Scrolling through my Feedly feed yesterday, I came to Copyblogger’s interview with bestselling author Hugh Howey, who wrote and self-published Wool.

It was a Q-and-A, and one question in particular caught my eye:

Do you believe in “writer’s block”? If so, how do you avoid it?

Howey’s answer:

“Other people say it happens, and I don’t feel that I have the right to disbelieve them. It doesn’t happen to me. What I get is the urge to procrastinate or do something other than writing. Or I feel disgusted with my current output and want to just stop.

“The key is to write through that and know you’ll delete the bad bits later.”

I think he nailed it. When I get writer’s block, it’s less inability to write anything at all and more desire to do anything but write. That’s when baking cookies or cleaning out the pantry (or pinning a slew of recipes I’ll probably never have time to make) starts to sound mighty appealing.

So next time that urge hits, I’ll have to try writing through it.

I can always delete anything unsalvageable.