There Is No Such Thing As Writer’s Block.

And what to do about it. 

There is no such thing as writer’s block.

That reaction that you just had, that violent opposition to the words in the sentence above, proves that there is no such thing as writer’s block. Just having read those words you could easy write thousands of words explaining to me that writer’s block is real, that I don’t what I’m talking about, and that I just don’t understand.

Still don’t believe me?

Try this: The boy band One Direction is a better band than the Beatles. You’d have no loss of words to explain just how wrong that statement is, would you? (Neither do I. But my twin daughters insist it’s true).

So why is it that you sometimes just can’t write?

You Haven’t Captured Your Ideas: One of the reasons you might believe that you have writer’s block is that you haven’t captured your ideas. You have ideas all of the time. They float into your consciousness and right out the other side. And you let them. The first key to having something to write is having something to say in the first place. But if you let your ideas escape you, then you won’t have them when you need them.

You need to capture every idea. I don’t mean this figuratively; I mean it literally. When an idea strikes you, capture it. Put it in a notebook. Dictate it into your iPhone. Type it into Evernote. If you had the idea, it’s worth capturing. If you know what you want to write, writing is easy. When you have something to say, you can hammer it right out, can’t you?

But there is a reason you don’t capture your ideas.

You Judge Your Ideas Too Soon: The reason that you don’t believe you have anything to write is because you are too judgmental about your ideas. You don’t believe they are good enough. You believe other people are going to judge you for your ideas. You believe you’re going to embarrassed. All of this is the fear generated from deep inside your reptile brain.

The idea that you dismissed because you were afraid to share it is the idea that would benefit someone else right now. But your fear caused you to withhold it from them.

You are an antenna. Your job is to capture and transmit ideas. Some of the words you write will change lives. Most of them won’t. But you can’t discern which will and which won’t. You have to set them free to discover what is of value and what isn’t. You aren’t really the judge.

You Won’t Write for No Reason: You are writing so you can publish what you wrote, so you can share it. Because you are judging your writing by that high standard, you don’t start. But that isn’t how the creative process works. You can write just to write.

In creative writing classes, you start by just trying to write to fill three pieces of paper (or fifteen minutes). It’s easy to write ideas when you are writing for no reason. There’s zero pressure. The pressure you feel is coming from inside you. No one else can see what you are writing while you are doing the writing.

I have a file of half-baked ideas sitting in the Byword folder of my Dropbox account. I started writing, and then the idea just petered out. Maybe I’ll finish them someday. Or maybe I won’t. Who cares?

You break the logjam by writing. Once you start writing, you just keep on writing. Sometimes something catches, something takes hold, and then you’re off to the races. Sometimes you end up with half an idea, half a story.

As Chuck Close says, “Inspiration is for amateurs.” The professional just shows up and does the work.

The Editor is Not the Writer: You can’t get past the first sentence. It’s not right. It doesn’t hit you right between the eyes. It isn’t strong enough. It doesn’t set the stage. The tone is all wrong. So you go back and revise it . . . 63 times.

Nothing chokes off the creative process like editing while you are trying to create. But creating and editing are two very different processes. They need to be separated.

It’s easier to write if you just worry about getting the ideas out of your mind and onto a page. The starting and stopping that is part of the editing process closes the spigot of creativity. It’s too judgmental. Separate the writing process and the editing process. Write now, edit later.

Just Write.

I don’t which of these ideas might work to break the logjam for you (or for the person who inspired this by asking for my help with his writer’s block). But I do know that telling yourself that you have writer’s block doesn’t do anything to get words on a page. You’re better off writing something until you find something that sticks.