There’s No Such Thing As A Writer’s Block

Illuminating You on How to ‘Ship’ Your Creative Work

People with writer’s block don’t have a problem typing. They have a problem living with bad writing, imperfect writing, writing that might expose something that they fear. — Seth Godin

More and more, I’m on my right path to getting in creative flow as a recovering perfectionist and procrastinator. In my recent post, I’ve talked about Mastin Kipp’s CIA principles in overcoming self-imposed mindsets and beliefs. And my recent binge on Seth Godin’s content has expanded my understanding of how to break free from perfectionistic patterns as a creative.

I also love the concept of ‘shipping’ where he describes creativity as

“If it doesn’t ship, it doesn’t count.” — Seth Godin

He emphasizes getting the work out there and developing the skills to continuously refine with feedback. So many of us are hiding behind perfectionism, afraid to be embarrassed, afraid to fail, and afraid of producing something ‘bad’. But it’s this fear that traps us and comes across as what we know as ‘writer’s block.’

Once we adopt the mindset of having to create messily, imperfectly in order to improve and get to the good work, it liberates us and sets us in motion. This has been one of my biggest lessons in observing common traits of great writers and successful artists, as resonated by my recent conversation with Adrain Drew, founder of Mind’s Cafe.

I’m taking on this approach of immersing myself in the doing and letting the thinking, hesitation fall into the background. One of my greatest personal insights is that it is always the initial part, starting off, that’s difficult. It’s the inertia, it’s the inner critic trying to convince you you can’t do this otherwise, but once you plunge yourself into it, momentum builds on momentum like a snowball effect.

Just like Newton’s first law of physics,

Things in motion stay in motion. — Isaac Newton

Once we understand on one hand that writer’s block is nothing but fear of producing imperfect work, and in order to produce great work it would require lots of imperfect work on the way, then you’ll be saying aha- let’s get the ball rolling to produce imperfectly and get to where I want to be!

Seth Godin’s words are full of wit and truth, cutting through all the nonsense I’ve been telling myself sometimes. So many of us fall into the fad of ‘tips and hacks to get X results’ but really, the real shortcut is to go the long way and allowing yourself to fail courageously.

It is through showing up each day and doing the work no matter what your subconscious is telling you, or what fear you felt that will eventually shift the dialogue and level you up. I agree that creativity sometimes can be misunderstood as a fancy thing that strikes out of nowhere, but it is more so of the practice, the craft, and the dedication to keep going, keep shipping out whatever you create. Eventually, your mind will fall into coherence in understanding that, “If I’m going to show up and write, I might as well write something good.”

And by then, you would have built up the confidence that what you are putting out will be good, be of value and it will be the great work that was only achievable through all the messy and imperfect work you first had to do to get there.

I have to say, as I’m writing of this, I am guilty of having so many unpublished drafts of incomplete ideas lingering in my Medium dashboard. But from now on, I will continuously ship out whatever I want to say and dare to write imperfectly, courageously, and consistently.

So dear reader, what writing or creative work are you still waiting to ‘ship’? It’s time to get the ball rolling.

If you’ve enjoyed my work on writing and mindset, please have a look at my other pieces: