Around the Writer's Block

by Rosanne Bane

  With the limbic system driving the bus, the cortex is effectively shut down. We are still conscious—we can still speak and calculate—so we often don’t know that the cortex has been elbowed out of the driver’s seat, but what we say and how we act are based on previous training. We are not capable of innovative, nuanced thinking, and our choices in this state will be instinctive. None of the higher thinking functions—the frontal cortex’s “executive functions”—are available.

  Unfortunately, your cortex doesn’t do a particularly good job of recognizing when it’s been pushed out of the driver’s seat. Imagine a driver sitting in a passenger seat on a bus with a Playskool dashboard on her or his lap, moving the toy wheel and pushing toy brakes and getting frustrated and confused when the bus doesn’t turn and move the way the driver wants. That’s about what happens when the limbic system is in control and the cortex doesn’t recognize that reality.

  Consequently, we are literally of two minds about our creative work, depending on who’s driving the bus. Our cortex seeks novelty and wants to be creative. The limbic system cares only about being safe and staying alive. When the limbic system is in control, we respond instinctively with behaviors that later make us shake our heads and say, “Now, why did I do that?”

  We’re often confused and sometimes embarrassed, frustrated, or remorseful about the actions we take when the limbic system is driving the bus. The cortex can’t explain behavior initiated by the limbic system. Because the cortex doesn’t recognize or accept that it wasn’t in control, it makes up stories to try to explain what happened. Those stories include, “I’m lazy”; “I’m undisciplined”; “Maybe I don’t really want to write”; “Maybe I’m afraid of success.” Or, as we’ll see below, “I saw a snake and decided I should get away.”

  CHALLENGE: WHY DID I DO THAT?

  List ten things you do that make you later wonder, “Why did I do that?” Set judgment aside as you’re making the list. Let yourself be in a state of genuine wonder, not regret or criticism.

  INSIDE THE WRITER’S BRAIN: YOU CAN’T THINK BEFORE YOU JUMP

  In The Emotional Brain, Dr. Joseph LeDoux explains how the cortex is often unaware that control has shifted.4 For example, if you see a snake, you’ll later say something like, “I saw a snake and thought I should get away, so I jumped.” However, the faster limbic system made your body jump before your cortex had the conscious thought, “I should jump.”

  More specifically, the visual stimulus is first processed by the visual thalamus, which sends crude information—in this case, “snakelike object”—to the amygdala. The amygdala kicks the body into the fight-or-flight mode described above. In the case of seeing what might be a snake, the amygdala sends impulses down the spinal column to the nerves that make us jump out of the way.

  The visual thalamus also sends information to the visual cortex, which makes finer distinctions (e.g., “Is this in fact a snake or just a stick?”). The visual cortex sends this refined information to the amygdala, but by this time, we’ve already jumped. Only after we’ve jumped to safety does the amygdala bring the cortex into the decision-making loop. Incredible egotist that the cortex is, we all think, “I saw a snake and I thought I’d better get out of the way, so I jumped,” despite the fact that we jumped before we had the conscious awareness of the need to jump.

  In other words, the cortex fails to recognize when it’s not driving the bus.

  Meet Aimee

  You can meet Aimee, but Aimee can’t meet you. Of course, you can’t really meet a person in a book, but even if you were to appear at the Asile de Bel-Air hospital in France in 1906, where Aimee (not her real name) was a patient of Dr. Edouard Claparède, and shook Aimee’s hand, she would not be able to truly meet you.

  As a result of a brain injury, Aimee lost the ability to form new memories. While her memories of her life before the injury were unimpaired, after she was injured, Aimee couldn’t remember anything that happened more than a few minutes earlier.

  So every time Dr. Claparède saw Aimee, he had to introduce himself as if he were meeting her for the first time. Claparède decided to conduct a small experiment one day. He put a pin between the fingers of his right hand, so that when he walked into the room, introduced himself, and shook hands with Aimee, she received a surprising, painful, but harmless stab in the palm of her hand. Claparède apologized and talked with her for a few minutes, then left. Aimee, of course, had no memory of the incident.5

  And yet, when Claparède reached for Aimee’s hand when “meeting” her later, she pulled her hand away. She refused to shake hands with him, even though she had never refused to do so before, and even though she couldn’t explain why she was unwilling to shake his hand.

  Aimee’s resistance to shaking Claparède’s hand makes perfect sense to us. But keep in mind that Aimee could not retain new memories. She didn’t remember the pin, so she couldn’t explain her resistance. Aimee’s experience demonstrates that memories, especially memories of painful experiences, are laid down in the brain with at least two systems. Aimee had lost the ability to form new conscious memories, but apparently her unconscious memory system still functioned well enough for her to avoid the threat of shaking Claparède’s hand.

  Claparède couldn’t adequately explain Aimee’s memory failure or how she managed to retain enough “memory” to know not to shake his hand. In The Emotional Brain, Joseph LeDoux elaborates, “It now seems that Claparède was seeing the operation of two different memory systems in his patient—one involved in forming memories of experience and making those memories available for conscious recollection at some later time, and another operating outside of consciousness and controlling behavior without explicit awareness of the past learning.”6

  The key point of Aimee’s story is that you don’t have to have a conscious memory or a “logical” reason for feeling resistant. And just because you don’t know why you don’t want to do something doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason for not doing it.

  As LeDoux puts it, “Although the patient did not have a conscious memory of the situation, subconsciously she learned that shaking Claparède’s hand could cause her harm, and her brain used this stored information, this memory, to prevent the unpleasantness from occurring again.”7

  Who’s Your Dr. Claparède?

  You’ve undoubtedly gotten reactions to your writing that were far more unpleasant than a little pinprick. It doesn’t matter whether it was your third-grade teacher marking your punctuation errors in thick red pencil, a poisonous TA ridiculing your poetry in sophomore English, or some relative urging you to “stop that silly scribbling and live up to your potential.”

  You might expect a challenge here to list the people and situations that have embarrassed or pained you about your writing. But there really isn’t much point in looking for causes; there are far too many possibilities and nothing to be gained from inventorying past injuries.

  It is enough to know that when you feel resistance, there is a legitimate reason for it. Interestingly, when Aimee was pushed to explain why she wouldn’t shake Claparède’s hand, she said something like, “Doesn’t one have the right to withdraw her hand?”8 In other words, her cortex, unable to explain her reservations, made something up. Remember that the cortex does a poor job of recognizing when it’s not in control. Your cortex is probably busy making up stories to explain behavior prompted by your limbic system far more often than you realize.

  Rather than admit we just don’t know why we did something or why we don’t want to do something—a profound statement of vulnerability few of us are capable of—we rationalize, make assumptions, and draw erroneous conclusions from inadequate evidence. Writers often assume the worst: that we’re lazy, undisciplined or lack willpower, intelligence and ambition. Or we complain about writer’s block. Or we distract ourselves and fill our schedules with other priorities to give us the illusion of virtue and allow us to
claim a reason, any reason, not to write. “I’m too busy to write. Maybe after I . . .”

  Unfortunately, none of these responses helps us get past the resistance caused by the limbic system’s takeover. In fact, negative assumptions and rationalizations often make us more stressed, and stress only increases the need to keep the limbic system in control. Unchecked and misinterpreted, resistance can lead to an ongoing cycle where the anxiety of anticipating not being able to write triggers the limbic system and reinforces the resistance. At an extreme, we call this self-perpetuating cycle “writer’s block.”

  You are not being weak willed, thin-skinned, oversensitive, underdisciplined, or lazy. You are reacting to a subconscious awareness of a potential threat. In fact, your cortex is probably far more consistent about showing up for your writing than you give yourself credit for. That is, your cortex is consistent when it’s in charge, which is less often than your cortex recognizes.

  The relevant question is not, “Why am I behaving this way?” or, “Why am I so lazy?” (or some other harsh, judgmental word), but, “How can I respond to get what I really want: the freedom to enjoy writing and the power to write effectively?”

  Writing Is Its Own Reward—or Threat

  As marvelous as it feels to be in the flow, writing is more often a source of stress than bliss for all of us. You have an audience to please, a deadline to meet, an idea you want to share that refuses to be pinned down, not to mention the memories, conscious and unconscious, of all the criticism, correction and rejection your writing has received in the past. And if that’s not enough, many of us fear success, because it means putting ourselves out there where we run the risks of exposing ourselves too much, being judged and criticized, or offending people we care about.

  At least some of the time in writing and in life, you’re going to feel frightened, anxious, angry or embarrassed. And when you do, your RAS will shift control to your limbic system. Your limbic system doesn’t care about how much you’re growing as a writer or how rewarding it will be to get your work appreciated or published. Its job is to keep you alive, and the best way to do that is to rely on the old tried-and-true instincts that have guided humans for millions of years. When your limbic system takes over—and it will—all the promises that “this time will be different” and “this time I’ll really stick to my writing schedule” become irrelevant.

  Since we all have had negative experiences around our writing, we often come to writing with our limbic systems triggered, even if we aren’t aware of it. Or we avoid writing altogether because our limbic system is triggered, again without our conscious awareness. It is simply impossible to write well when the limbic system has precedence over the creative cortex.

  Until we learn how to flip the RAS from limbic system to cortex, our efforts to be “disciplined” about our writing will be futile since none of the higher cognitive functions necessary for writing will be available. Learning just a little bit more about the neurological causes of resistance will help you recognize resistance in its many guises and find ways to relax so that your cortex can reengage.

  Recognizing Resistance

  The many forms of resistance can be categorized by the instinctive actions we take when the limbic system is triggered. When threatened, all mammals will freeze for a moment before choosing to fight or flee.

  Freeze

  This is usually a short-lived reaction. We typically freeze for a moment, then move into fighting or fleeing. When this “deer in the headlights” response is repeated for more than a few days, we traditionally call it “writer’s block.” Because the RAS has flipped control to the limbic system, the innovative and sophisticated thinking of the frontal cortex is not available. The writer literally cannot think what to write or how to start. The prolonged freeze response can cause emotional numbness or intense anxiety and frustration.

  Fight

  The fight response can be directed at yourself, at someone else, or both. Fighting yourself includes excessively harsh criticism, negative self-talk, hating the writing or yourself, perfectionism, and sabotage behaviors such as missing deadlines, losing files, having accidents, etc. Fighting others can include refusing to hear suggestions for revision, criticizing other writers or other people in your life, insisting that you’re right or insisting on doing it your way, denying the need for improvement, damning the whole system (publishing, academia, business, etc.).

  Flee

  The behaviors that rise from the urge to escape the discomfort associated with writing are the most common forms of resistance. These include distractions (social life, work, family obligations, other creative endeavors, hobbies, and numbing activities like excessive gaming, shopping, drinking, TV watching); the inability to stay in the chair to write; inventing other tasks that must be completed first (emails, cleaning the desk, researching beyond what’s necessary); overscheduling or overcommitting to other priorities that “must” be addressed before the writing; waiting until the last minute to start; and other forms of procrastination.

  All forms of resistance are confusing and frustrating. We seem unable to honor our best intentions and efforts to be better writers. It helps to remember that we are struggling so much because our limbic system is in charge, which leaves us unable to use our cortex for nuanced thought, self-reflection or the ability to foresee future outcomes. And it helps to know that you can bring your cortex back online.

  CHALLENGE: HOW DO YOU DO?

  Answer these questions about how you do resistance.

  How do I do the freeze response, and what do I usually do after the freeze? Do I stare at the blank screen, then flee to check my email? Or is it that little pause when I think about writing and then decide I’ll do that later after I . . . ?

  How many ways do I run away from writing? How do I distract myself? What do I tell myself I need to do before I can write? How do I keep myself too busy to write?

  How and who do I fight? Who do I criticize? What do I complain about? What feedback or advice have I rejected?

  Hope Is Not Lost

  The good news is that there is a lot you can do to identify and manage your responses so that you can write effectively. An important first step is to bring resistance out of the shadows. Talk openly about your resistance with other writers, reminding one another that this is not an excuse to avoid creative work, but an opportunity to devise and share strategies to overcome common forms of resistance.

  The appendix will help you start your own Around the Writer’s Block support group, or you can visit www.Facebook .com/AWBWritersGroups, to add yourself to the list of writers who are interested in supporting each other in recognizing and resolving writer’s resistance.

  The remaining chapters of Around the Writer’s Block will detail what else you need to know and what you can do to bring ease and joy to your writing life.

  Plastic Brain to the Rescue!

  The best news is that the human brain “is wired for change,” says Dr. Ira Black, professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.9

  The concept of neuroplasticity, the idea that the brain can change far more than we ever thought possible, is probably one of the landmark shifts in science, up there with Einstein’s rewriting the laws of physics or Copernicus disproving the Church’s decree that the sun circled the Earth. The old paradigm was that the human brain grew and developed in infancy and childhood, and that once we reached adulthood our brains would only decline because neurons could not be replaced. Adult brains were computing machines and, like machines, they were fixed, “hardwired.” The brain couldn’t alter its structure or change how it processed information.

  Paradigms die hard, and in the 1970s, researchers who found evidence to challenge the old paradigm were not welcomed with open minds. They were ridiculed, accused of poor research methods and denied opportunities to publish their
research findings. But the researchers persevered, the evidence piled higher, and now neuroplasticity is widely accepted.

  We now know that the brain can grow new neurons and reorganize itself by making new neural connections to compensate for injury or to adjust to changes in the environment. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, author of My Stroke of Insight, explains neuroplasticity by comparing the brain to a playground filled with children playing different games in different places. If the kids can’t play on the jungle gym, they don’t just stop playing; they play with other kids on the swings or the slide. Likewise, neurons don’t just hang around doing nothing when the function they were performing is no longer available.10

  Not surprisingly, research has shown that blind people who read Braille have more neurons in the somatosensory cortex (which processes tactile sensations) dedicated to feeling in the finger they use to read than nonblind people or blind people who don’t read Braille. What’s amazing is that not only are they using the neurons in the somatosensory cortex to read Braille, they also use the neurons in the visual cortex. As Taylor suggests, the neurons in the visual cortex don’t lie dormant; the visual cortex rewires itself so that those neurons are available for a different purpose. Even more amazing, neurons in the visual cortex not only adapt to “read” Braille, they also contribute to other language-processing tasks, something that is supposedly reserved for the nonsensory, higher-cognitive parts of the cortex.11

  Like a corner lot in a thriving urban area, neurons are simply too valuable to leave unused for long.

  Dr. Norman Doidge’s The Brain that Changes Itself is a collection of incredible triumphs of neuroplasticity.12 Doidge describes autistic children with dramatic increases in their abilities to use language and interact with others; blind people who are able to “see” words, faces, and shadows with a camera attached to eyeglasses that sends signals to an ultrathin strip of plastic on the tongue that in turn sends signals to the brain; and people in their eighties and nineties who were able to use physical and mental exercise to reverse the effects of aging on mood, memory, concentration and other cognitive abilities. These amazing stories may become commonplace as science expands our understanding of neuroplasticity.