Dear Writer, Are You In Writer's Block? (QuitBooks for Writers Book 4) by Syme Becca

Author:Syme, Becca [Syme, Becca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hummingbird Books
Published: 2020-05-18T16:00:00+00:00

Ten

The Myths of Writer’s Block

I once met a man who designed vending machines and if you’d asked me before that to name a job that sounded fictional, I would have said, “vending machine designer” somewhere right before “underwater basket weaver.” But it’s apparently a real job.

The guy’s name was Mike, and he shared his full name with a certain famous actor who’s played a superhero, which was also a topic of conversation because of course, when I said that I’d met the real version of his name, Mike raised his bushy eyebrows and said, “I’m real.”

Can’t argue with that, Mike.

As I often do when I meet someone with a unique job, I immediately asked Mike the Vending Machine Designer a routine Becca question. “What would you say are the biggest myths about your job? ”

The things no one would believe are true. Or the things everyone assumes are true that aren’t. Job myths fascinate me, and I’ve never been disappointed when I’ve asked this of a stranger.

“That all vending machines are the same,” he said.

Of course, it turned out they weren’t. Not even close. I’d just only ever seen the kind that dispensed candy and chips, or sodas. But there are as many kinds of vending machines as there are products to be vendored.

Because vending machine designers like Mike are incredibly creative, every time someone comes to them with a problem (“I want to sell this new product but they don’t make a machine to dispense it”), Mike would say, “I can fix that.” And he would build a machine.

I had a hard time even conceiving of how a person would buy something like soup, for instance, from a machine. But Mike described the process, the heating of the elements to temperature, and it made sense.

“You’re imagining something like a claw machine,” he said, “where there’s something inside and the machine just grabs it and pushes it out. Not all machines are like that.”

Some of them, it turns out, might have you standing in front of them for quite some time, waiting for your product to come out. You put your money in and you wait. The food isn’t dispensed right away .

When he politely asked me about the common myths of my job, I replied, “The same as yours. Everyone assumes all writers are the same, and there’s one way to be a writer.”

Turns out, writers are a lot like vending machines.

This thought comes to me often when coaching writers who have been referred to me because people know that one of my specialties is getting writers unstuck. I will often listen to a writer explain their issue and underneath what they’re saying is, all writers are the same . Because we have “writing” in common, then our fixes must be the same.

But… must they? Why? Why would we ever assume that one size fits all when there is so much evidence to the contrary?

Yet the most common thing I see in my coaching practice is writers applying unilateral advice that’s not working for them, but they’re trying to apply it anyway.

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