The Bane of Writers: 6 Ways to Banish Writer’s Block
There comes a time in all creators’ lives where they find themselves in the desert. The barren wasteland of their mind. The pressures of the outside world crush them into oblivion and their creativity along with it. Any creator–every creator has been there at least once in their life. Those of us who cope with the mysterious Writer’s Block, or Creator’s Block, as I like to term it, have dealt with it enough that it’s easy to turn the soil of that barren wasteland and watch the forest grow.
Hi, I’m Kat! I’ll cut the flowery metaphors and get down to the real business at hand, Writer’s Block. Here’s the trick though, it’s not just writers that get the block. Any creator: artists, writers, musicians, you name the creator; they get the block too. Plenty of people don’t even realize that they are blocked in their day-to-day life. That’s a whole different philosophical blog that I’m not going into today, though many of the coping mechanisms for Writer’s Block can be used to correct daily issues too.
Let’s first talk about what is writer’s block.
Defining Writer’s Block
When you look up the phrase writer’s block, you’ll find that Google (any search engine really) will define it as the inability to create or write. Many of us, when starting out or even now after so many years of writing, will open out notebooks, blank pages, or stare at a canvas and freeze.
“I don’t have the energy right now.” “I don’t know what I’m doing.” “Why is it so hard?” Are all things that I know have come out of my mouth through my writing journey. I’ll shed some light on why these things happen.
I’m a mom of two, with (until 2023) a steady 9-3 job. I was a massage therapist at a studio and saw 25 clients a week (if they were all 1-hour clients). That takes a lot out of a person energetically. Then you add taking care of the house since my husband works longer hours. Then you add in meals and prep time. Time to be with my husband after the kids go to bed and so on. The days have always been long and with little to no help after a certain age range. That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone in my position even now when working for myself.
Sometimes I don’t have the energy to write. Sometimes I don’t remember even remotely what I was working on. Sometimes, I have no direction for my personal work to go in. These are all issues that I have come to understand as a part of everyday life. So how do I fix writer’s block? I allow myself to decompress through my writing.
Let’s ask you what your most common phrases are with the block before I ask one question that will put this a little more into perspective.
· How much do you have going on in your life?
· Are you dealing with burnout at work?
· Are you dealing with issues in your relationships?
· Do you have kids/pets/dependents of some kind?
· How much time do you take for yourself?
· Are you a perfectionist?
· Are you afraid of taking time for yourself?
· Do you procrastinate?
· What’s your to-do list look like?
These are all good things to think about when it comes to realizing where the creative block starts and how to use the tips I am going to explain to their best advantage. Now, here’s the fun question I came across while verifying my own tips and tricks, (thank you Jerry Jenkins for all your writing insight over the years), why is it only writers (creators) get blocks? A carpenter doesn’t get carpenter’s block, an accountant doesn’t get accounting blocks, right? So why is it only writers (creators) get the block?
I phrased it a little differently than Mr. Jenkins, but the question at its core is the same. Why is it that only creators get a block?
If you answered the question above, the answer is pretty simple. You’ve worked yourself so hard that you’ve neglected the part of you that desires to create. Fear of being unable to accomplish daily tasks or not being able to find the time to the creating is where it begins. Fear of the blank page. Fear of your work in progress (WIP) never getting finished or leaving your own hands. Pressure is the second biggest. Pressure of being a good person, mom, dad, worker, housekeeper, etc. Pressure from society because, well, “writing isn’t a real job”. Fun fact, it is!
So, you ask, how do you fix it? How do you fix this fear? This pressure? How do you cope? Let’s look at my first way to banish Writer’s Block.
Tip 1 For Banishing Writer’s Block: Take a Break
I can hear the scoffs. “I take breaks, but that gets me nowhere in writing!” Very true, but I wasn’t referring to writing. Allow yourself 5 minutes of silence. Disconnect from life for 10 minutes. Take a walk in nature. Meditate and push away the intrusive thoughts coming from your mental to-do list. This is what I mean by taking a break.
Resetting yourself in life allows you to reset your creativity. A bath while listening to music is my best reset. The concept of adding a break into your writing will help you write more. Write better even. I have found the best days for me writing are when I’m also doing laundry. So, pick a task to add to the days you can write. If you don’t have a day to dedicate, turn your phone on airplane mode or find an app that turns off notifications for the length of time you have for writing. This gives you a break from the outside influences.
Another way to take a break is to read. Or listen to an audiobook. This is yet another tip I have.
Tip 2 For Banishing Writer’s Block: Read, Read, and Read Some More
You’ve often been told; write the story you want to read. The adage is, “because you’re gonna read it a million times.” The adage isn’t wrong. In the name of taking a break, however, when I say read sometimes you need to have outside influences like the works of other authors you enjoy. It can help trigger something that you didn’t realize you need. Also known as inspiration.
I’ve found that if I reread my works from the beginning, (a difficult task with the current WIP), that it helps me remember what I have done and aids in the task of remembering the direction I’m going.
Reading isn’t the only way to continue a story, though. Sometimes when you reach the end of what you’ve written, things still don’t want to flow. Maybe sitting at the computer is too hard. Your little one wants to help you write (as mine often does when I am working). Your cat is insistent that they sleep on your wrists while you’re typing. Your mind is wandering too much and too far for you to control. Rabbit holes have led you down a warren of click bait research that makes no sense, and you can’t remember what you were looking up.
This is where tip #3 comes in.
Tip 3 For Banishing Writer’s Block: Change Mediums
Likely as not as a writer you don’t think about Mediums to work in. Here’s what most are used to: Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Notepad, Scrivener, etc. All electronic forms of writing. Typing your work is a medium of writing, as is handwriting, and recording. These are all different forms of writing that I categorize as mediums of writing. When the blank document begins to scare the crap out of you or you can’t look at it without staring for ten seconds, then closing it. Or have found yourself doom scrolling through Facebook after looking up information on something else entirely. My suggestion is to change mediums.
I have four WIPs at the best of times that I work through. I also have four notebooks that are associated with each of those WIPs because that is the easiest medium to change to. Especially when my kiddos just want to pound on the keys like mommy does. So, I change mediums and take both my wandering mind and theirs to pencil and paper. Most of my first three books, StormBringer, The Second Soul, and The Heart of Isgradine, were written in my car to and from the Studio where I worked.
It’s amazing how much you can cover of your story in a thirty-minute time span twice a day, five days a week. For the longest time, I struggled to lean out of an auditory medium into another until over a month of reading and rereading my works. That’s where tip 4 comes in.
Tip 4 For Banishing Writer’s Block: Just Keep Going
Finding Nemo came out while I was in middle school and so was a hit for me and my younger cousins, who would often end up at my house. When it came to my desert after my career shift, I more often than not sat there just like Dory and chanted, “Just keep writing. Just keep writing. What do we do? We write, write, write.” It honestly didn’t matter what I was writing, so long as I was writing.
Some of the work I did back then has found its way into the current series, though rather polished and warped from where it began. Most of it, though, is in a folder that I deem ‘too dark for my own good.’ As I mentioned above, I write to relieve my stress. It was very stressful back then.
It’s wiser to sit there and just continue writing, no matter what you feel. If it’s two words, 10 words, or 2000 words, it’s still better than nothing. And I know this seems at odds from some things that I have mentioned above. But sometimes it’s best to just sit there and write about what you’re feeling during the day.
That brings us to the next tip.
Tip 5 For Banishing Writer’s Block: Free Write and Info Dumping
So when we talk about writing and keep writing, what we mean is free writing or info dumping. You don’t have to have a theme for your writing or a specific scene in mind. A free write is just that, it’s writing. Just write what comes to mind. Have a conversation with yourself or with your favorite TV character. Have a conversation with one of your characters. It doesn’t have to be about anything in particular. The weather is just fine!
When I refer to info dumping, I mean, if you are stuck in a particular area of your story, there is nothing wrong with writing all the information surrounding the scene you were stuck on. I’ve found myself able to see multiple scenes or chapters ahead of where I got stuck and once those pieces are out, everything else flowed afterwards.
What you might find difficult about free writing or info dumping is that everything still needs to be perfect. This is something that I have found stalls out a lot of my fellow writer friends. Especially in rereading their own work for inspiration.
This is where the final tip comes in.
Tip 6 For Banishing Writer’s Block: Face Your Perfectionist in the Mirror
“I’m not a perfectionist!” “There’s no such thing as perfection.” “What do you mean, face it in the mirror?” These are all the things that I’ve heard and told myself. We (my generation and before) learned the philosophy, “practice makes perfect.” Now, my kids have, “practice makes progress.” This is only part of what I am talking about for facing your inner perfectionist.
We all have one, sometimes in the voices of our parents, partners, teachers, and others. Sometimes it’s our own hyper critical voice. This comes across in our writing when we go back through to edit our work. I met a writer friend who would write a single sentence, then go back and edit that sentence and would never get anywhere.
These pathways, these inner editors, critics, perfectionists, are the essence of failure and the fear of failure. That’s why you need to face them. Find a way to separate your perfectionist from your writing. Let it be your editor after you’ve completed the writing. Leave out that comma, leave out that period, leave the word misspelled. I have an entire 350+ page manuscript that the first page of edits is 75% correcting punctuation.
It took me time to separate that part of myself, though. So, if you sit there and are the one sentence editor, start by making it one paragraph. After a week, make it one page instead of a paragraph, then another, then a chapter, and so forth. The perfectionist is your editor. The monkey throwing mud and sh*t, that’s your writer.
Where do you go from here?
Armed with some tips from me, and in the spirit of your inner Dory, “Just keep writing!” The only thing giving you writer’s block is the way you perceive and mold your own world. So even if it’s two words or two thousand. Progress is progress. If you get stuck, figure out why. Dishes aren’t done? Go do them, then come back. Laundry isn’t done? Start a load in the wash, then sit down and write till it stops. Kids won’t leave you alone? Grab a pen and pencil and jot down notes while you play or watch their crazy antics.
Who knows, maybe they trigger the next scene to flow freely. Hopefully, one or more of my tips will help you get those gears moving with a little more grease! Let me know in the comments if one of these methods works for you. Or if you have other methods to get rid of writer’s blocks! And don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter. You’ll receive tips, tricks, and writing prompts in your inbox once a month from me.
