just about writing.  It is about life.  Particularly about life in this complex and confusing age with way too much stimuli.  You can’t write if all the pieces aren’t working together or working well.  It’s not just about writing exercises.  She includes what she calls “Process” time (play!), “Self Care” and effective “Product Time.” 

Ms. Bane even offers coaching and has set up a whole network of support systems, and ways to form your own groups over the internet.  It’s one of those experiences, like ‘why the hell isn’t this taught in grade school through college as required learning?  We’re taught theoretical concepts, important information surely, but when it comes to understanding our own systems, our own brains, it’s left a mystery.  The brain really is so basic.  And it is wonderfully amazing and convoluted – it means well I think!  The fund of knowledge is growing every day, and that just gets me giddy. 

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This book for me was the culmination of every ‘how to’ book I’ve ever read.  It is wonderful and it will change your life.  The last frontier – the brain!

Check out Rosanne Bane's website here - Baneofyourresistance.com

The Runaway Writer is not affiliated with the product or site reviewed here