Is the solution to a creative block ... sympathy?

“Your kindness is the breath of life to me.”

Welcome to the 127th issue of Subtle Maneuvers and the final installment of my second-annual #blocktober series on creative blocks.

(For more on my own history of blocks, see this post from last year.)

Four weeks ago, I kicked off the series with the idea that power doesn’t answer to the will, a phrase lifted from George Gissing’s 1891 novel New Grub Street, whose protagonist, Edwin Reardon, suffers from a fearsome case of writer’s block. But I neglected to mention that Reardon has his own ideas about what would solve his block—and they involve his pragmatic young wife, Amy.

Amy, you may recall, greets Reardon’s block with rational, straightforward problem-solving. When Reardon despairs over finishing his next novel by Christmas, Amy says: “I really can’t see why you shouldn’t. Just do a certain number of pages every day. Good or bad, never mind; let the pages be finished.”

Perfectly good advice, no? Even more sensibly, Amy advises her husband to take a vacation before he gets back to work—which, as some of you pointed out in the comments, seems like the best possible remedy.

But this isn’t what Reardon wants to hear, or it’s not the main thing he wants to hear. As Amy continues problem-solving for him, he only grows more despairing. Finally, he blurts out: