Writer's Block
Do you ever get the urge to start writing, so you pull out your writing tools, get yourself ready and as you lay your finger to keyboard, or pen to paper….nothing happens.
All of a sudden, that motivation, that drive, that idea is nowhere to be found. This, my friends, is writer's block!
When this happens to me, I have a main strategy (and a couple supporting ideas) that I rely on: don't think, write!
Often when I get writer's block, it's because I have out too much pressure on myself in some way or there is a mental block somehow. I don't always know what the block is, which makes addressing it harder.
Free Writing
My big trick is to do something called “free writing”. It's basically where your body tricks your mind into beginning the process of writing. I use my five senses and start capturing the most basic information that my body is processing and try to capture that.
What am I seeing?
Am I comfortable, why or why not?
What are my emotions?
What did I have for breakfast?
It could be anything! That's why it's called.fre write - you are free to write about anything. The prompts above are just a couple suggestions that have worked for me. Like starting an engine! You don't know where you're going but you have begun moving forward. This sounds incomplete so I'll give you an example of me free writing below.
1/3 Free Write (MC Version)
“I don't know what to write. My knees hurt. I need to feed my cat. I should eat more vegetables. What am I doing this week? What day is it? As if I'm so confused lol. My mind is in no shape to be writing anything. But here I am anyway. That's determination. That's why I'm a writer! Look at me go!”
Expanding Your Thoughts
As you can see, it's not very pretty and it doesn't have to be. The point is to get started..once you have written a few lines I recommend you take a look at what you've written and consider some of my prompts below:
Who am I trying to speak to?
Why do I even want to speak to them?
what do they need?
how can I organize my thoughts in an easy to understand way?
Once you ask yourself these questions, and have a better focus, I recommend you continue writing a little more! You may need to cross a bunch of things out and expand on the things you keep. I organize them into the categories of “USEFUL” & “NOT USEFUL”.
2/3 MC Free Write Thoughts Organized & Expanded
Useful: I don't know what to write. “Many others want to write but also don't know what to write.”
As if I'm so confused lol. “I bet you other people feel confused. Maybe I can help people feel less confused. “
My mind is in no shape to be writing anything. But here I am anyway. That's determination. “But what exactly did you do? How did you show up? Tell people who you got over it, tell people about writer's block!”
Not Useful: “My knees hurt. I need to feed my cat. I should eat more vegetables. What am I doing this week? What day is it?” & “That's why I'm a writer! Look at me go!”
Refine & Focus
Now that you have expanded your thoughts you hopefully have at least one paragraph or more of thoughts to expand upon. Ideally, you now have an audience in mind and an intended objective. I now want you to think exclusively about how people receive information. I think about how people have a hard time remembering lots of things and also they don't like being told what to do. I usually tell people to organize your thoughts into lists, let me show you from my example. As you may have figured out by now, the example I am using was the motivation for this very post!!
3/3 MC Example Refine & Focus
Writing objective: Share with people about my writer's block that is likely the same as their writer's block! Talk about free writing, audience and expanding prompts and then focus your writing, considering what is useful to the reader.
This is it
Now you see it! This post is an example of how I used my writer's block to create something that could be helpful for other writers who are facing the same challenge as me. Let me know if you end up writing something awesome out of your writer’s block!
