There are people out there who think that Writer’s Block isn’t real. I disagree, but I think I understand what causes the debate. Writer’s Block is an umbrella term for a lot of different things. Anything that keeps you from moving forward is a creative block of some kind, and some of those things come from within your own mind. These blocks look different for everyone, and maybe some people find that simply denying it is their best strategy. I’m not one of those people.
In a way, it would be easier if Creative (aka Writer’s) Block was a single thing, with a known cause and a known solution. Then, when I started struggling to write blog entries last summer, I could have followed the steps of that solution and gotten right back on track.
Instead, I misidentified the cause(s), ignored all the little signs that I was on the wrong path, and watched it only get worse over the last half of 2024.
Honestly, that last part seems to be the most universal aspect of a creative block. Pretty much every artist I’ve asked about this can quickly identify the last time they “wasted time” trying all the wrong things. At least I’m in good company.
Finally getting myself back on track has been a journey. There was no single lightbulb moment, and honestly, I’m still “in process.” I want to share my journey today, not because I think the details are universal, but learning from other people’s experiments is such a time-honored way of developing our own methods.
What Didn’t Work
Between July and December, I tried a bunch of things that didn’t end up working. I relaxed my timelines. I lowered my goal posts. I tried committing to a simple 30 minutes a day without any deadlines at all, just to see what I could do with that time.
Those are all strategies that have worked for me in other circumstances, but didn’t work this time. I tried thinking MORE ambitiously, to see if it would spark interest. I tried changing the subject and blogging about other things. Those ideas didn’t work, either. Finally, I “gave up” for a temporary sense of that phrase, and decided I would try again after a pause.
Step 1: Rest
I had a vague sense, throughout the fall, that I was getting pretty worn out from a difficult year, but it wasn’t until the end of December that I realized I had numbers to back that up. Since I’m self-employed, I’ve been tracking my time off in a similar way to how a salaried employee would, to make sure that I actually take days off once in a while. (Otherwise, I am a pretty tough boss.) When I sat down on December 30th, I realized that I had 61 days of “PTO” stored up that I hadn’t used. That’s a lot of rest that I could have gotten earlier in the year, if only I’d taken the time to do it.
So, I started the new year with two kinds of rest. I took a several days off entirely, and I also gave myself a couple of “working” days to do the kinds of small administrivia that had been stacking up – things that made me feel better without actually using much critical thought.
The resting helped, a LOT. After those breaks, I came back to all my other work with much more energy and imagination than I’d had in December.
Step 2: Explore
But when I sat down to write a new blog entry, crickets. The familiar painful silence of both my keyboard and my thoughts was discouraging. It turned out that the creative block I was experiencing was not a single wall, but a pile of rocks.
Fortunately, with the Fatigue boulder out of the way, I had the energy to be curious about what other causes there might be.
The first clue was that I was only blocked on writing for the blog. Other writing seemed to be going okay. Revising was great. My bookkeeping work had never struggled. It was just the blog… which helped me narrow the causes a bit. It helped me find the right questions to ask myself to get the buried things out in the open.
I did this exploration on paper, because I’ve discovered that I’m much better at being honest with myself on paper. I wrote down the prompt: “What’s keeping me from writing blog entries” and then brainstormed a list.
Then I looked at that list and started exploring some of the things that came up. I’m not going to go into all the nitty-gritty details, because another part of my process is the agreement I have with myself that nobody else gets to read my notes. Which ALSO means I’m not going to transcribe them for the internet.
The simplified version is that I looked more closely at the kinds of insecurity and self-doubt that came up. Then I dug a little deeper. Eventually, I found a couple of areas where my goals for the blog had experienced some scope-creep, until they were misaligned with what I actually wanted out of it. Every day when I sat down to write, my mind filled with “shoulds” that didn’t fit my interests or match my abilities. I might spend my entire writing session letting those “shoulds” bully me into silence, and end the day feeling even worse about myself.
Step 3: Change the Approach
So the first changes I needed were pretty easy. Let go of certain goals that were never mine to start with. Remind myself (and I’m still needing to do this literally every day), that my own natural writing style is the only one I need.
Post things when my idea is basically clear, and not when it’s perfect.
Acknowledge the Elephant
There are still a few other changes I’m considering. Mostly because the WORLD is in a different place than it was a couple of months ago. And it’s hard to keep focusing on art, in any form, when you feel like maybe the world is ending. I have to acknowledge that, somehow, in the work I do going forward.
I’m not going to dramatically change my subject matter. This was never meant to be a “current events” blog, and that still falls outside my abilities and timeline. But we all live in the world, and right now, many of us are struggling to be creative in a world that feels like it’s on fire. So, I might talk about how to take care of yourself in an uncertain world. I might talk about the relationship between empathy and self-care. I might talk about my own struggles to keep focusing on art when the existential anxiety gets bad. Because not acknowledging those things creates its own kind of creative block.
And finally – I would like to take back the Elephant as a symbol. They’re too beautiful to be associated with such hatred. (That example above is a photo by James Hammond on Unsplash)