Q: What's your cure for writer's block?

A: Auden has this wonderful saying: “The great writer does not see through a brick wall; he just doesn’t build one.” Maybe writer’s block isn’t something we stumble into, that is, as a kind of sudden locked gate or wall in our process. Perhaps learning writing is just learning how not to build that wall.

So, how not to build the wall. It’s about how we think of things. If writer’s block is to be “cured,” for example, then perhaps we would prescribe the remedy as action. But perhaps writer’s block is just the mind turning and taking stock of its own machinery. It’s a tall order, but the idea here might be that all one needs to get out of writer’s block is to give up the idea that the work has to be a certain thing.

More about Jeff...

Jeff Latosik is the author of Tiny, Frantic, Stronger, and Safely Home Pacific Western.

Read some poems by Jeff in The Walrus.