How To Stop Getting Stuck - Four Ways I Get Through Writer's Block

Writer's block you say?

I know exactly how you feel. You're speaking beyond your roof. To the clouds. And then - whack! the clouds are gone and the roof has caved in.

Photo by Matt Artz

Now what? First things first. Pick yourself up. Writer's block happens for a reason, a least for me. 

I need to relax. 

I need to focus on something else.

I am not interested in what I am writing.

I should be doing something else.

Relaxing usually helps me. I take a break. I read. I sleep. I go outside for a walk. I breathe in and out.

When I go back to writing my mind is refreshed.

Focus. I need a break from what I am currently doing. I focus on another project that I have been putting off. I focus on a new idea - something still in the creation stage. I write nonsense. 

I am not happy with what I am writing. Maybe the writing isn't me. I pick up the book, "A Writer's Year -365 Creative Writing Prompts" by Emma Bastow. Great book to pull stuff out.

I should be doing something else like marketing. I don't want to market [necessarily] but I have a new book coming out at the end of August and I need to get the word out.

Writer's block doesn't have to stay - at least for very long.

See that hole in the roof?

When you look up you can still see the sky.

Photo by set.sj

 

Getting Unstuck: When Writing Just Doesn't Interest You

I have had a couple of challenging days, and with challenges comes an opportunities for me to either reach out or hold back.

Truth be told, I usually hold back when I've been challenged. It's sort of my protection mode, my way of slinking into myself so that I will no longer feel the hurt or pain.



Only it doesn't work.

And I don't want to write. I'd rather withdraw from the world, Keep to myself like a hermit crab on the shore of a great ocean.

Oh, the ocean!

It is right there, but I am in hiding and don't see it.

Have you ever been stuck in your writing? Have you ever thought to yourself, "I will never write again. I can't." Have you ever thought that writing was just too hard, too revealing, too... terrifying?

Take a peek. Just a little one out of  your shell. See the water? She how it ebbs and flows? See the blueness? The seagulls? See the sand, the glorious sand?

Come on, you can do it. Today, I'm taking my first step out into the water, too.