Adichie on writer's block

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest novel Dream Count came out earlier this year. While on the promo circuit, Adichie described the years long interregnum between the publication of her last novel Americanah, which I enjoyed, and her latest, thus:

I didn’t want to leave such a long gap between novels. When I got pregnant [with her daughter], something just happened. I had a number of years in which I was almost existentially frightened that I wouldn’t write again. It was unbearable.

There are expressions like ‘writer’s block’ I don’t like to use because I’m superstitious. But I had many years in which I felt cast out from my creative self, cast out from the part of me that imagines and creates; I just could not reach it. I could write nonfiction, that was fine. But that’s not what my heart wanted.

It's her description of feeling "cast out from my creative self" that aptly evokes the pain of being exiled from the sacred, creative, psychic space, that I found particularly resonant.

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