How to Overcome Writer’s Block

6-min. read

Being a creative professional means I get to play with messy ideas on a regular basis. I love that my tasks evolve organically and that my articles take themselves in wildly different directions than I first imagined. There are a lot of right answers and legitimate paths. Sometimes it feels like my writing becomes an entity on its own, something bigger than myself and beyond my conscious control. Some days the ideas come very fast. Some days the ideas come more gradually.

Enter writer’s block. As a writing consultant, I have talked with multiple clients about how and to what extent they experience writer’s block. Authors who suffer from writer’s block want to write, but they feel incapable of producing quality words. They show up for their writing, but it doesn’t show up for them. They wonder whether this will last for an hour or a week or the rest of their lives.

Before I considered myself a professional writer, I also had a very hard time with writer’s block. This was because 1) I was a horrible perfectionist and 2) writing was my hobby, so I could quit / pick it up again whenever I liked. Now I recognize that I have to be a bit more disciplined and write even and especially when the ideas come slow and steady. I have also reluctantly come to terms with the fact that no piece of writing will be perfect (gasp!). That said, I have found a rhythm that works for me and allows me to vastly reduce the number of days I experience writer’s block and the severity of those days when it does happen. This list includes strategies for building a lifestyle and mindset that support a productive writing life and some quick tips that work well in a pinch. My hope is that you will be a healthier, happier writer when you apply these best practices.

Strategies for Overcoming Writer’s Block

Write Every Day (Loosely Defined)

I write every day. This does not mean that I compose publishable writing or even well-developed drafts every day. It means that I invest a little in my writing practice every day. On the best days this means I compose publishable writing or a well-developed draft. On the worst days this means I jot down notes about my ideas or create an entry in my journal or write just for fun, which is still better than nothing. Before I committed to writing every day, it made me nervous to jump back in after taking a break because I worried that I “lost” my knack for writing. This is silly, of course—writing is less of a knack or a talent than a practice—and I’ve only felt more assured of this fact since committing to my writing as a full-time career. When I write every day, I know that some days will be more productive than others but I will have a predictable amount of writing completed by, say, the end of the month.

Keep a List of Ideas That Pop into Your Head

It’s hard for me to generate a golden idea on demand. It’s easy for me to think of writing ideas when I’m doing things besides writing. The key for me is to write down a few notes immediately and put them in an organized file system so that I have easy access when I’m ready to write. This saves me from losing good ideas to distraction or forgetfulness.

Know Whether and How to Set Deadlines

I dislike firm and frequent deadlines. It makes me feel pressured and anxious and more willing to settle for less than my best work. That said, I also do not work well without deadlines because I am still a bit of a perfectionist and no piece of writing is ever “done” until I’m forced to submit it by myself or someone else. If I am afforded the flexibility to set my own deadline, I choose one near enough to make me feel motivated but far enough not to make me feel anxious. This also helps me work more effectively within deadlines that are given to me—for example, knowing that I need to start early in order to feel and do my best. Just having a higher threshold of self-awareness and being intentional about how I set goals has helped me come a long way in overcoming writer’s block.

Know What Time of Day You Write Best

I write best early in the morning. My mind is fresh, I am at my highest daily energy threshold, and there is little pressure to do anything else for anybody else before standard business hours. This ensures that my optimal time is invested in my writing practice rather than an administrative task that may be necessary to running my business but doesn’t demand as much creative energy. You and I will write plenty at other times, too, but it helps to block off your optimal time for what requires/deserves the most energy simply because this is when you have the most energy to give.

Try It for Fifteen Minutes

Starting is the hard part for a lot of people. I’m worried that I won’t have anything to say or that I’m a bad writer, etc. When this happens, the best thing I can do is just jump in and after fifteen minutes I’m typically exhilarated with whatever I’m working on. I’ve noticed that a lot of the time writer’s block is just fear, which can either be overcome (“I’m not a good writer”) or accepted (“not everybody will like my writing”). Overcome or accept and move on. Nobody (yourself included) gets to tell you you’re not a writer when you’re writing all the time.

Give Yourself Permission Not to Be Perfect the First Time

When I give myself permission to have messy drafts in the beginning, I find my writing faster, more enjoyable, and of better quality—a win-win-win. I dislike staring at a blank screen. What is much easier is staring at a list of bad ideas, then staring at a list of good ideas, then an outline, first draft, second draft, etc. If my objective is to create a polished piece on my first try, I won’t accomplish it. If my objective is to do a little better, I can do a little better.

Lower the Stakes

This is similar to the previous tip. It’s hard to begin the writing process in paragraph form. Some people draw maps with offshoots of their ideas. Some people create formal outlines. Some people get warmed up with freewriting. Some people make lots of bulleted lists (me!). The point of all of these exercises is the same—to generate fast ideas and have some workable material for a first draft. It makes writing feel easy because nothing has to be perfect or even good right away. If you don’t yet have a practice like this, experiment, experiment, experiment until you find something that works for you.

Generate More Ideas Than You Need

In the early stages of writing, too many ideas are better than too few. If I have more than enough ideas, I don’t feel obligated to write about all of them, including the ones that aren’t working either in concept or execution. Instead, I delete one or two main ideas without writing about them or after I’ve written about them in very rough draft form. I feel absolutely zero guilt or reservation about this because 1) my outline/plan is there to serve me, not the other way around, and 2) if it isn’t interesting for me to write about, it probably won’t be interesting for my audience to read about, and in the meantime, I’ll discover something that is.

Put Less Pressure on Yourself

I wrote stories when I was a little kid and rarely if ever got writer’s block. This is because the current constraints I see that I need to obey in order to be considered a “good” writer didn’t exist. There were no rules and there was no audience. Everything could be very selfish because it was just for me and my own enjoyment. As a professional writer, I recognize and love that there is an audience, and I recognize that there are rules (or at least guidelines) to best facilitate their reading experience. That said, there is something to be said for taking a day or two to simulate writing without constraints and see what happens. When I’m stuck, this practice often helps me generate great draft material that I can later develop into something publishable. It’s important to recognize ever so often that your expectations of yourself are probably higher than anyone else’s expectations of you and that many of our constraints are self-imposed.

Final Thoughts

For me, making the change from someone who writes for fun to someone who writes as a profession involved many changes, but none of them were sweeping. Instead, there were a lot of little things in the way I thought about my writing that I had to give up on or reconsider. The only time-consuming part was the trial and error, and without this waiting period, I would have been able to implement these best practices and become a happier writer much sooner. I am sharing this list in hopes of expediting your own self-discovery process. If you follow this list, it will still take some trial and error as you find the difference between what worked for me and what works for you, but my goal is to get you there more quickly.

Did I miss anything? How do you overcome writer’s block? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

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