This blog is focused around the ever-looming and ever-stressful writer’s block. There are people who don’t believe it’s real, but whether you call it writer’s block or just a feeling of being stuck somewhere, we have all experienced the inability to make the creativity happen. Below, we’ll get into some of the ways we can solve some aspects of writers block with a thank you to my writing community on Discord for giving me some of these questions to work through!
Why are you stuck?
Our first step is to ask this question and answer it honestly. This may take some time. We need to sit with this question for a bit if we’re going to figure out what’s causing us to be blocked. Sometimes this blockage is external, and the answer might be that you can’t write right now. However, other things can be circumvented. But if you’re staring at a blank page, spinning your wheels, your first stop will be to ask yourself why.
The answer to a few of the more common problems are below, but sometimes our answer is that we are burned out, that life has no space for creativity right now, or we are having an issue stopping us (mental health, medication, physical health). If that’s the answer, we’ll work on that, too.
1) I’m stuck because I don’t know what to write next.
If you’ve written yourself into the corner or don’t know the next step in your story, the first thing to do is to look backwards. Look at your story thus far and write an outline of it. I don’t mean write what’s next, but write a rough description of what your story is at the moment. Once you’ve got your bird’s eye view you might well see a path forward.
Also, you should take a look at what you want the end of your story to look like. What’s the last thing you want to have happen? Where does it all go? If you have that in mind, write whatever will take you toward that end. It’s all about steps.
2) I feel like it won’t be perfect.
I’ve worked with a lot of authors who fight with this. It’s a tough thing to surmount, but if we’re honest with ourselves, perfect is impossible. Perfect isn’t real. Instead, we should aim for good. Good is good enough. If you sit around waiting for the perfect story, the perfect characters, and the perfect time to write, you won’t get anywhere, and in the end you will be frustrated, miserable, and unable to progress. Instead, embrace the suck.
Your first draft will be awful, and that’s okay. The first time a violinist picks up the instrument, they sound like a sack of cats going down a staircase. I teach beginning violin, so I know exactly what that sounds like. Writing is no different. Your initial story will suck, and that’s okay because once you’ve written it, you can go back and fix things before anybody sees it! You are not obligated to stick with what you write first. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. As you get more practice your writing will improve, and your first drafts will suck somewhat less. But they’ll never be gold. And that’s okay.
3) I feel like it’s too big for me to start with.
4) I don’t feel inspired.
5) I don’t have the time.
6) I feel burned out and don’t have the energy.
Burnout is a specific problem brought on by a lot of factors. If you’re fighting with burnout, you aren’t doing yourself any favors by agonizing over your writing. Instead, you should focus on recovery. Take some time and relax, meditate, exercise, or whatever active recovery method you have that will help bring you back to baseline. Sometimes the answer may be to just rest. That’s an okay thing to have to do sometimes, despite what our world tells us so frequently.
Don’t worry too much. Your writing will be there when you come back and feel like you’re able to do it again. Be kind to yourself for now and give yourself permission to rest.
7) I have no real energy for the project until the last minute.
As someone with ADHD, I am intimately familiar with this experience. Without deadlines, I frequently don’t get anything done. If I do have a deadline, I tend to put things off until it becomes too urgent to ignore. While I don’t have a quick fix for this, I suggest that you may find the sprints I mentioned above helpful. Also, join a writing group to help you stay focused and keep you accountable. If you’re sprinting and working with other authors, then you may well discover that you are able to get more finished with more excitement than you could otherwise. Your mileage may vary, but it’s what’s worked for me.
8) I am not excited about the project.
Then maybe that’s not the project you should be working on right now. If you aren’t locked into this specific project for a reason (a contract, a release schedule, etc.) then take a break from it and give that project a little time to relax and figure itself out. Sometimes we need to let our subconscious work, and we’ll have a sudden breakthrough when we least expect it.
Right now, I have two novel series other than Smoke & Magic sitting on my hard drive with one or two books in each. I hit a point where those series just weren’t clicking for me, so I put them down. I will finish them someday and share them with the world, but I needed to chase my passion which, right now, is Smoke & Magic. And now that I’ve got the first book out, I ought to continue with it in order to keep my fans happy because angry and disappointed fans are never a good thing!
9) I feel distracted and cannot focus.
Again, being an ADHD author, I feel this in my soul. I combat this by setting boundaries with those around me while I’m writing, putting on my headphones with lyric-less music that inspires me to write the scene I’m working on, and then I turn on “focus mode” on my writing software. It hides everything else on my screen except for the document. Further, I turn my cell phone notifications off so only phone calls will come in and pull me out. Everything else can wait for a few hours, and if there is an emergency, then my family can call me or contact my husband who will throw things at my head until I surface.
Getting into a flow state can be a challenge, but creating space in my schedule that’s just for my writing and treating it with the same importance that I treat other vital activities is important, and it is the only thing that ensure I will get butt-in-seat time that isn’t interrupted by my favorite YouTuber releasing a video and me scuttling off to go look.
10) I received previous negative feedback that destroyed my confidence.
Of all the things on this list that might be a struggle for a person, this is the second of the only two we cannot fix without extra help. The other one is burnout, since that’s more of a life problem than anything. As someone who is a veteran of a space where a person in charge was cruel to many people and who tore their writing apart in ways that did damage to them as people, I can say that the real problem here may well be trauma.
If someone seriously hurt you and damaged your self-worth and confidence to this degree, you may want to consider talking to a therapist. And I don’t mean that flippantly. I was in therapy for many years and am going to be returning to deal with some of my demons that have raised their heads lately. If you have access to it, mental health counseling can make a hug difference. If you do not have access to it, I do have some suggestions and am not going to leave you hanging.
First, you need to get back into the saddle. Just start writing for you. Find the things that made/make you happy to write about and go back to your roots. It might be smutty fanfic or short stories about tea cozies. It makes no difference. Just find things that make you happy to start with.
Once you’ve re-discovered your happy place, start looking for a community of wholesome people who want to lift you up. There are a LOT of writing communities out there chock full of writers like this. A rising tide lifts all ships, and we authors aren’t in competition with one another in the traditional sense. Whether it’s finding a couple writer friends and going for coffee once a week or an online community you can feel safe in, find your people. Having a community is vitally important, so don’t dismiss the idea out of hand.
Finally, when you have a community you trust, start sharing little pieces as you can and let people know that you’ve been hurt before and are looking for support and community. Be prepared for some critique, but when it’s done with love and support in mind, critique stings far less. Either that or talk to a writing coach or an editor if you want to get some helpful, positive feedback. I’ve worked with authors who have been hurt before, and the first thing we do is establish a foundation of trust. It takes time, and sometimes it means we do the dance a little longer, but you will find that your confidence grows as you learn.
Above all, be kind to yourself. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your writing is, you can always improve, grow, and find people who want to share your journey. You don’t need to do this alone, and being hurt doesn’t make you worthless. Your story matters.
