In The News – Scientists discover the antidote to writer’s block

In The News – Articles Of Interest For Authors

Writer’s Block, the bane of every writer. Here comes science to the rescue! If you have ever suffered from this affliction, read on at the Freelancer’s Union Blog to find out which type of blocker you are and how to solve the problem!

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Scientists discover the antidote to writer’s block

by Laura Brockett Murphy Jul 15, 2016

Ah, writer’s block. It befalls the best of us. Sometimes it can be as mild as fifteen minutes of banging your head against the desk, but it can also be so severe that it takes years off your writing life – or brings it to a close altogether. Writer’s block engenders feelings of impotence, which creates a kind of cyclical reinforcement.

Luckily, psychologists have spent some time trying to figure out what happens when a writer stops writing. In her article for The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova covers research on writer’s block and remedies for the problem.

In the 1970’s and ‘80’s Yale University psychologists Jerome Singer and Michael Barrios recruited a diverse group of writers – some of whom were blocked and some of whom were fine. The psychologists found that all of the blocked writers were unhappy – and each unhappy in her own way.

The researchers were able to distill the blocked writers into 4 distinct types:

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