Get yourself a notebook, a pencil, some strange green coffee, and a hand model.
Next, leave a few clumps of baby’s breath (gypsophila) around and you’re good to go — your cats will eat it, barf all over everything you’ve ever loved, and you’ll forget all about writer’s block.
See how easy that was?
Nearly everyone who writes experiences some kind of “writer’s block,” although there are many different causes and nearly as many ways of responding to it as there are people who write.
You want to have written—you may even want to be writing—but for some inexplicable reason you haven’t and you aren’t.
Here are a just a few of the reasons some of us don’t write, and some helpful tips for getting past them.
- “I’m not motivated” (or “not in the mood”). The trick is that motivation doesn’t precede action. Action precedes motivation. It doesn’t take much action either. Research shows that if you dive into action whole heartedly, in 3 minutes and 17 seconds (on average☨), you will find your motivation and will be able to continue without effort.
- “My writing is going to suck, and I’ll be embarrassed!” Yes, it will suck. The secret is that every first draft sucks. Even popular, well-known authors usually wear a disguise and lock themselves in the janitor’s closet at the local YMCA when writing a first draft. The trick is to embrace the suck. Revel in it. Grin your biggest grin and charge that word bunker, pen soldier! (Not sure where that came from.)
- “I don’t have time!” Nice one, excuse-monkey. Tell me you haven’t looked at Facebook or Twitter or Instagram (or any of the other seven hundred million social apps) every twelve minutes over the past week. Or maybe you’ve been too busy to write, but not too busy to binge-watch Netflix? The trick is to reduce your expectations. (That’s actually the trick to life itself. Keep it to yourself—it’s a secret.) You don’t need two hours in a quiet room to write, you just need enough time to write one shitty first-draft sentence. You can do that while holding your breath. Try bringing a little notebook and pen with you everywhere you go, and jotting notes and sentences and doodles whenever you have a moment.
- “It’s too much! I want to write a novel, but I’ll never finish it.” The trick is: so what? Maybe the point is to be learning to be a better writer, not writing a novel that actually gets published? You think Ludwig van Beethoven never played scales? Used appropriately, “so what” is incredibly powerful. So What is also a song by Pink, and if you listen to that while writing the words will fly out of your fingers like you’re a metaphorical wood chipper. (Another amazing secret, just between us.)
Writer’s Block is no fun. But you know what? It’s how you know you’re a writer.
Well, that, and writing.
☨ — I totally made up the 3 minutes and 17 seconds number. I’ve heard “3 minutes” many times, but if anyone has actually done research and measured it I’m not aware of it.
This has been another 2 minute blog. I’ve been writing these every Tuesday and Friday, except when I don’t. I wrote this one on a Saturday. Thanks for reading!
