Twelve Ways to Overcome Creative Doubts, Procrastination, and Other Writing Blocks
Although I’m a professional author, most days picking up the dog poop in the yard seems more appealing to me than sitting down to write.
Once I get into a writing trance where I’m open to the creative energy of the universe and am surprising myself with what’s being created, I love it. There’s nothing more gratifying than connecting with the creative source and bringing something new into existence.
Nevertheless, I often experience feelings of doubt and fear (“This is terrible,” “I’m not good enough to create what I feel called to create”) that make creating difficult. Or I experience bouts of distraction and procrastination (“I can’t possibly write now,” “I’ll start after _____ happens”) that block me from sitting down to create.
After researching creative practices and ways to enhance creativity for nearly two decades, I can say that the root cause of such creative blocks is actually the same thing—the ego.
If you want to explore why the ego often blocks creativity, along with gaining techniques to completely transcend such ego blocks, check out Breakthrough: How to Overcome Doubt, Fear, and Resistance to Be Your Ultimate Creative Self.
But if you’re reading this article, then you’re probably looking for immediate, practical steps that you can implement right now to get beyond doubt, fear, procrastination, and other common creative blocks.
So here it is, twelve easy techniques that you can put into practice today.
1) Before starting a creative task, spend a moment visualizing and feeling some of the benefits of creating.
By focusing on the intrinsic benefits of creativity like the thrill of connecting with the creative source and the joy of discovering something new, you can get yourself excited for the day’s creative adventure.
If such intrinsic rewards aren’t enough to motivate you, pay yourself a token amount for showing up to do creative work. For instance, if you show up for your daily creative work, pay yourself $5. At the end of the week, you can use your “creative earnings” to reward yourself with something fun.
If money isn’t a good motivator for you, come up with other token ways to reward yourself for showing up to do creative work. I know two best-selling authors who give themselves stickers every time they meet their daily writing goals. Personally, I pay myself in jelly beans (if I finish this article, I get five).
2) Start small. Procrastination is usually most debilitating with large tasks.
Having big goals can make it easy to feel overwhelmed. Instead of thinking of the big things you want to accomplish (like write a novel), focus on taking small steps (like writing a sentence). All you need to do is get started. Just write one sentence, draw one line, dip the paintbrush into one color, etc…. You can do that, right?
Once you write a sentence, write another, and another. Count by ones. Doing a hundred pushups is daunting. Doing one is manageable. Rather than telling yourself that you need to do a hundred, do one, and one, and one. The mind will travel down the path of least resistance, so when the path is challenging, focus on taking one easy step at a time.
3) Start anywhere you like.
Don’t worry about writing or creating what you think you “should” create. All you need to do is start somewhere (in whatever part that calls to you). Starting is often the hardest part. Once you get going, you can see where the Muse takes you. Keep your creative momentum up and trust that the Muse will lead you somewhere interesting.
4) Take the pressure off.
Don’t worry about creating something “good.” That’s the ego talking. Instead, view any creation as a success. After all, you’re bringing something new into existence that wasn’t there before.
With writing, I often think of the first draft as merely giving myself a lump of clay to work with. When I feel blocked, I let myself write terrible sentences to provide more clay. Only when I have all the clay I need to construct a story do I focus on shaping the clay into what it wants to be. That’s when I allow myself to question what’s working and what needs to be revised or cut.
During the early revision process, try not to let the clay dry out and harden. It’s better to stay open to new possibilities and discoveries. Once you’ve found the shape that works best, then you can smooth things out and focus on the polishing, glazing, and finishing stages of revision.
5) Create a daily work habit so the decision to start is out of your hands.
Every day, you simply need to show up and start creating at a certain time, just as you have to show up for your job (even when you don’t feel like it). It might help to make a schedule for yourself, with a sticker chart where you sign in.
Close the door to your workplace and tell yourself that you’re at your job (or, more importantly, your calling). You’ve been called to do this, and you need to honor that calling by showing up for the time you promised. It’s out of your hands, so the ego can go sit in a corner for a while. You’ve got work to do.
6) Minimize distractions — these are the ego’s allies that help it slip back in to keep you from creating.
Turn off your phone. Use an app to shut yourself out of the internet (I use SelfControl for this). Toss the TV remote under the couch. Because the mind will travel down the path of least resistance, the harder distractions are to access, the less tempting they’ll be.
If you still keep getting distracted during creative work, try noticing when this happens. For instance, if you can’t think of the word you want, do you search the internet and end up watching videos of Twiggy the waterskiing squirrel?
Figure out what your distraction triggers are and accept that they’ll probably happen again. Then put plans into place (like using an app to block you from visiting social media sites and YouTube) to create a different outcome. In this age of aggressive technological distractions, technological measures are needed to keep them at bay.
7) Maximize productivity by using optimal work habits.
Personally, I’ve found that I’m most productive when I write in 30-minute sessions, with 5-minute breaks between them (this is similar to the Pomodoro Technique). I use a timer to make sure I don’t stop working until I’ve completed my 30 minutes of focused writing.
Often, I enter my most creative stage after 10–20 minutes of flailing around. If I can do four 30-minute sessions a day, I’ll usually accomplish more than if I sat in front of the computer trying to work for eight hours.
8) Your brain needs oxygen to function effectively, so increase your blood flow.
Work until you’re stuck or your efficiency lags, then exercise (or exercise between 30-minute sessions).
It might sound ridiculous, but try this: As soon as you get stuck, do 50 jumping jacks, pushups, burpees, or whatever gets your heart pumping (burpees are the single best way I know to get my blood flowing. Try doing 30 of them — you’ll see). Taking exercise breaks can also help you get new ideas. Plus, if you don’t enjoy exercise, the threat of exercise can give you extra incentive to keep creating (it’s that or burpees).
If aerobic exercise doesn’t work for you, there are other physical activities that can be beneficial. A counselor I know recommends tensing and relaxing different muscle groups as a way to lessen stress and heighten focus.
Simply pick a muscle group and tighten it. As you do this you might think, “These are my hands clenched.” After five seconds, focus on relaxing the muscles in that area (“These are my hands relaxed”). Continue with various muscle groups — toes, legs, arms, chest — until you feel blood circulating more freely through you.
9) Give yourself notes for the next day to make starting easier.
Nothing is more intimidating than a blank page. To make starting easier, try leaving things in the middle of a scene, or even stop mid-sentence with ideas listed below for how to continue. That way you have a thread to pick up and begin with the next day.
10) Accept that doubt will keep coming back.
Nearly every writer doubts. There’s never a moment when I don’t have doubts. Hell, I’m even having doubts right now as I write this sentence. Part of me fears that you’ll think this is stupid and doesn’t need to be said. If writers listened to such doubts, very little would get written.
Rather than resisting doubt or waiting for a doubt-free moment that might never arrive, recognize doubt for what it is — a manifestation of the ego, coating creations with its fear that if you put something out there, it will be criticized and rejected.
So be it. You can’t control what others think. Things still need to come into existence, and most will emerge through a primordial pond of doubt.
11) Think of creativity as coming from beyond you, so there’s no point in doubting it.
Michelangelo described it this way: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
Seeing creativity as a process of discovery in which you uncover what wants to exist gives you a way around doubt. After all, you didn’t come up with the ideas. That’s just your ego talking. Creativity isn’t something you “have.” It’s something that flows through you, and the source of creativity is beyond your ego mind. Doubting it would be like doubting the wind.
If you must doubt, doubt the things that you think must be a certain way, but don’t doubt the Muse — that’s how you offend the gods.
12) Practice creative gratitude.
The ego loves to tell you that you suck and aren’t accomplishing enough. To lessen resistance to creativity, develop the habit of noticing and feeling grateful for small creative acts like writing a paragraph, or doodling a frog.
Creating anything is a pretty amazing accomplishment when you think about it. As Steve Martin once put it, “I think I did pretty well considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.”
The more you notice and appreciate the pleasures and benefits of creativity, the easier it will be to start creating the next day when new doubts, fears, and ego blocks arise. (See the first technique — things come full circle).
Techniques like these can help you develop a foundation of healthy creative habits to work from, but all this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you feel blocked from reaching your full creative potential, that’s often a sign of being on the verge of a creative breakthrough. Keep going—something wonderful wants to exist through you.
Todd Mitchell is the Director of the Beginning Creative Writing Teaching Program at Colorado State University. He’s the author of six books, including The Last Panther (Penguin Random House), The Namer of Spirits (just published this fall by Owl Hollow Press), and Breakthrough: How to Overcome Doubt, Fear, and Resistance to Be Your Ultimate Creative Self. Portions of this article appear in Breakthrough, along with deeper techniques to unlock creative potential while making creative endeavors more effective, sustainable, and enjoyable.
