Writer's block

He's a professor of English at the University of Memphis, where he teaches in the MFA program.

To find out more, check out the Poetry Foundation website, where you'll find an essay that Marcus wrote in March on the late singer, rapper, and songwriter Nate Dogg, Black Barbershops, and Writer's Block.

That essay is titled, An Ode to Nobody Does It Better.

The music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions.

right.

Did you have writer's block at any time? And if so, how did you deal with it?

I definitely had it a couple of times.

Basically, I would just sort of step away from the project, give it some time, just kind of think on it when I wasn't sort of having to write.

And a lot of my kind of dreaming about the book would literally be like when I was trying to take a nap or when I was trying to go to sleep.

Like that is when like if I close my eyes, that's when I am able to sort of really figure out issues with writer's block.

It's like, okay, what if this happened? What if these people went here? What if this went over here? And then if I do have any ideas that I think are good, I immediately write them down in my notes app on my phone.

And then I will kind of try to do stuff with them later.

... amazing book, yeah.

And I, I asked him about writer's block, and he goes, "I don't believe in writer's block.

Writer's block is a failure of courage." And, uh, that quote is al-

Interesting

... yeah, that quote has always stuck with me because his whole thing was, "Don't be afraid to write the bad stuff, and you're not that special.

So I'd love to get your take on that.

Is it...

I guess there's a lot of ways, right? Do you believe in writer's block, or maybe is w- is, is a, is writing a bad song better than writing no song? How do you feel about that idea in general?

So I think what I realized like with this, I did write a little bit of my last album there and just I was just kind of testing it out and I loved it so much.

And I realized when I was starting the process for for my my latest one for for Estress, I I kind of got writer's block at first because I mean, Ludwig, who I make pretty much all of my music with since day one, he We had a month together in LA, like end of 2024, I think it was.

We started out like, you know, usually we just get together and we like write cool shit.

And it's like, you know, we got this.

Um, th- there's a certain steamroller effect, though, when you read one after the other, um, that I like.

Um, the next essay was then the pervasive myth of writer's block.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Barton Fink was a writer that used to write plays in New York and was brought to LA to kind of sell out and make some money as a Hollywood writer.

He ends up getting, landing this gig, has to write a movie about wrestling, but he gets, he gets writer's block and, And the whole movie is actually about the idea of like writer's blog and how difficult it is.

And like, it's kind of, you just kind of follow this guy around as he has writer's blog and he's trying to figure out what to write about and learn, try to learn about wrestling, which he knows nothing about.

And then the first hour and 10 minutes of it is pretty much just that.

Sometimes when you are creating so much content, like me, I put out [laughs] so much content when, when I actually break it down, I laugh sometimes 'cause I'm like, I really do not give myself the benefit of the doubt with how much content I actually put out on the internet.

And sometimes I think, like, I reckon artists go through this as well, but you do go through a creative block.

Now, I've only ever had two of these whilst in my content creation, uh, career, and one of them was really bad, and that was because I was trying to find more of a flow state with, like, what I wanted to put out on the internet.

And I was trying to change my content whilst trying to, like, do something that wasn't me, and I think that's what I was struggling with last week.

avs you just updated it this morning i know i feel like i will i update

uh i feel like such a fraud coming on a germany podcast when i haven't uploaded for a month because i basically panicked myself into this is a current theme of my life i've panicked myself into a corner here and i have never whenever i think about writer's blog i always i'm journalist and writer and columnist called caitlin moran um and she once said I've never had writer's block because I cannot afford to have writer's block.

Meaning that she was always on deadline and writer's block is kind of like a really indulgent thing to have.

I have always been so strict with myself on like writing and uploading and being really timely with all of that kind of stuff.

And I've just fucked it for myself.

This is a hands-on training podcast that's intended to help you, fiction writer, diagnose your problems, build a repeatable skill set, finish the work that only you can finish more consistently.

This week's episode is my current best approach to understanding flow state as it relates to writer's block.

This is what I think works right now, given what I know right now.

This is a follow-up episode.

The originator or at least popularizer of flow state.

Just... how he identified similar patterns among high-performing athletes, artists, different musicians and scientists, and just creators, creatives in general.

So, hey, the other fun thing is we're also going to revisit a recent episode about writer's block.

Steven challenges part of my original argument.