and argued that a writer is like a psychoanalyst, saying that a writer “unconsciously tries to solve his inner problems via the sublimatory medium of writing.” A blocked writer is actually blocked psychologically—and the way to “unblock” that writer is through therapy. Solve the personal psy- chological problem and you remove the blockage. Why does this matter? Because there has been a ton of stuff written since then about writ- er’s block, and most of it is wrong. The original guy got it (basically) right. WHAT CAUSES WRITER’S BLOCK? Even though writer’s block always boils down to a “personal psy- chological problem” causing it, those psychological problems fall into three main buckets. The first one is the biggest and totally obvious one: FEAR Writers are human, and thus afraid. They’re afraid of taking risks, they’re afraid of being judged, they’re afraid of writing a bad book, but mostly—they are afraid of looking foolish. This is the human condition, and the best thing to do is, if it’s true—admit you are afraid. Then you can deal with it (I discuss solutions in the next section). The second fear is not so much a direct fear, but an indirect fear. You know the “fight or flight” response? Well, in the literature it’s actually called the “fight, flight, or freeze” response, and “freeze” is a big one in writer’s block. I usually refer to this as: 432 · ThE SCriBE METhOD