Every so often I sit down to write and realize I’ve accidentally invented a new form of performance art: staring at a blinking cursor for twenty minutes while coming up with increasingly implausible excuses not to type.

They call it “writer’s block,” but that phrase feels too clean, too engineered. Blocks are tidy, stackable. What I feel is more like quicksand, sinking deeper the more I thrash.

The advice columns always suggest rituals: light a candle, change locations, freewrite nonsense until the dam breaks. Sometimes those tricks work. Sometimes they just make me feel like I’m doing a parody of “a person who writes”.

The truth is simpler and less comforting: sometimes you don’t write because you’re afraid. Afraid it won’t be good enough. Afraid the idea you thought was brilliant in the shower turns out limp when put into words. Afraid that once written, you’ve revealed more about yourself than you intended.

I’ve started treating writer’s block not as an obstacle but as a compass. If I can’t bring myself to write, it usually means the thing I should be writing is the thing I’m avoiding. The draft feels too raw, or the subject I don’t want to be caught caring about.

The block doesn’t go away when I acknowledge it, but at least it stops pretending to be mysterious. It’s just fear, dressed up in silence.

And fear, at least, is something you can work through, one stubborn sentence at a time.