§ 162. Writer’s block

Let’s have a simple experiment. Without stopping, let’s say all the words we know (or ask a friend to do this). The first ten words will come at once. Then we will look for and name objects in the room – maybe ten of those. Then we remember a few unusual words from the far distant end of our vocabulary. Abd then we stop, because we run out of words.

If we try to describe anything known to us with our words, there will be no word deficiency. One description will be good, another one not so – that will tell the difference in the describer’s skill. But noone will stop looking for the next needed word in a simple story.

An “idea crisis” can only happen, if the designer sets out aiming to think of something new and unusual.

Something new and unusual cannot be thought up – it can only be discovered while working on a specific, defined goal. It’s the same difference as there is between recitation of words and a story.

A writer’s block is a dead end of a senseless way.

© art.lebedev, my translation from Russian