Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Conquering Writer's Block


I’ve heard many people talk about writers block. I think the most likely cause is stress. Writer’s block is a little like what a speaker might experience if he goes to a meeting and someone asks him to get up and say a few words. I remember one of my high school English teachers talking about how to overcome writer’s block. The suggestions weren’t all that satisfying. The one I remember is to use brainstorming to come up with some ideas. We had brainstorming exercises we had to do. I hated that.


I think the best thing a person can do when she can’t come up with anything to write is to just relax. That’s hard to do when you have to have something written within the next day or hour or whatever, but all good ideas come from thinking about other things than our need to write something. Simply put, writer’s block occurs when the writer is trying too hard.

1 comment :

Dal Jeanis said...

That's certainly one cause. Here are others, some of which are closely related -

1) You've made choices earlier that you are now discovering the effects of, and which have screwed up your story;

2) You've gotten out of your depth, the story is too complicated and you've lost sight of your overall purpose/theme/motive in writing the piece;

3) The story is naturally trending somewhere you don't want to go;

4) You are low on energy and don't have any left over to write;

5) You went too long between writing sessions and have lost the thread of the story;

6) Something in your current life is pulling your attention away from your writing, and you have not found a way to use that distraction to power your writing itself.