Beating the Blank Page: Wrangling Writer’s Block

What Causes Writer’s Block?

Writer’s block can strike at any time for a number of reasons, which might include:

• Struggling to find the place to start. Whether it’s a research paper you need to draft or a short story you’re inspired to explore, finding the right place to start can be elusive, stopping the writing before it even begins.
• Worrying you won’t make the opening “interesting.” Once you do know where to start, you may find yourself flummoxed by crafting an interesting opening.
• Bored by the topic at hand. In school and at work, you don’t always get to choose what you’re writing about—sometimes it’s about what you need to write or must write. And what you must write might be very, very boring.
• Unsure what you should be writing about. Some assignments are vague. When the purpose or goal of writing something is unclear, everything about getting the writing started can seem impossible.
• Perfectionism. Too often you may find yourself fretting over whether or not you’re writing the right thing, in the right direction, as perfect and polished as you want it to be. So you freeze up, afraid to put something on the page that isn’t completely perfect.
• Distraction. Other assignments. Looming deadlines. Plans for later. Bills that are due. Errands that need running. Other people in the house or office or coffee shop working or talking or laughing. Distractions abound pretty much everywhere and work to pull your focus away from the page.
• Stress. Perhaps the biggest distraction of all is stress. Unfortunately, stress can also be caused by the writing task at hand, locking up your ability to get the work done.

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Not every cause of writer’s block will respond to the same approaches to overcoming it and what works for one writer may not necessarily work for another. Don’t worry—there are plenty of tips for writer’s block to try, and try again, until you get the words flowing.

Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block

The writing may not come easily, but you can make it start. Trying one or more of these tips for overcoming writer’s block may help the ideas and words begin to flow:

• Brainstorm. If you don’t know where to start, make a list. Brainstorm facets of the assignment or what you’d like to write about—any detail you can get down, get it down. Then see what you’ve collected and what is drawing your interest.
• Make an outline. Whether it comes out of a brainstorming session or is based on the known requirements of what you need to write, developing an outline can be a first step toward writing something longer and more substantive—and will become a roadmap for you to follow.
• Break the work into parts. If you’re overwhelmed by how large a writing task is, break it into easy-to-manage parts. Once you do this, either choose the part you’re most interested in or what you know the most about and start tackling the writing.
• Skip the beginning. Hung up on writing a perfect first sentence? Unsure how to lay out the opening paragraph of a report? Skip it. Start somewhere else and come back to the beginning later.
• Ask questions. Ask questions of yourself, of your colleagues, of a task’s assigner—ask any and all questions you may have about the work. Questions might be about opinions regarding where to start or about approaches to the task at hand. Solo writers might consider asking themselves something as deceptively simple as, “What am I trying to say?”
• Don’t be precious—it’s a first draft. First drafts aren’t supposed to be perfect—they’re supposed to be a start. Try to avoid the desire to write something perfectly the first time by reminding yourself that you can draft, redraft, revise, and edit until you’ve reached perfection.
• Remove distractions. Turn off your internet connection. Consider a white noise machine. Move yourself to somewhere with less noise and fewer people. If you know yourself to be distracted by something, work to remove it from your workspace when you need to get writing.
• Set a timer. From five minutes to an hour, choose an amount of time, set a timer, and force yourself to put something—anything—on the page until the timer runs out. Free writing, list making, outlining—anything. Just keep writing.
• Take a break. If you’ve been wracking your brain for a while without any forward movement, give yourself a break. Take a walk, have a meal, read something inspiring.
• Ask for help. If the writing you need to get done is an assignment from a teacher or supervisor and you find yourself stuck, don’t be afraid to ask
• Write your way out. This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s a tried-and-true approach that plenty of writers employ to get the words to come. Even if you’re only writing about how stuck you are, at least you’re writing something—you may find yourself brainstorming or solving a problem inadvertently.

What NOT to do to Help Writer’s Block

There are some things that are absolutely not helpful when it comes to battling writer’s block; don’t try these infective approaches if you intend to actually get on the way toward writing:

• Don’t wait to be inspired.
• Don’t psych yourself out or have a pity party about being stuck.
• Don’t procrastinate.
• Don’t hyper-focus on the writer’s block itself.

Don’t wait for the muse to come—start writing alone. If one approach to overcoming writer’s block doesn’t work for you, try another, and another, and another. Eventually, even if you feel as though your block hasn’t lifted, you’ll have put plenty of words on the page and may be in a good place to start rewriting, lifting the stress of writing your first draft.