A Quick and Powerful Technique You Can Use to Get Past Your Writer’s Block
A tonic for the most notorious illness which has plagued writers throughout history.
A few days ago, a friend of mine texted me complaining about his final papers. He’d already given his final presentation for his marketing class and was working on writing up the accompanying report.
“I’m going to have to figure out how to make this thing five pages,” he lamented. And though he’s just writing this as a class assignment, his predicament is all too familiar if you’ve ever had to write under a deadline.
You stare endlessly at your screen, imploring the right words to come to you, yearning for a burst of inspiration — but alas no such epiphany comes. Despite your best efforts, the writing simply won’t flow. So you sit there endlessly, writing sentences you don’t like and subsequently deleting them, hopelessly wondering why after years of experience you’ve somehow lost the ability to produce a coherent clause.
Most people will suffer from an occasional bout of writer’s block. Even successful authors admit to dealing with it. Reassuring though this may be, it still doesn’t help you move past your blocks. If you want to make a living out of your writing, a few things are as frustrating as sitting around for hours feeling unproductive.
As I’ve experienced this myself, I’ve found a method that has pretty consistently moved me past these blocks. It’s been helpful for me, and I’m hopeful that it can be for you as well.
A 4-Step Process
There are four basic steps of the process. Read on for a more detailed explanation of what they mean and why they work.
- Remove all distractions
- Set a timer for 30 minutes as preparation for Step 3
- Write everything that crosses your mind unfiltered until the timer rings
- Go back and revise
Step 1: Remove all distractions
When I say all, I mean literally everything. You should be alone, in a quiet room, where you are certain no one will disturb you for the duration of your writing session. There shouldn’t be a YouTube video or a Spotify podcast playing in the background. I also recommend you don’t listen to any lyrical music while you’re writing. It can be helpful to have some background music when writing in general, but it is not ideal when you have writer’s block. You need to have a clear and uninterrupted mind for the next steps to work.
Step 2: Set a timer for 30 minutes as preparation for Step 3
The specific length of 30 minutes is important here. Your brain needs occasional moments of rest to function properly. Given that you’re already stuck, going longer than a half-hour isn’t likely to be any more productive (check out the science behind the famous Pomodoro technique). Simultaneously, you want to ensure you give yourself enough time to properly implement the third step of the process.
Step 3: Write everything that crosses your mind unfiltered until the timer rings
This is the most important stage of the process. Throughout, you will be plagued with thoughts like “Ach, this sentence is no good” or “Hmm, what if I just reword this phrase a little.” Ignore those thoughts and keep writing. This stage of the exercise isn’t about producing your best, most polished prose — you’ll worry about refinement later. For now, the focus is just on getting your ideas into words, even if the results are rough. Actively thinking about what you write at this stage defeats the whole point of the exercise.
Step 4: Go back and revise
If all went to plan, you’ll have managed to write down some of your thoughts, albeit in a rough fashion. Now’s the time to focus on fine-tuning — sentence structure, diction, flow, all that good stuff. Now that you have actual words on the page, you have material to work with.
“I appreciate the days when I’m feeling in the zone, but I don’t wait for them. I also write on the days when it feels like I’m running through waist-deep mud. It’s much easier to revise an uninspired manuscript than to start from scratch with a blank screen.” — Linda Wasmer Andrews
Wise words from Linda Wasmer, a prolific writer with over 3000 published articles and 15 (co-)authored books.
Why This Works
There is a tendency to frame writer’s block as a situation where your mind goes completely blank of ideas, but that isn’t really what’s happening. Think about the last time you went through it. It’s not that you can’t think of anything at all, but more so that the ideas you do have feel as if they aren’t any good. The writing you produce in this state just doesn’t seem to cut the mustard, as it were.
This is more an issue of transmission than it is one of the inventions. By the time you go to write about something (say, about how social media hurts productivity), you usually already know the topic pretty well. But when it comes to actually write it, you’re at a loss for words.
It’s not as if you’ve suddenly been stripped of all the topical knowledge you possessed. It’s still there — it’s merely a tad incoherent at the moment, for whatever reason. As any good writer would, you analyze these incoherent thoughts, decide they’re worthless, and enter an endless cycle of typing and deleting. Writer’s block isn’t a sign that you’re a bad writer, but more that you care about what you’re writing. You get stuck because the quality of your prose matters to you.
By forcing yourself to bypass this cycle of write, delete, repeat, you allow yourself to get some words on the page. Once that crucial step is complete, the bulk of the work is done. The ideas are in front of you now, and all that remains to be done is to make them better — which you already know how to do.
Final Thoughts
When you’re trying to find your way to literary success, a few situations can be more frustrating than writer’s block. And while the four-step process above may not be perfect, it’s a way to get yourself started. Over time, you’ll discover tweaks and alterations that fit your style better — you might find you like to write for a little less time, or you prefer to revise in real-time instead of after all the writing is done. I encourage you to explore and find what works best for you.
The point I want to emphasize, however, is that struggling to write occasionally does not imply you are out of ideas; it is a natural result of working to improve as a writer. The key is to learn to tap into your brain and resist the urge to throw out anything less than perfect. The best writing isn’t produced in one fell swoop — it takes consistent review and revision.
Once you accept and apply that, you’ll be well on your way to success.