Clever, clever. I know.
There is a part of me that is inclined to dispute that such a thing as writer's block exists at all - or at least, that it is a phrase tossed around too often without any clear meaning. It seems doubtful whether or not that part of a person which makes them a writer (if such a part exists, and one is not merely writer) can be somehow temporarily cut off from functioning. If I may tediously make an analogy, the mark of the mother is her deeply-rooted share in the affairs of her household and its members, and though the household would surely fall apart if the functional acts of caring for the house and its occupants did not take place, she does not cease to be a mother when she sits down for five minutes' rest.
Similarly, I suspect that what makes one person a writer has more to do with his share in the literary and less to do with the actual, functional part of setting words onto paper. The latter is important, of course, but it is not complete. Back to the tedious analogy, one does not say a woman has "mother's block" in those moments when she is too disorganized and weary to decide what needs to be done next. One may say that she is being lazy, or that she does not possess the skills to maintain her home, but those are very different things than saying that she is "blocked." Put in those terms, the idea of a "block" seems a very passive sort of excuse.
(Here one gets a little too close to treading on one's own toes for comfort... )
Taking the role of writer to mean something closer to one who has an appetite for words literarily set to paper than one who has an appetite for literally setting words to paper, I then suspect that nine times out of ten when the word "blocked" leaves my mouth, it is not only a passive excuse but something unduly blamed. If a writer has merely ceased to produce words, it does not necessarily follow that a full block has set in. Now, if a writer ceases to write and read, and simply mucks about in a stew of mediocre thoughts and reality television, then I suppose he may fairly refer to his whole writing self as effectively blocked. But, once again, a little change in habits will quickly fix that, without trusting to the return of fickle inspiration. He may turn off the television and begin to read again, trusting that his appetite will return shortly.
I fear I have set my thoughts toward a conclusion on my Unwritingness that is more to my own shame than anyone else's. I have read, but I have little more to show in writing from the last three months than a few scraps of sentences far-flung among my many battered notebooks. And yet I have not simply been too busy to look at my sundry Word documents of ill-promise; I can recall several instances over the last few weeks, at least, where I spent quantities time scrolling through them and ... for what?
Pecking without promise - that is how I would describe ventures into my stories of late. Opening a document with the intentions of scrolling to the end and moving forward, and somehow always finding myself lost in a sentence somewhere in the already-written portion, chipping away towards some ideal of perfection as if that sentence were the only sentence in the story. I have not written very much, and still I could spend hours in editing. I write, but I do not move forward; surely this is classifiably blockage.
But I have gone too far in the paragraphs beforehand to leave it at that, and I begin to think (uncomfortably) that "writer's block" is simply another name for a far less excusable condition. If I look at my so-called block, I find that lack of inspiration cannot be blamed. Too often I am unable to write because the story might not be good enough for me to have written it, and unable to read because I do not wish to be still and contemplate the fact that someone else might be God. There - behind every tale of my writer's-block woe - there it is. When I am blocked, it is merely that same unbelieving pride that felled humanity, now speaking in me: "I am only a writer when I put something forth, not when I receive." This same pride must make something of itself now, must write the story now, must not be called upon to wait and to listen. Not having something to say cannot be a divinely-granted privilege to be still and know that He is God. I must be allowed to write; I must be allowed to produce; I must be allowed to follow my Christian calling and construct something worthy of my own approval...
And I wonder if, buried in all this dissection of distasteful negativity, one might find the true calling of a Christian writer: beyond simply not writing smutty books (though this is important), and beyond even the production of excellent writing with beautiful themes of truth. I do not deny the value of clean, excellent, meaningful writing; I think I must deny its wholeness as a calling. They are but a handful of words from one sentence in a story of which I am not the author. To treat them as the most important sentence, and to spend a multitude of hours editing and re-editing my presentation of symbols and themes as though it were the summary of my calling as a Christian writer - as if I, who have been given everything that is anything, must somehow forge my own worth when it comes to my craft....
What is the job of the Christian writer? Is it not to spy the roots of unbelief and pride which (though dead) still linger in the fiber of who I am as a writer and not wall myself off from the reality of them with red herrings of a supposed "block?" Can I call myself a 'Christian' writer if in the act writing I persist in seeing falsely, forgetting that in all things literary or otherwise I am called first and foremost not to do something for God, but to revel in the works of another on my behalf, and so kill sin and love Jesus? Is this not the true calling of a Christian (writer): more than sacrifices and burnt offerings, more than dedications in the front of books naming the name of Jesus, and far more even than stories that depict Christian values and redemptive themes in an excellent manner?
In a job that is often centered on mystery and imagination and the ability to produce catchy, exciting things, it is all too easy to fall back on the folly of Digory's Uncle Andrew and proclaim that "ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny." Pagan writers and movie-makers, believing this, have produced plotlines exalting people with similar destinies, and these are the tales of our generation: thousands upon thousands, tributes to the bent nature of twisted selfishness and blind anarchy that seem to ever only ape greatness and never reach the mark. The self-made writer with his glorious 'Christian' calling may evade such follies in writing, but in being he joins Uncle Andrew and the pagans. What if he gains a whole book, and loses his soul?
Let us be as kind as we can. Let us take this Christian writer with his brash ideals and aspirations of Christian writing, and set him alongside the sons of Thunder, asking it be given him to sit beside Christ in glory. And then the trouble with a self-made destiny becomes clear. The flaw is not that it is too high or too lonely; rather, that our self-conceived destinies are bound too close to the earth by the weight of sin, and so too crowded by sins and miseries. We cannot be high or lonely enough. It is not within the powers of our imagination or creativity to transcend such a weight as the pride of unbelief - not when the desire to do so originates in that same pride. The Christian writer has only to bind Micah 6:8 across his forehead and about the doorposts to his heart, and then be still and know that Christ is God. Because then Jesus will certainly turn and ask if this bold scribe is ready to drink of His cup, as indeed it will be given to His own to drink: a far higher and far lonelier destiny than anything dreamed of by Uncle Andrew or the pagan storytellers or the sons of Thunder, telling the tale of foolishness that shames wisdom and weakness that shames strength.
"But indeed, words are very rascals
since bonds disgraced them."
-Shakespeare-
