Trenton Lee Stewart on Writer's Block

     These days, while driving to and from school, my kids and I have been riveted to the audio recording of "The Mysterious Benedict Society". Since author Trenton Lee Stewart is such a mind-bogglingly good writer, I thought I'd see if I could find any words of wisdom from him on the Internet.
     On the web page of the literary journal "Toasted Cheese", I found a great interview with Mr. Stewart. My favorite passage was in answer to a question about writer's block. (Long story short...Don't plan to write. Just write!)

"It seems to me that writer’s block is not so much a lack of ideas as it is a flare-up of perfectionism: the writer doesn’t want to put something bad on the page, and everything he or she can think of seems bad. When this happens to me (as it occasionally does) I remind myself that the act of writing is different from thinking about what to write, that if I will just start laying down prose I will probably discover something to help me move forward. I may need to discard what I’ve written, or it may reveal to me that I need to be writing something different, but one way or another the act of writing tends to eliminate the act of fretting before a blank page."
   ~ Trenton Lee Stewart