Writer's Block
- Ray Hargens Hire
- Jan 21, 2022
- 4 min read
Writers Block Q&A
With
Ray Hargens Hire
Q: Is writer’s block real?
A: I often tell people who claim to be struggling from the fated ‘writer’s block’ that there is no such thing—per se. It’s not that writer’s block is a myth; it’s more that it’s a misnomer. There is nothing blocking your ideas from flowing onto paper or into song, but there is something causing them to hang up. It should be called ‘Writer’s Hang-Up.’ A blockage makes you think the only way out is forward, that there is something standing in the way of progress. My belief? You’re caught on something from your past—often, your most recent past.
Ever walked past a door and had one of the belt loops on your jeans snag on the handle? Or yanked too hard on a seatbelt, only to have it lock up and stop you dead? The key lessons here: Pay attention—watch where you're going to avoid hang-ups. And don’t get angry or frustrated—you’ll only make it worse.
Q: So what are these hang-ups we need to look out for?
A: Life, basically. Responsibilities, stress, burnout. Passion (whatever that even means) can wane—often in line with the seasons. Emotional turmoil, interpersonal drama, self-doubt, unrealistic expectations. And then there’s the music itself. Sometimes, the problem is you—your ideas about your own work, your fear of not meeting some imagined standard. A lot of hang-ups come from unresolved issues—jagged edges in your past that snag you when your mind tries to move forward.
Think of writing as a movement between different layers of consciousness—the subconscious (everything that makes you you) and the superconscious (everything you could create). If you can move freely between the two, ideas flow. But if there’s an unresolved issue in the subconscious, that transition becomes impossible. Your brain fixates. Every time a thought brushes against that sore spot, your creative flow halts. And if you keep ignoring the issue? You stay stuck.
Q: How do you identify the source of the hang-ups?
A: Sometimes, it’s obvious. A breakup, a failure, an identity crisis. Other times, it’s layered—like sediment in a riverbed, stacking up over years. I’ve worked with people who needed deep psychological therapy to dig up their ‘meta hang-up’—the root cause that had spawned dozens of smaller ones.
Take this young songwriter I worked with during lockdown. He couldn’t write. Blocked, frustrated. So, we dug in. His problem? He had no real sense of identity. Online, he’d built this character—a version of himself that was prolific, confident, successful. But in reality? He barely wrote any music. His songs had no substance because he had no substance. He was too busy comparing himself to what others appeared to be achieving. His creative flow was blocked because he wasn’t doing the work. He was a songwriter in name only. His confidence was a performance, not a product of competence.
And competence? That only comes from doing the work. You have to write ten stinkers before you get one belter. You have to let those stinkers disappear into the ether. If you post every scrap of unfinished work online, pretending you’re some prolific artist, the world will let you know when you’re not. And that kind of exposure can be another hang-up.
Q: What happened to that songwriter?
A: I told him to take a month off social media. Focus only on writing. He lasted ten days. But in those ten days? He wrote a song he was genuinely proud of. Of course, he couldn’t resist posting it online immediately—ending his ‘hiatus’—but that was fine. Because now he knew the problem: distraction. Remove distraction, increase flow. It’s simple.
Q: How do we remove the hang-ups?
A: Write. Journaling is a game-changer. Writing smooths out the rough edges in your subconscious, making the transition to the superconscious easier. Talk to someone. A friend, a bandmate, a therapist. Or talk to yourself. If you think everything you write is terrible—why? If you think you’re not good enough—why? If confidence is the issue, how do you build it? By doing the work. Bad songs are still songs.
Sometimes, the hang-up is a relationship. A breakup can fuel a songwriter—unless they were the heartbreaker. Then, guilt takes over, and guilt is a creativity killer. Fear is another big one. If people don’t like your work, does that mean they don’t like you? Artists pour themselves into their work, so criticism stings. There are two ways around this: Detach from your work (hard, but possible), or own it completely—so completely that no one else’s opinion matters. I recommend a mix of both. Love your work enough to share it, but let go of how people react. Once a song leaves your mind, it lives in someone else’s. It takes on their meaning. It’s not yours anymore.
Q: What do you mean by cognitive expenditure?
A: Simply put—songwriting is hard.
From a neuroscience perspective, it’s brutal. You’re using multiple brain regions at once. Listening to music? That activates the visual cortex in musicians, but the auditory cortex in non-musicians. That means musicians see sound. Then there’s lyric-writing—language processing in the left hemisphere, melodic structure in the right. And if you’re playing an instrument while writing? You’re engaging motor functions, timing coordination, memory retrieval, emotional processing. It’s a mental marathon.
This is why I tell people to stop being so hard on themselves. If you’re struggling to write, remember—what you’re trying to do is really, really difficult. The fact that you can do it at all? That’s a talent most people don’t have. Celebrate that. Honour it. Keep doing it. Because at the end of the day—bad songs and good songs are still songs. And bad writing is always better than no writing at all.
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