When you’re hit with writer’s block — whether you’re staring at a blank page or stuck mid-scene — what do you do? For me, the temptation is to walk away, to hide from my manuscript, and to avoid writing at all until I can force myself over that block.
Needless to say, that’s not a healthy instinct. If I follow it, then before I know it it’s been weeks since I’ve sat down to write, I’ve broken the habit, and starting back up feels a whole lot more difficult than before.
Fortunately, there’s another way.
In her book 1000 Words, Jami Attenberg reminds us that the act of writing doesn't always have to be about actually making progress on a current project:
You don’t even have to write the thing you want to write. You just have to write about it. Write a little letter to yourself. Sit down somewhere quiet. Tell yourself why you want to write it, what you think it can be, why you dream of doing it, why this pen feels good in your hand, why this notebook looks nice on your table, why this stolen moment you claim for yourself is important, how it felt the last time you wrote, however long ago it was, and how it feels to be back at it again, here with yourself and your brain. Start there, and see what happens next.
When we write about writing, we’re just having a conversation with our creative selves. We’re reconnecting with our “why,” we’re lowering the stakes, and we’re letting ourselves write without the pressure of solving the next problem.
But when we respond to writer’s block by writing about writing rather than just giving up, we’re doing something else, too: we’re maintaining the habit. We’re keeping those writing muscles strong, preserving the time in our calendars, and keeping up our own creative momentum even when the momentum of the story is stalled.
In Better Than Before, habit and motivation researcher Gretchen Rubin talks about the importance of maintaining the habit of a habit even when you struggle to maintain the habit itself:
The habit of the habit is more important than the habit itself. For this reason, it can be helpful to keep a habit symbolically, even if we can’t keep it literally, to keep a habit in place. Someone who can’t go for a run because his wife is sick can go for a short walk. Someone who can’t write for an hour because the kids are home from school can write for ten minutes.
She’s talking about unpredictable circumstances that may prevent us from keeping up our usual routines, but the way I see it, a mental block is the same thing as a logistical block (in this case, at least). When you see your writing practice as all-or-nothing — either I unravel this plot hole or I do nothing — you’re more likely to do nothing.
And keep doing nothing.
And keep doing nothing.
Until you’ve done nothing for so long that doing something — anything — feels prohibitively difficult.
But when you keep the habit symbolically alive — with a ten-minute writing session on a busy day or a letter about why you write on a day when you’re feeling blocked — then when you’re ready to get back to the plot (or the long writing session or whatever the ideal looks like), you’ve preserved that space in your brain and your schedule, and you’ve kept your creative muscles honed and ready to go.
So, next time you’re hit with writer's block, resist the urge to abandon your desk. Instead, maintain the habit by writing about writing. At best, you might hit on something that sparks your creativity and busts through that block. At minimum, the simple act of putting pen to paper will help you preserve the habit and maintain a connection with your creative self.
Want more tips on overcoming writer’s block? Download my free e-book, Over, Around, Through: Cures for Writer’s Block that Really Work.
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