Maybe you’re not stuck: 5 solutions for writers block
Do you ever find yourself saying that you feel stuck? Or blocked?
Maybe you are.
But maybe something else is going on.
Take Bee, who said she’d scheduled two hours to write only to sit at her computer for two hours, staring, thinking, writing nothing.
I suggested Bee commend herself for taking that time at her computer and thanking her internal muse for accompanying her on the journey. Perhaps she needed fallow time, the way farmers leave a field unplanted for a season so the soil can recover. Maybe her creative soil needed a rest and a chance to replenish its nutrients.
When she acknowledged the seemingly unproductive time as necessary fallow time, and decided to believe that inspiration would flow once she gave herself enough fallow time, she relaxed and the words soon came in her next writing session.
The key, in such situations, is to engage curiosity. To consider whether there may be a new way to look at the situation, and to explore with an open mind. You might even journal about the challenges and the stuckness you experience. See what your inner wisdom has to say about it.
Possible Explanations for feeling stuck:
- The Need for Stillness: Your creative muse may need times of being and not just doing. Stillness and silence can help you integrate before producing. The Solution: make some time for wandering and stillness—walk in the woods or on the beach, meditate, practice a moving meditation like tai chi, sit somewhere in nature doing nothing, sit in a sunny spot or library with a cup of tea—but no book. Just be.
- You Need an Ending: I often see this with memoir: an interesting story but the end just hasn’t happened yet. For example, a couple of years ago, a client struggled with feeling her book was incomplete and felt stuck. Recently, she wrote me a beautiful note about a healing experience with her father that brought her life story to a whole new level of catharsis. It wasn’t a fairy tale ending, but it was the perfect ending that made her memoir feel complete, satisfying and fulfilling. The Solution: wait and let time do its work.
- You Need an Editor: Sometimes we’re too close to our own work. We know it’s not quite working but we don’t know how to give our writing the energy infusion it needs. The Solution: A developmental editor can help you look at the whole with fresh eyes and suggest structural changes or big picture ideas that can breathe new life into your work.
- You Need Confidence: It’s not uncommon for self-doubt or the inner critic to derail a writer. You might feel stuck but perhaps all you need is some affirmation of your skill or the writing itself. The Solution: Join a writers group where you can share your writing with others. Sometimes just hearing yourself read aloud and seeing that it has moved someone can jolt you right out of those pesky feelings of less-than, imposter syndrome, or despair.
- You Need Transformation: We can only take our readers as far or as deep as we are willing to go. If you’re afraid to traverse certain emotional territory in a memoir, for example, you may hold yourself back and feel stuck. The Solution: Engage with the personal issues (the journaling I described earlier, conversations with a coach or therapist, an exploration with your inner muse, or even asking for your dreams to help inform the situation, for example); you’ll likely find that you become unstuck and the writing again flows.
What have you discovered when you engaged with any feelings of stuckness or frustration with your writing? Do you have any explanations and solutions to add to this list?
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Lisa Tener is a leading book writing and publishing coach, entrepreneur, speaker, and author of the award winning book, The Joy of Writing Journal: Spark Your Creativity in 8 Minutes a Day. Winner of the Silver Stevie Award for Coach/Mentor of the year and known as “The Creativity Catalyst,” she has helped thousands of aspiring writers through her coaching services and courses. Lisa Tener’s clients have signed five- and six-figure book deals with HarperCollins, Random House, Hachette, Beyond Words, New World Library, New Harbinger, St. Martin’s Press, Yale University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, HCI and other major publishers
Connect with Lisa on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook or her book coaching website, LisaTener.com.
