COAH Postgraduate Research Conference
Taliesin, Swansea University: 17 – 18 September 2020
The Blank Page as Alien: Overcoming Writer’s Block, the Psyche Monster in the House, to Cultivate Writing Flow
H Raven Rose
Swansea University, Swansea, Wales, UK
Writer’s block is commonly described as a fear of the blank page, which leads to procrastination. In contrast, this paper postulates that scribes with actual blank page dread, a phobia of paper with nothing written upon it, are rare. This article proposes that writing resistance is a primitive unconscious natural reaction to what Save the Cat! Narrative structure theorist Blake Snyder might term the writer’s psyche Monster in the House (MITH). Any writing, an unknown narrative of fiction or non-fiction, resides in the realm of imagination and is accessed through the writer’s whole being, including the unconscious. The work explores the relationship between writing resistance and the human whole being, including the monstrous residing in the unconscious and writing flow. Unresolved writerly creative soul issues, unconscious or otherwise, including perfectionism, inhibit writerly voice and self-expression. The paper illustrates creative practice-based self-inquiry tools used to identify personal MITH writer’s blocks to facing the blank page and techniques to Access | Process | Release (APR) the blocks and return to the highly pleasurable “writing flow” state (Rose, 2003). Relevant quotations and images from the MITH science fiction film Aliens illustrate fundamental paper concepts.
Keywords: writing flow, writer’s block, creative practice, creative blocks, psyche, creativity