How many times have you been faced with writer’s block? Staring at an empty screen, wondering when inspiration will strike and words will start to flow. You wonder if you can ever be a great writer if you can’t even get past the blinking cursor or the crippling self-doubt.
Well, fear no more! Here are ten ways that you can kickstart your writing again, unblock your writer’s block, and finish your project.
- Turn off the inner editor. You’ve probably struggled with perfectionism. You have a very clear vision of what you want to accomplish, and it can be discouraging to write something that doesn’t resemble what’s in your head. This is normal, but it will often lead to you getting stuck. If this is you, here’s a challenge: write badly, then improve. Write a scene all the way through and don’t change a single sentence. Then, go back and improve it, and watch how much faster you get to the stage of perfection you’re currently striving to get in the first draft.
- Organize your thoughts. Do you find yourself thinking, “I have the motivation and the story, but I can’t figure out how to get it onto the page.” What a great problem to have! This may be a time to storyboard, outline, or otherwise organize your writing. Organizing your thoughts builds a mental framework that your fingers can then follow because you have a clearer image of where you’re going. For some, this is a dreaded part of writing—but to get unstuck, sometimes looking forward to where your story needs to go is exactly what you need to start getting there. If you’re in the middle of a manuscript and having trouble, your problem might come earlier, which leads us to the third tip.
- Get unstuck. You may be struggling with a character or a plot point not going the way you thought it would. Often, when we get pushed up against that wall, the problem is actually back a little ways. This could mean that the plot point has a hole in it, or, in the case of a character issue, that the decision you’re trying to force them into doesn’t fit with their current development. When you get stuck like this, look back in your story to see where the problem could lie. Reverse storyboarding, or outlining where your story has already been, can help bring to light threads that you may have dropped, character choices that are inconsistent with where they should be, etc. These types of mistakes can be frustrating to find, since you might feel the need to backtrack and fix everything in order to keep on going. Thankfully, this is what revision is made for, and ultimately your story will be all the better for it.
- Find a sprint partner. A buddy makes everything better! A writing partner can be an accountability partner and someone to share and get excited with! Sprinting (writing as much as you can in a set amount of time) can serve to get your hands on the keyboard and just write. Doing this exercise with a partner is doubly encouraging since you share the excitement with each other. You may end up going again, and before you know it, you have 6000 words written.
- Do a writing warm-up. Do something fresh and new, and don’t worry about showing it to anyone. Give yourself the freedom of just writing for the sake of writing. New stories may emerge and new techniques may be learned, but ultimately, this is just to have fun and get your writing juices flowing again.
- Have a dedicated space and time for writing. Every writer’s space looks different; if you thrive in a clean environment, it might be time to take a look at your writing space. Can you operate in it? Or you may have such limited time that in order to get any writing done, you need to ignore the state of your desk and get your hands on the keyboard. In this case, give yourself that dedicated time for writing, and hold yourself to it! Make other time for cleaning—writing time is for writing.
- Get out there. Look at all the beauty around you and try to describe what you see. This is a way to practice your craft and get inspired. Plus, this was something Tolkien did frequently!
- People-watch! Write down funny quotes or little bits of dialogue. Look at the real conflicts happening around you. These will lend reality to your writing, a depth that comes from being grounded in real life. Writing doesn’t just happen as you’re sitting at your computer; it happens each time you interact with the world. It happens in your kitchen, on the road, on a walk, at your main job—writing is everywhere.
- Keep a writing journal. This is the place to capture your thoughts and ideas—a dreamcatcher of sorts to keep all those juicy lines of dialogue you don’t know where to put yet; pictures from Pinterest that look like your character, with a biography of who they are; make it fit your needs. This could be messy or meticulously organized, but make it yours! Carry it with you. Those sceneries and people will come to life in your journal and in your writing.
- Don’t get discouraged. You have wonderful and unique ideas. You have a message that’s needed in the world, and you are uniquely qualified to write it. You are the only one who can write it. That story will never get written if you don’t do it. Don’t give up on it, even in the face of a blank screen and blinking cursor. Your readers await.
By Allie Zaugg, Inscape Staff
Header image from cottonbro studio, pexels.com
