Express Yourself

The Limiting Belief Behind the Worst Kind of Writer’s Block

Shame is probably the biggest obstacle for writers. Here’s how to confront it.

Thomas Page McBee
Human Parts
Published in
10 min readMar 11, 2021

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Quirky photo symbolizing writer’s block. Person sitting at typewriter with a bunch of crumpled paper.
Photo: Drew Coffman/Flickr

I’ve had a lot of lives as a writer. I started out as a poet. At 26, I was in grad school for fiction. By 29, I freelanced personal essays and worked as an editor at an alt-weekly…

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Thomas Page McBee
Human Parts

Writer exploring the relationship between gender, culture, and history. Most recent book: Amateur (Scribner). Essays/reporting: NYT, The Atlantic, GQ, more.