I was so fortunate that I didn’t have any pressures or real hard deadlines to meet, so when I did have a block I could wait it out. I think most of the time when I did have a block, it usually came from outside distractions—I allowed myself to become distracted. Sometimes an audition, a talk I would have to give or conceiving a new workshop…would take a lot of my concentration. But if I was being 100 percent honest with myself, I would have to say I allowed those distractions to block me. It really is a long journey writing a book and sometimes I think I fell into having excuses of why I didn’t write anything that day or week…or even month. But that is a real trap to fall into. If you let it go too long between writings, you tend to lose that connection to your story. (I think that’s one of the reasons so many of us always talk about writing a book but never finish.) I think my saving grace was my wife’s constant loving interest—she was the one that kept me writing. Having said all that, there were times when I just was truly blocked.

I think my writer’s block usually came because of what I was feeding my mind. Sometimes when I was researching something, I would get so distracted that I ended up over researching and filling my mind with so many details that it became completely overstuffed…I would be looking up the meaning of a name then that led me to some tradition to which led me to that country and maybe something to do with that tradition…which would lead me to GOD knows where!

I know many times I just overdosed on researching…and that would lead me so far from maybe just ONE line I was writing. And after getting so overdosed…well, then I found it so hard to get back to writing. My head just hurt too much!  It would have been better for me to just write something—fill that little empty space with the first words that came and then move on. If I had just written a little idea down and moved on, it would have saved me from being blocked so many times. One thing I learned through this process though is that: When you’re writing, just write!!! It is always easier to erase or delete something later than to get stuck in thinking about all the ways to write it…and I think I did that a lot to myself.