When authors talk about writer’s block they discuss it as a fait accompli…something that they’re just destined to experience. It’s part of being an author, or is it? While there are many reasons why a story or character may not flow onto the page as easily as we want, what often is attributed to writer’s block can be traced to a single thing.

The good news is once you learn how to look for signs of this one thing in your writing life, you’ll see it in other areas of your life. And as I talk about in an upcoming episode of the Holistic Author Show, removing this one thing can also help ease burnout and stress.

What is it?

Dissonance.

I could parrot the dictionary definition of dissonance. If you’re a longtime reader of my blogs, that’s actually the place where I like to start. But that also wouldn’t be quite explaining how dissonance affects our writing, and our life in general.

As neurodivergent authors, we often wear masks when dealing with other individuals, whether virtually or in-person. Putting on those masks takes energy. That energy has to come from somewhere, and in my experience ,it comes from our creativity and our ability to accomplish the tasks we want to do.

I feel like the musical definition of dissonance works here too. The clashing of sounds that’s unpleasant on our ears also happens in our mind. It’s the clashing of tasks, the clashing of our environment, our masks, and our true selves. Like someone standing behind you and banging cymbals in your ear, or the tuneless clang-clang of the monkey toy playing symbols, it keeps you from being able to focus. More importantly for authors dissonance makes it difficult for us to draw on our well of inner creativity and storytelling.

It doesn’t matter if we’re writing nonfiction or fiction. I’ve sat and stared at a paper I was enthusiastic to write for college and my mind simply turned to static and I’ve also had the same thing happening when diving into the fictional worlds I’ve created and love. I’m old enough to envision this as the “snow” on a television set.

What is this dissonance? It’s when we have conflicting needs in our environment and within ourselves. For neurodivergent authors, it can often be the challenge of feeling as if we should mask our true selves, while trying to reveal those same true selves through our writing. It can be sensory needs, or not taking breaks between tasks. Wherever we find our inner and outer needs conflicting, that’s dissonance, and where at all possible, removing it from our minds and our lives has beneficial effects all around.

Want to talk more about this? Reach out! I’ll be opening some spaces for affordable author coaching soon!