Fighting Writer's Block

​By Madeline

Every writer, whether you’re a casual writer jotting character and story ideas or an aspiring novelist, dreads writer’s block. It carries taboo with a slight mention and seems to sneak up on you and strike before you realize what’s happening. Writer’s block is a sneaky, tricky, annoying thing. It feels like constantly reaching for something and never being able to fully grasp it. 

Unfortunately, I haven’t cracked the code to preventing writer’s block. Nor have I ever heard of anyone who has. Writer’s block has no time limit either, stretching on from anything from two weeks to two years to an endless mental block. There are some tips and tricks that I have used myself though that give the writer a few ways to fight back against writer’s block. 

Experience: 
I’ve been fighting creative writer’s block for over a year. It started at the beginning of quarantine when everything seemed to be falling apart and no one knew what came next. As I had to adjust to online classes and the reality of being stuck inside with my family for the foreseeable future, my motivation for writing and creative juices just disappeared. While I finished out the year on Zoom and studied for finals, I didn’t notice that the writer’s block was settling in. I was too busy focusing on reality to realize that the fictional worlds and stories I was so used to creating were slipping away. It wasn’t until the summer that I finally realized, and at that point, it was too late to even think about attempting preemptive measures. Since then, I still haven’t been able to write as much as I want to, but as the world has slowly started returning to normal, I have felt my motivation for writing trickle back too. 

Advice:
The past year has been a lot, to say the least, and while I didn’t have the time to try writing despite my writer’s block, I have some tips that I’ve used against past blocks. 

1. Just write anything: I also call this the “mind dump trick”. Open an empty document or a notebook, and just write whatever is lurking in your mind. It could be a monotonous rant about what you ate for lunch or the song lyrics that have been circling through your head for the past eight minutes; just get any words that are in your mind onto the page. It helps to write anything to help your creative juices start flowing, whether it’s adding an adjective to describe that sandwich you ate last night or spitting out the random word you haven’t been able to stop thinking about. The worst thing you can do when you have writer’s block is to not write at all. 
   
2. Get outside: Take a hike, a walk, go stare at the sky or some trees. Take a notebook or computer if you want to, but don’t force yourself to. A change of scenery can do wonders against a block, particularly somewhere that you haven’t been recently. Bring your headphones for music if you want to, as I’ve found that listening to music while staring at nature helps form little ideas for stories. 
   
3. Sleep!: Dreams are weird but perfect building blocks for writing. If you have vivid dreams or can remember your dreams, trying writing down what you remember dreaming about. What your unconscious mind thinks about when you sleep could be just what you need to jumpstart a new story or fix a plot hole in a current piece of work. 
   
4. Read!: Reading other people’s writing can also help spur you to write yourself, even if it’s just because you think you can rewrite the story to be better or because their grammar was awful. Other people’s works can also inspire you, give you a new idea, or present a side that you never thought about before. 
   
5. Don’t give in!: Don’t let your writer’s block knock you down! Don’t realize that you’re fighting a block and then just give in to it, never to write again. Remember that not writing is the worst thing you can do against it. Writer’s blocks do end, and yes sometimes they end on their own, but they end much faster when you fight them. 
   

Conclusion: 
None of these tips are bulletproof, and just doing one is not going to push you into a creative overload. The most important thing to remember is to just keep writing. It doesn’t have to be good, but letting the block do its worst isn’t going to solve anything. Fight the block one word at a time, even if it’s just a long-winded explanation of how annoying writer’s block is.