Writing | ADHD | Writer’s Block | Productivity | Writing Tips

Find Your Environment

How to Cure Writer’s Block

Have you ever thought about where you write? How your writing environment could cause writer’s block? For many of us, especially those with ADHD, where we write is often filled with distractions . . . and that causes writer’s block.

Choose Wisely to Avoid Writer’s Block

Willa Cather, the American novelist and my favorite author, said that much of her best writing was done in a tent in an open field outside Jaffrey, New Hampshire. She sat on a camp stool and wrote at a small writing table.

She was writing about Nebraska but trying to write in Nebraska caused writer’s block. Instead she found a place free of distractions. A place that didn’t cause writer’s block. A place where she could focus.

As for me, I wrote most of my PhD dissertation wearing a hoodie. Yes, I know that’s a bit weird but I was so easily distracted that I needed something to block my peripheral vision.

Several chapters were written in a funky little cabin on the Oregon coast–no phone, no people, and no internet connection.

When at home, I holed up in a tiny carrel in the University of Oregon Library. I wore my hoodie while listening to the music of the 16th-century Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi and drinking coffee. Coffee wasn’t allowed in the library but I never got caught. I admit, hoodie and Monteverdi is weird, but it worked!

I got the thing done in record time. Helped that my advisor was going on sabbatical and would be in France for the year.

Note: A deadline always helps. Tell everyone in your family, all friends on Facebook, announce it on Twitter, mention it to your neighbors. Suggest that these people remind you of your deadline frequently.

Having been born with raging ADHD, I need to focus and avoid distractions. Something as simple as a new picture on the wall can be a distraction. No pictures in my library carrel.

Analyze your work environment

Maybe your writing environment is cluttered or noisy. Maybe your chair is uncomfortable. Or perhaps the space is ugly or reminds you of 103 other things on your to-do list? Maybe you’ve got a picture of your old boyfriend hanging on the wall by your computer? What if you forgot your cup of coffee?

Where do you work the best? Does what you’re wearing make a difference? Does music help? What time of day is best for you? Think of times when you were “in the zone.” What contributed to that productivity?

Now you know what you need in order to work without distractions. How to work without writer’s block getting in the way.

Write without an Internet connection

Set up a second computer just for writing. A computer that isn’t connected to anything but a word processing program. Save your writing to an external hard drive that accesses both your writing computer and your computer connected to the internet.

You’ll need what you wrote for posting on the Web. Make it difficult to be distracted at your writing computer.

This is a nuisance but if you can’t keep yourself from checking your email and scrolling through Facebook, using a computer without an internet connection works.

You can use workarounds. Several programs can be set to turn off the internet for a specified amount of time. Plug-in timers also work.

Turn off your cell phone

Don’t just turn it off. Hide it. Put it so far away from your work area that you have to leave the room to retrieve it. Maybe a shelf in the garage so high that you need a ladder to grab your phone after you’ve finished writing.

Eliminate clutter

Most people are distracted by clutter, even unconsciously. That’s clutter on your physical desk and on your virtual desktop. Pictures and trinkets and piles of this and that can disrupt your brain even if just for a few seconds.

If getting rid of clutter is challenging, get someone to help you. Be sure a wastebasket is handy. While you’re at it, slide unnecessary stuff on your desktop over to the virtual wastebasket or delete it.

What do you have on your desktop that can be put in folders and saved in your documents rather than on your desktop?

Keyboard or Notebook?

Just because they say “don’t write it out first and then retype. It’s a waste of time,” do it anyway. If writing by hand helps keep you “in the zone,” you’ll be more productive than writing at your computer.

Willa Cather wrote 12 novels, several books of poetry and short stories, and more than 3,000 letters all in longhand. One novel won a Pulitzer. So paper and pencil can’t be all bad. (I’ve written a story about a trauma connected to Cather’s letters.)

Remember that much as your brain loves to learn new things, to do old things in new ways, and thrives on novelty, it also works best with routine. So just like Willa Cather in her tent and me in my hoodie, a routine sends a signal to your brain that says “Now we’re working.”

By the way, to this day I can’t listen to Monteverdi without thinking about my PhD dissertation. My brain got the signal that the music of that Italian master means not just writing but a specific piece of writing.

P.S. Whether you’re writing in longhand or at a keyboard and staying in the writing zone, it doesn’t matter if your writing isn’t readable.

Not sure about readability? Check out this post

Watch for my forthcoming eBook, Oh Look, There’s a Squirrel, a collection of stories from Medium.

Because I’m an adoption coach for women, my writing, as one might assume, focuses on adoption. In addition, I offer words of wisdom for adult ADHDers. (Not only do I suffer from ADHD, but so do many adopted folks.)

You’ll find me at LivingWithAdoption.com. For a list of common adoption challenges, grab my free Adoption Checklist for Women: 25 Life Issues.

Given raging ADHD, it’s no surprise that focus does not come to me easily! In addition to adoption and ADHD, I also write random stories from my life, what I’ve observed, what’s in the news, about writing and editing, anything that tickles my fancy.

For a Black Lives Matter from a white perspective, see my stories For White Folks from an Old Gray-Haired White Woman with Arthritis. And Teaching Kindergarten at an all-Black school.

You might also like musings on Staying at Home because of COVID 19: The Good, The Bad, and the Not So Ugly.