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The main idea behind this book is that writer’s block can be cleared by opening the channel of communication between the two sides of the brain. The author is a psychologist and writer who has treated a lot of people with writer’s block—as well as dealt with her own writer’s block. The exercises throughout the book involve having your dominant and non-dominant hands respond to certain questions. The author believes that the conflict between the left side of the brain (the logical and adult-like side) and the right side of the brain (the emotional and childlike side) is the cause of writer’s block. So being more like a three-year-old, the right side of our brain will throw a temper tantrum and refuse to do things at the most inappropriate times. If we can recognize this conflict, start listening to both sides of the brain, and allow ourselves choices, then we should be able to overcome writer’s block and get down to work.
The title of this book is not an accurate reflection of how long it will take to clear your writer’s block. Unless you can spend all day reading 250 pages and completing the exercise, there’s no chance of getting through this book in 10 days. The 10 days actually comes into effect at the end of the book, where the reader spends 10 days completing task-sprinting charts—and, with any luck, writing.
I went through most of the exercises in this book, answering the questions with my left and right hands as required, but I didn’t encounter much conflict between the two. The author’s analyses of her own responses were a lot more meaningful than anything I could come up with. So either I don’t have much conflict between the two sides of my brain, or I couldn’t access the right side of my brain enough to listen.
For me, I don’t think the book worked as well as it’s supposed to, but the author has a lot of good ideas, which I plan on continuing. The first is the idea of giving ourselves rewards. Those of us who feel the need to write probably feel that writing itself should be the reward. But writing is work. Some of us don’t even get paid for this work, so we need to reward ourselves when we’ve spent time on it.
The other idea I like is finding the best time to write and finding the energy to write. The author gives plenty of ideas on how to achieve the ideal state for writing—such as doing Yoga, taking a brisk walk, eating complex carbohydrates, or drinking green tea. She also points out the bad stuff that writers will usually turn to in order to get that high that will keep them going for at least a limited amount of time—coffee, chocolate, candy, and ice cream, just to name a few. While reading this chapter, I had the urge to do some Yoga and drink some green tea; however, it was much easier to ask my husband to pass me the Cheesies. In fact, the evidence is still on the book. I was happy to read later in the chapter that the author used a combination of the good stuff and bad stuff to get her through writing this book. Basically she gave herself choices.
Overall, I think this book is worth the read. Just don’t plan on doing it in 10 days, and don’t plan on anything changing without putting the work into it.
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