Nobody cares, embrace it (my cure for writer’s block)

I got a new desk chair for Christmas. That must be the reason the words are landing like a slow drip on the screen tonight, each sentence a new pulled tooth.

Now I’m mixing metaphors, dammit.

I switch out the chair with my old one. Same thing. Nothing is coming to me. I’m wordless.

Maybe it’s the New Year. Maybe my ability to write disappeared, Cinderella-like, when the clock struck midnight in 2024. Or maybe it’s the new chair. Or maybe it’s the clanking in the damn dryer next to my basement office.

I panic. I stand then slow-jog up the stairs into an empty kitchen. I’m not hungry but I search in the refrigerator like there’s a clue in there—somewhere—to explain this, something that might unlock my writer’s block.

I walk back into the basement, switch the desk chairs again then I remember: Nobody cares. Nobody cares if I ever write again, and this is the most liberating thought in the world.

This isn’t my original idea, of course. I was first introduced to it while watching an interview with author Dennis Lehane, the Boston native who wrote the best-selling novels “Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “Shutter Island.” In the interview, Lehane explains how he carried around a three-by-five card with the words “Nobody cares” scrawled on it when he was starting as a writer.

“Nobody gives a shit. Nobody cares,” Lehane says. “There’s no weight on you. Nobody is keeping score. Nobody is watching you and tabulating whether or not you’re good enough. Relax with that concept. Nobody cares.”

Since realizing this, my bouts of writer’s block—such as the episode I just described—have been minimal and generally don’t last more than a day or so, until I’m ready to “relax with the concept” that nobody cares. Nobody cares if I publish another word in my lifetime, and nobody’s life is going to be severely impacted, one way or another. Nobody needs my words as sustenance to survive.

There’s very little at stake here, so I might as well sit back and enjoy the process of composition.

Reciprocally, Lehane’s advice also has a way of putting me in my place. Like most writers, an ego is essential to doing what we do. It requires a certain audacity to believe that what you have to say is so important that it should be shared with the masses. And this belief can lead to a certain arrogance—imagine that, a pretentious writer!

An old professor of mine, Joe Monninger gave a handout to our undergraduate fiction writing class in the 1990s where he wrote (and I’m probably paraphrasing): “Being a writer does not absolve one from being a decent human being.”

That sentiment—essentially telling writers to stop acting like dicks—along with remembering that nobody cares, carries me through the days when I’m trying too hard to sound profound.

It turns out that it was never the chair, or the New Year. It was me, taking myself too seriously, that caused the block. But nobody cares, and let’s keep it that way.