How to Quickly Conquer Writer’s Block Every Time You Get Stuck
I had no idea what to write about, so this article happened.
There comes a day in each creator's life when he has nothing to write about. This is one of those days… but I do not submit to this, I will push through it!
I spent the last 2 days thinking of what I should write for the next issue of the blog, but I got nothing. My brain seems to be busy with the projects that I currently work on. The fact that I also have some things to take care of in my personal life, for sure, doesn't help.
You can say I have, as they call it, writer's block, but this cannot stop me.
Something magical happens when you put yourself in front of the white screen (or paper, if you're into that). When you write whatever comes to mind, the idea seems to clear itself.
There are lots of ways that you can get past writer's block. One of the most interesting ones that I found is in this tweet.
The creativity faucet
So, how can I use the creativity faucet to get past writer's block? Well, it's fairly easy, just start writing. As you write, you get ideas, you get questions that you need to find answers to, and so on.
A mistake that I used to do at some point was to start with the title. Sometimes I do that when I have the title beforehand. But I stopped forcing myself to create a title if I don't have any idea what I'm writing about.
Since writing is something almost spiritual to me, I need to put some music to get in the mood. That's what creativity is all about. It’s important that the music doesn’t have too many lyrics because that gets distracting.
I know that there are people that like to work in silence, that’s what they need to focus. I'm the opposite, I cannot concentrate in silence. I feel like there needs to be something that can silence the chaos from my mind, and only music can do that. It gives that chaos a rhythm, a structure, something that I can hang on to during this creative process.
You also need to get comfortable with deleting more than you write. Yeah, I know how that sounds. It's not physically possible to delete more than you write, but it certainly feels that way. Well, get used to that feeling. That's how you iterate. You write, you delete, you write, you delete, on and on and on.
You don't need to be proud of your first draft, that's why you should just write. Don't lose too much time proofreading in the first run. The most important thing for me is to remove as much resistance as possible from the process. The way I remove resistance is by not being a perfectionist about my grammar, punctuation, and structure. If you want your initial draft to be publishable, you are doing it wrong.
You will get better at writing in time, meaning that you will write better drafts. But don't you try to make art from the first go.
You can imagine this creative process as making a beautiful painting. You are actually painting with words. You first need to have a structure, something that keeps everything together. After you have that structure, you can start adding the details, the beautification.
This is one of the main reasons why I like to write over many days. So that I write the big bulk of it one day, then I come with another mood or mindset the other day.
You can try and create a personal workflow around this. You are somehow forced to do that since you cannot create if you don't actually sit in front of the editor (notebook).
Creativity is like any muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets. The best thing about this is that you can actually transfer the process. That means that getting better at photography makes you a better writer. Or a better musician. They are all connected. Once you find that creativity well inside your mind, everything falls into place.
Picture your thoughts
I also use an interesting trick that I didn't read about but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one doing this. I use something like a screenshot tool to capture whatever happens in my mind. When I write, I see a succession of pictures and I describe what I see. It takes some practice until you figure out how to make this kind of picture, but after you get the hang of it, oh man! You only need to get your mind in the right mood, to have the right thoughts, and the writing just happens.
You can use the same technique to talk better and clearer. But it’s way harder to do that when talking than when writing. Remember this when you have a difficult time explaining something to someone.
The most important thing is that you need to discover what works for you. I am sure this is not the only guide out there that helps you cope with writer's block.
This might even be the hardest way to do it since you need to brute force creativity. The good thing is that you can.
It's imperative to set a schedule for creating, otherwise, you will procrastinate. A healthy habit for creating gets you more than an inspiring day.
So that's what you need to do now! Start working on those habits, start creating in the way of least resistance. You need to make things easier for you, not harder, so find out what is exactly that.
Practice
Set right now an alarm for tomorrow when you have 1 hour you can be sure you can work.
The target is to open your favorite text editor or notebook and write one sentence. That's it, one sentence!
Feel free to continue if you have more to write, but the target is one sentence and setting the alarm.
That's how you create your schedule and that's how I get past the writer's block.
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