Challenge Your Writer’s Block

I’ve been writing professionally for 3 years now. It’s been an endless, incredible learning lesson, and even after being a couple years in, I still feel like I’m quite brand new. I think it’s a reflection of the ever changing human being. Some may say changing, while others use the word evolving.

I’ve found a majority of my writing to come successfully, even when I felt like I was at my worst moments of writer’s block. Writer’s block has been something that I challenge, and believe may not even exist. A while back, I was given a bit of advice when it came to having that roadblock in writing. I feel that some of my best work has come from those days of difficulty. I have an awareness of that, because that advice I’m referring to was one that told me to follow the one hundred percent rule in life. Especially as an author.

To write everyday; if I really wanted to be a writer. To approach each day as an open book, starting with many blank pages. It’s never a blank mind I’m working from, so why should a day’s story, or a day’s thought, remain blank.

An ingenious way to approach those days of writer’s block, was to kick off each article, with a statement like this; “here’s where I’m at today, right here, right now.” From there, the potential for words is quite strong. We’re always living a story and a journey. We’re always the driver of that journey. Choosing to write everyday. I believe that we as people always have a story to tell. A lesson to learn, or a lesson to teach.

We live everyday, far from a day with no words in our mouths, nor no sounds from our voices. When we are working from emotions and thoughts, as complex as ours, then we are far from silence. When we have nothing to say, it’s actually no desire to speak. Only motivation to dream. To live in silence, as it quietly grows. To hide from the world, our story of today. Our pain and sorrow of tomorrow. Our writer’s block, we think we have.

Start each day, with a willingness to share. A theory to write. Wake up each morning, telling the world where you’re at. Fancy grammar can be for another day, another time, another place. We’re not living a life of grammatical perfections.

Each waking day, challenge your writer’s block. I have seen many times, that it isn’t really challenging. Put your words down on paper, one thought at a time, take a few minutes, or even a few hours. If you take a break, and read what you’ve wrote. The more natural it’s done, the better.

So what was your story of the day? Where are you at, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually? You’ll get more than you imagined. You’ll see your story that you thought was blocked, was still going all along. Life, being as poetic as ever. It’s those words without any prep, that go as smooth as ever.

It was after all, where you really were, for that moment, and that chapter.

Michael Patanella

is a Trenton, New Jersey Author, Publisher, Columnist, Editor, Advocate, and recovering addict, covering topics of mental health, addiction, sobriety, mindfulness, self-help, faith, spirituality, Smart Recovery, social advocacy, and countless other nonfiction topics. His articles, publications, memoirs, and stories are geared towards being a voice for the voiceless. Hoping to reach others out there still struggling.