This opinion makes me unpopular among some of my fellow writers, but that’s okay. I’ve had unpopular opinions before and so far no one has kicked my ass for them. Good thing I’m a big dude, I suppose.

But writer’s block – I don’t believe in it. I think it’s a crutch for people who are afraid or lazy and don’t want to admit that they’re afraid or lazy. Lazy is easy to understand – I wouldn’t be this fat if I didn’t have a good helping of lazy to go along with my love of all things deep-fried. But afraid? What does a writer have to be afraid of? Even back in the “give me liberty or give me death” days, most people could write whatever they wanted without fear of actual dangerous physical repercussions. Even Salman Rushdie, despite his famous fatwah, is still alive and kicking, although I hear his vacation home in Tehran stands vacant most of the year.

So what are writers afraid of? I was pondering this last night as I sat in front of my computer, staring at a blinking cursor on a white page. I’d reached the climax of my next book, the sequel to Hard Day’s Knight, and I was stuck. I wasn’t stuck because I didn’t know where the scene was going to go, I was stuck because I was afraid that everything I’d written to that point was crap. You see, HDK has just started to sell, and it’s starting to get some positive reviews. And some of the reviews are saying exactly what I wanted people to get from the book. And all that is great! I love the fact that people are enjoying the book, and I love the fact that some of the influences that I wanted to homage in the book are coming through.

But while I’m writing the sequel I should stay very far away from those comments, no matter how encouraging. Because as soon as I started thinking “What if this book isn’t as good?” I lost the ability to move forward. I sat there for a good half hour, not worrying about anything except that the people who enjoyed Book 1 would feel let down by Book 2. Because I’ve been there. I have so many of those best first albums, those flashes of lightning in a bottle that never shone so brightly again. So I got myself good and stuck because I was afraid of writing crap.

Then I picked up a couple of books off my shelf, flipped through the pages, and realized that they’re abject crap. And I love every page. Let’s face it, kiddies, I’m writing genre fiction. I write novels about vampire detectives with smart mouths and comic book addictions. I ain’t shooting for War and Peace here. Hell, getting to Angels and Demons is enough of a stretch. Once I realized that I owe more of my literary heritage to the penny dreadfuls than the complete works of Shakespeare, I was okay, and I got about 1,500 words in last night. Tonight I’m going to bulldoze through the big fight scene at the end, and by the end of the week, I should be done with the denouement. That’ll put me two months ahead of schedule, so maybe I’ll take a week off and plot out some other ideas. Then on to editing, formatting, cover art and all those other things.

So that’s my writer’s block – it wasn’t writer’s block, just writer’s chickenshit. And I think that happens way more often than anything else, if we’d just be brave enough to admit it.

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