Review: Black Women Writers at Work
Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I love Toni Morrison’s take on "writer’s block:
"When I sit down in order to write, sometimes it’s there; sometimes it’s not. But that doesn’t bother me anymore. I tell my students there is such a thing as ‘writer’s block,’ and they should respect it. You shouldn’t write through it. It’s blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven’t got it right now. All the frustration and nuttiness that comes from ‘Oh, my God, I cannot write now’ should be displaced. It’s just a message to you saying, ‘That’s right, you can’t writer now, so don’t.’ We operate with deadlines, so facing the anxiety about the block has become a way of life. We get frightened about the fear. I can’t write like that. If i don’t have anything to say for three or four months, I just don’t write. When I read a book, I can always tell if the writer has written through a block. If he or she had just waited, it would’ve been better or different, or a little more natural. You can see the seams.
Diary of a mad reader 