Goodreads asked E.P. Clark:

How do you deal with writer’s block?

E.P. Clark The harrowing experience of cranking out my dissertation and applying for academic jobs for several years in a row has really trained me to be able to write about all kinds of things all the time under all kinds of circumstances. A lot of the time now the act of starting to write allows me to bypass my higher mental controls and go straight for the text-generating subconscious, which I think is essential for writing. I think that's what a lot of people use drugs or alcohol to access, but for me pain and desperation were very effective! So being put in a situation where you HAVE to generate something and submit it according to a strict deadline can be very helpful, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time! In order to get to that state, I have some tricks, like writing by hand when writing on the computer seem too difficult or intimidating, and doing things to make the process less painful. For example, I listen to music. I have trained myself to have a Pavlovian response to music, such that it puts me in the mood to work. I have some go-to artists that I consider to be my "muses" when I need to write something really difficult. Kino (a Soviet band) got me through a lot of The Midnight Land, and I worked some of their lyrics into the book. My number-one groups recently have been Snow Patrol/Tired Pony, with Florence + The Machine, Of Monsters and Men, AWOLNation, and Ben Howard all tied for a close second, along with a bunch of Finnish artists. Somehow being exposed to something that's sort of like writing (I like to pay attention to the lyrics) but not exactly helps break down the barriers in my mind and allow the words to flow.

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