A Writer Without Words

Lianne Hikind
Sep 9, 2018 · 4 min read

What does it mean to be a writer? For me personally, I’d describe writing as just this deep, almost spiritual connection and love for the written word. Finding beauty in combinations of words is an art form like any other, and writers just “get” it, feel it, and understand it on a spiritual level. What happens when that connection is lost? What happens when someone with a deep love and respect for writing cannot write? What happens when all your dreams seem to be falling apart because the very thing you love most becomes non-functional?

Well, that’s what happened to me, the forever terrible, always dreadful curse on writers: writer’s block. Ideas would form in my head, and then disappear. As for the ideas that decided to stick around for a bit, I’d find every reason to second guess and ignore them. My relationship with the backspace button certainly took a toxic turn for the worst as it seemed like I was deleting and second-guessing more than actually writing. Now I was still working so I could get basic tasks and even client work done. though my ideas felt plastic and it seemed as if my creative spirit had simply vanished. In the end, as much as I loathed my experience with writer’s block, I learned some really valuable lessons during that period:

1). Be nice to yourself. One of the easiest ways to stifle creativity is being excessively hard on yourself. If you’re setting the bar for yourself so high it’s unreachable, it’s going to leave you feeling discouraged and upset. The next time you find yourself being excessively self-critical, take a step back and do a little healthy introspection. Ask yourself what beliefs about yourself and your writing abilities are driving you to be so hard on yourself. Start to become aware of when these beliefs and self-critical behaviors start to hit you, and as you do, gently stop them in their tracks. For me, this meant finding ways to encourage myself. Imagine you were your own child. What would you say to that child to encourage them to succeed? Treat yourself with the same gentle kindness that you’d expect from family or loved ones and give that to yourself. You deserve it!

2). Trust your gut and allow yourself the space to change course: When I first realized I felt blocked, I noticed that the topics and interests that fueled me in the past no longer did. Writers can develop a “comfort zone” like anyone else. Writing about the same things long enough establishes a flow and rhythm that’s easy, certain, and dependable. But creativity doesn’t always care very much for established practices and routines. It’s spontaneous and driven by intuition; the same intuition I was ignoring by writing on topics that had become irrelevant to me. It’s important that as we grow as people and our interests change, our writing grows with us and doesn’t get left behind in the process. By finally giving myself space to embrace other topics, hobbies, and interests, my writing style became fun and flowy again instead of descending into monotony.

3). Writing, like anything else, requires practice. Sometimes just writing for a set amount of time will help. Something I found that really helps with writer’s block is to set a timer on your phone, and just write for any amount of time. This could be ten minutes, half an hour, forty-five minutes, it doesn’t matter just do it. However, practice doesn’t refer strictly to a quantity of writing.

Practice also means learning to have fun with your writing, and so you will need to out of your head.

Try creative freeform writing! It doesn’t matter how silly and stupid it comes out. Write the first things that come to mind and just write things down as they appear in your head. You might be super resistant to doing this exercise when you first start it. GOOD! That’s because your analytical, rational mind is telling you it’s completely ridiculous, but the goal of doing this is to get you OUT of your head. Even if what you write doesn’t make much sense, you start to sink into a flow state and I’ve written several pages on a scratchpad in 30–45 minutes using this method. There’s an element of spontaneity and risk-taking involved with writing. This practice taught me to embrace the uncertainty of outcome that comes with writing or any other art. If you’re too focused on writing the “perfect” article/story/book/document/etc, that’s universally liked and appreciated by everyone, well I say good luck with that! It’s when we fear negative criticism and focus too heavily on perfection that we get lost in analysis paralysis. This principle can apply to just about everything.

To sum it all up, writer’s block seemed like the bane of my writing career, but when I decided to embrace it and learn from it, I learned a lot about myself and what was standing in my way. Honestly, I’d say I’m thankful for experiencing it in the first place. Perhaps that’s the last and most important lesson. When you find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place, stop judging the situation you’re in, and rather, ask yourself how you got there and what you can learn from it. You might run into some surprises! The journey of life is filled with many bumps and “blocks”. Why not become a little wiser from them?

So tell me… how do you handle writer’s block?

Lianne Hikind

Lover of purple, and the stock market. Kind of a hippie. Part-time adventurer. Creative Consultant at ABC Purple.

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