What to do when you are stuck?

Writers Block is real. Don’t deal with it.

Hello and welcome to The Writer Story.

I’m sure if you are here, you are already quite familiar with Writers Block. If not, you are clearly in the wrong place buddy. I look away while you hit that unsubscribe button. Go ahead, no hard feelings.

Okay, back to Writers Block.

We all get it from time to time, it’s a definite part of a writer’s life so to say and there’s no running away from it. There’s no way to avoid it. There’s no way to remove it.

It’s just going to be there. Like that pestering moldy smell in my guest bathroom. Let’s not talk about it. It gives me the heebie jeebies.

So then what should we do when dealing with writers block? How to continue working on that book which is going to breakout your author career? Ah, dreams.

My advice is this.

You may not like it and you are certainly entitled to your opinion but the best course of action to deal with writers block is to keep writing.

Don’t worry about the block. It’s going to return how many ever times you try to shoo it away. So why bother at all. Just ignore it, let it stink up the corner while you go about your business like every other day.

My sincere apologies if you were expecting a better and magical answer. Sadly, there isn’t one.

For any writer, who takes up writing as a profession, they have to just learn to live with writers block. Just like any other job.

If you have experience of doing a job, any job, just imagine telling your boss that you are blocked today and can’t come to work. What do you think would happen?

Nothing good, that’s for sure.

Of course, you can take vacation days and sick days and you must for basic sanity and mental peace. With the writing job it may appear as if you have unlimited vacation with no boss to report to, but it’s a mirage and will only lead you to nothingness.

Keeping all my nonsensical metaphors aside, all I’m trying to say is if you aren’t going to treat your writing as a job, the problem will remain forever.

Professional writers have learned to live with writers block and not pay it much attention. Because if you feed the block with your negative emotions it’ll grow and become only more worrisome.

So what’s the solution?

Just keep chugging along. Try to mix things up, with writing, researching, editing, character profiling, etc. It’s all part of the process. So as long as you are working on any of these, that would potentially benefit your WIP, it’s goes into the writing bucket.

But whatever you do don’t give in to the block. It might be tempting, but just don’t. Because all it will do is start a vicious cycle of you giving in to the block and then feeling bad for doing that… It’s endless.

So just let the writers block do what it wants, you do what you want. Separate your ability to put words down from feeling creative. Think of it as a job you got to do. And then when the real creativity strikes you’ll always know the things that you shouldn’t do.

Here are some things I have done to force myself to get back to write. Not saying it works all the time, but I am persistent.

1. Writing random story ideas in my notebook.

2. Listening to podcasts, mostly non writing related, history, mythology, TED talks etc. I love the Normal Gossip podcast. If you haven’t heard it, give it a try.

3. Music, always helps me get back into mood. I don’t have a playlist or anything. I just listen to music I like.

4. Force myself to write for 10 minutes. 10 minutes is a short time to not feel overwhelming.

5. Work on developing a new idea. It gets the juices flowing. I have so many half developed ideas, but at least I know I am not going to run out of book ideas anytime soon.

Okay, that’s all I have for this newsletter. Now get on with the writing. There is no shortcut to writing a book. If you decide to become an author, you have to make yourselves ready for the grunt work. If not, go do something else. There are many other professions in this world which are much easier to manage, and all the power to you.

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Thanks for reading The Writer Story. You can find me on social media - Twitter/X - @authoranima or Instagram - @authoranima

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Until next week,

~Toodle-oo~