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Why Do Writers Stop Writing?
Early Romantic writers assumed writer’s block was due to a power that prevented them from writing
The first known victim of writer’s block is the English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote his most famous lines in his twenties. At the age of 32, he made the following diary entry in 1804: “So completely has a whole year passed, with scarcely the fruits of a month. — O Sorrow and Shame. . . . I have done nothing!” He described his writer’s block as “an indefinite indescribable Terror,” and refrained from writing poetry. To him and his peers, writer’s block was due to a power that prevented him from writing. What can we learn from this interpretation for our times and our writing?
The modern notion of writer’s block
Coleridge is one of the primary known cases of what we call writer’s block. There are different forms of writer’s block. While for some, it means that they stop writing altogether. For others, it can be that they can no longer tap into their literary capital and feel like their pieces are no longer worthy of publishing.
Given the nature of the writer’s block, it must have always existed. However, its existence was first mentioned by early English Romantics as something…
