Most advice about writer's block treats it like a motivation problem. You're stuck, so you need a better routine, a new app, a change of scenery. And sometimes that works, the way aspirin works on a headache without telling you why your head hurts.
But I've started to think the interesting causes of writer's block are the ones that don't look like writer's block at all. They look like discipline, or taste, or just being busy. They sit underneath the surface for months before you notice them, and by the time you do, you've already built a story about yourself that makes the real problem harder to see.
A few worth knowing.
1. You're editing sentences before they exist
There's a particular kind of writer's block that feels like having nothing to say, but when you look closer, that's not quite it. You have plenty to say. You just can't find a way to say it that meets the standard you've set before a single word hits the page.
The inner critic is supposed to show up during revision. That's where it belongs, and where it does good work. The problem is when it shows up at the drafting stage, evaluating every sentence as you try to produce it. It's like trying to drive somewhere while simultaneously grading your driving. You stall out. Of course you stall out.
Anne Lamott has a chapter in Bird by Bird called "Shitty First Drafts" where she makes the case that virtually all good writing starts as bad writing. She describes her own first drafts as long, rambling, incoherent messes, and she's won National Book Awards. The writers who produce clean first drafts, in her experience, are "not having much fun." I'd go further and say some of them aren't producing much of anything, because the pursuit of a clean first draft is a kind of paralysis dressed up as high standards.
If you're blocked, try writing something you know is bad on purpose. Give yourself permission to produce garbage for twenty minutes. You'll often find that the block lifts, because what felt like having nothing to say was actually your internal editor standing in the doorway, refusing to let anything through that wasn't already finished.
2. You've outgrown the thing you're writing and haven't admitted it yet
This one is harder to talk about because it sounds like quitting. But sometimes writer's block is a signal, and the signal is that the project you're working on no longer fits who you've become.
Zadie Smith has talked about scrapping hundreds of pages of a novel because she realized, deep into the draft, that she was writing someone else's book. The voice wasn't hers. The concerns weren't hers. She'd started the project as one writer and grown into another somewhere along the way, and the manuscript couldn't hold the change. She had to let it go and start over.
That takes a specific kind of honesty that most writing advice doesn't prepare you for. We're told to finish things. Push through. Discipline over inspiration. And that's usually right. But there are times when the resistance you feel sitting down to a project isn't laziness or fear. It's your gut telling you that you've moved on, and the writing hasn't moved with you. The block, in those cases, is a form of self-knowledge you haven't consciously caught up to yet.
I'm genuinely uncertain about where the line falls between "push through the resistance" and "listen to the resistance." I don't think there's a clean rule. But I've noticed that when the block is laziness, it lifts once you start typing. When the block is misalignment, starting to type makes it worse. The words come out forced and flat, and you can feel yourself performing a version of your own voice that you've already left behind.