Chip off the Ol’ Writer’s Block

The information in this post comes from an SFWA panel on writer’s block I attended in June 2015. If you’re a speculative fiction writer and can afford to attend the SFWA weekend in June 2016, I highly recommend the experience. I learned a lot in this session and others, and I met a lot of great people too. Now, about that block…

What’s that? A blockage? Let me at it.

Authors Nancy Kress, Sarah Pinsker, Jack McDevitt, and Jack Skillingstead began the session with introductions and a definition of what writer’s block would mean in the context of their discussion. That’s more important than it might seem on first glance. See, the creative dry spells writers usually mean when we talk about being “blocked” are frustrating, but they’re actually not the debilitating condition a psychologist would call writer’s block. Everything here is directed towards problems of the  “where do…