I'm adapting this from my own (very long) blog post on the subject lol. First thing's first:
"Writer's block" is a bad term, because it doesn't mean anything
If you go to the doctor, you don't get diagnosed with "my tummy hurts
" It's IBS, or gluten intolerance, or general anxiety disorder. The tummy hurting is the symptom, and writer's block is also a symptom of something else.
And, just like going to the doctor, it's going to take some questions and investigation to figure out what's really wrong. But there's no blood tests or other forms of objective measurements. It's more like going to a psychiatrist: you need to be mindful of what you're thinking, what you're feeling. What, exactly, is triggering those feelings?
Here are some root causes of writer's block and what you can do about it.
1. I Don’t Know What Happens Next
You're probably not as much of a pantser as you thought you were. Or maybe this story needs more outlining than your past projects. And that's okay! You can also skip ahead to a future scene you know IS going to happen, it might help you figure out that middle bit.
2. I Don’t Know How to Get [Character] to [Essential Thing]
So, you wrote yourself into a corner! Happens to the best of us. The only way out of a corner is to back up. This might mean tossing out the conversation, or scene, or chapter. Or maybe even a whole plotline. Save that part in a separate document, if necessary, and take another whack at it. Or go back to the drawing board and change your outline. Depending on how much you have to change, this can be super painful, but art isn't always easy!
3. I Think The Story is Bad
We've all been there lol. This one has three possible solutions.
i. Restart the voice - Change from first to third, or past tense to present. Make the narrator more like the MC's voice or make it more neutral. Rewrite a scene from the ground up (so more than just changing verb tense and pronouns) and see if you like it better. Voice tends to be that je ne sais quoi that make people love or hate a story. This can happen to you and your own story!
ii. Scrap it - Some ideas just. Aren't all that good. And it takes you starting to develop them to realize this. It happens. No one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to complete every idea. But also, consider...
iii. Trunk it - Take the story and shove it into a drawer (metaphorically, for digital files) and forget about it, do another project. You can come back to it in a few months (or a few years) and you WILL be a better writer then, with more life experiences, and that might be just the thing to make the story work.
These all require "throwing out" some amount of words, which does suck, yeah, but you still learned writing those words, so they're not a waste. Artists always sketch and make practice pieces that never see the light of day, and writing is no different. But also: you can make things better in editing. It's okay to write some bad stuff today. The story is made in editing.
4. I’m Bored
Your shiny, new idea has lost some of the shinyness. This scene is no fun. There's all this CRAP in the way to the cool fight scenes! This one also has 3 possible solutions.
i. Make it interesting - What part of the original idea captured your heart? Can that put more of that in the scene you're struggling with?
ii. Suck it up - Not every part of every story is going to be action packed and super fun lol. So sometimes you just have to push through it. But consider: you need a first draft in order to revise it. Don't be afraid to write the most bare bones, mechanical paragraph. "He went to the airport and then got to the hotel to prepare for the hit job tomorrow." Scene done, now we can move on.
iii. Drop it - Scrap it, trunk it, rescope it, whatever. Not every idea is big enough for a whole novel. Or more than a flash fic. Don't force your story to be more than it needs to be.
5. I’m Paralyzed by my To-Do List
This is more of an editing/revising problem than a writing problem lol. Break up your to-do list into sections and prioritize them. Do the biggest stuff first, like rewriting scenes and chapters. More granular grammar/punctuation stuff should be saved to the end; it doesn't make sense to polish a chapter you're just gonna rewrite. And edit one chapter at a time, and make a sub list just for that chapter. Not all 100 things on your list will be applicable for all of your chapters, so pull out the 5 or 6 things you need to do in THAT chapter. That is way more manageable and way less scary.
6. I Can’t Write When I do Have Time to Write
We are now out of "the problem is your writing" territory and into the "the problem is your life" zone. This is going to take a lot of self-reflection to figure out what, exactly, is your issue and what is feasible for you to fix it. For some people, this is dedicating time every day to write, which is nice for them, but not everyone has a schedule (or bandwidth) that allows that. If your time sitting in front of the keyboard is limited, try to accomplish other stuff at other times. Like instead of thinking of what happens next while staring at a blank page, do that at the gym, jot down notes on your phone. You can also write (very sloppy/barebones) scenes on your phone, while standing in line at the pharmacy or during lunch at work. It might take some creativity to find a solution, but experiment! Work on your writing in those 5-10 minute windows instead of playing Candy Crush, you'd be surprised how much time you actually have throughout the day. Work smarter, not harder.
7. I Have No Energy
Burnout happens. Illness happens. Life happens. If you're too sick or too stressed or too whatever to write, that's okay! Take a day off. Take a nap. There's always tomorrow.
8. I Can’t Find my Muse
What does that even mean? Do you know? How someone refills their font of inspiration can be by doing other tasks (other mediums of art, errands, going on a walk). It can be from viewing other art (go to the museum or the movies or the library). And it can just be! Accepting that not everything has to be the most ground-breaking, original thing ever. I mean, Avatar made over $2 billion and its plot is nothing new.
9. I Still Don’t Know What’s Wrong!
Maybe you can't put it into words, or maybe it's not on this list! I'm not claiming this is everything lol. A lot of these tips are, ultimately, "suck it up and push through" or "go try something else." If your block is because there's an issue with your story, taking days off won't fix it. If your block is because you're too sick and stressed from life, forcing yourself to write won't fix it (and it might make it worse!). At least try to figure out if the source of your problem is "writing stuff" or "life stuff." Then you can start troubleshooting and figure out what's causing your block.
And uhhhhh that's it! This is a long post lol
"Writer's block" is a bad term, because it doesn't mean anything
If you go to the doctor, you don't get diagnosed with "my tummy hurts
" It's IBS, or gluten intolerance, or general anxiety disorder. The tummy hurting is the symptom, and writer's block is also a symptom of something else.And, just like going to the doctor, it's going to take some questions and investigation to figure out what's really wrong. But there's no blood tests or other forms of objective measurements. It's more like going to a psychiatrist: you need to be mindful of what you're thinking, what you're feeling. What, exactly, is triggering those feelings?
Here are some root causes of writer's block and what you can do about it.
1. I Don’t Know What Happens Next
You're probably not as much of a pantser as you thought you were. Or maybe this story needs more outlining than your past projects. And that's okay! You can also skip ahead to a future scene you know IS going to happen, it might help you figure out that middle bit.
2. I Don’t Know How to Get [Character] to [Essential Thing]
So, you wrote yourself into a corner! Happens to the best of us. The only way out of a corner is to back up. This might mean tossing out the conversation, or scene, or chapter. Or maybe even a whole plotline. Save that part in a separate document, if necessary, and take another whack at it. Or go back to the drawing board and change your outline. Depending on how much you have to change, this can be super painful, but art isn't always easy!
3. I Think The Story is Bad
We've all been there lol. This one has three possible solutions.
i. Restart the voice - Change from first to third, or past tense to present. Make the narrator more like the MC's voice or make it more neutral. Rewrite a scene from the ground up (so more than just changing verb tense and pronouns) and see if you like it better. Voice tends to be that je ne sais quoi that make people love or hate a story. This can happen to you and your own story!
ii. Scrap it - Some ideas just. Aren't all that good. And it takes you starting to develop them to realize this. It happens. No one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to complete every idea. But also, consider...
iii. Trunk it - Take the story and shove it into a drawer (metaphorically, for digital files) and forget about it, do another project. You can come back to it in a few months (or a few years) and you WILL be a better writer then, with more life experiences, and that might be just the thing to make the story work.
These all require "throwing out" some amount of words, which does suck, yeah, but you still learned writing those words, so they're not a waste. Artists always sketch and make practice pieces that never see the light of day, and writing is no different. But also: you can make things better in editing. It's okay to write some bad stuff today. The story is made in editing.
4. I’m Bored
Your shiny, new idea has lost some of the shinyness. This scene is no fun. There's all this CRAP in the way to the cool fight scenes! This one also has 3 possible solutions.
i. Make it interesting - What part of the original idea captured your heart? Can that put more of that in the scene you're struggling with?
ii. Suck it up - Not every part of every story is going to be action packed and super fun lol. So sometimes you just have to push through it. But consider: you need a first draft in order to revise it. Don't be afraid to write the most bare bones, mechanical paragraph. "He went to the airport and then got to the hotel to prepare for the hit job tomorrow." Scene done, now we can move on.
iii. Drop it - Scrap it, trunk it, rescope it, whatever. Not every idea is big enough for a whole novel. Or more than a flash fic. Don't force your story to be more than it needs to be.
5. I’m Paralyzed by my To-Do List
This is more of an editing/revising problem than a writing problem lol. Break up your to-do list into sections and prioritize them. Do the biggest stuff first, like rewriting scenes and chapters. More granular grammar/punctuation stuff should be saved to the end; it doesn't make sense to polish a chapter you're just gonna rewrite. And edit one chapter at a time, and make a sub list just for that chapter. Not all 100 things on your list will be applicable for all of your chapters, so pull out the 5 or 6 things you need to do in THAT chapter. That is way more manageable and way less scary.
6. I Can’t Write When I do Have Time to Write
We are now out of "the problem is your writing" territory and into the "the problem is your life" zone. This is going to take a lot of self-reflection to figure out what, exactly, is your issue and what is feasible for you to fix it. For some people, this is dedicating time every day to write, which is nice for them, but not everyone has a schedule (or bandwidth) that allows that. If your time sitting in front of the keyboard is limited, try to accomplish other stuff at other times. Like instead of thinking of what happens next while staring at a blank page, do that at the gym, jot down notes on your phone. You can also write (very sloppy/barebones) scenes on your phone, while standing in line at the pharmacy or during lunch at work. It might take some creativity to find a solution, but experiment! Work on your writing in those 5-10 minute windows instead of playing Candy Crush, you'd be surprised how much time you actually have throughout the day. Work smarter, not harder.
7. I Have No Energy
Burnout happens. Illness happens. Life happens. If you're too sick or too stressed or too whatever to write, that's okay! Take a day off. Take a nap. There's always tomorrow.
8. I Can’t Find my Muse
What does that even mean? Do you know? How someone refills their font of inspiration can be by doing other tasks (other mediums of art, errands, going on a walk). It can be from viewing other art (go to the museum or the movies or the library). And it can just be! Accepting that not everything has to be the most ground-breaking, original thing ever. I mean, Avatar made over $2 billion and its plot is nothing new.
9. I Still Don’t Know What’s Wrong!
Maybe you can't put it into words, or maybe it's not on this list! I'm not claiming this is everything lol. A lot of these tips are, ultimately, "suck it up and push through" or "go try something else." If your block is because there's an issue with your story, taking days off won't fix it. If your block is because you're too sick and stressed from life, forcing yourself to write won't fix it (and it might make it worse!). At least try to figure out if the source of your problem is "writing stuff" or "life stuff." Then you can start troubleshooting and figure out what's causing your block.
And uhhhhh that's it! This is a long post lol