Oh no, Experiencing Writer’s Block?
Try having a casual conversation with a friend or mentor to get the juices flowing.
I set up my laptop to write — My coffee is perfectly situated next to me, the ceiling fan is on, and white noise takes over my headset — Ah, perfect — time to write my viralesque article on Medium that’s going to be loved and adored by millions!
*3 hours later*
My coffee’s guzzled, the white noise has looped 5 times over, and guess what? I haven’t written a goddamn thing. In fact, all I did was hit the backspace button on the 300 words I decided to scrap anyways.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever experienced debilitating writer’s block
*All of Medium raises hand*
In accordance with writing, this seems to be a necessary part of it that we all have to come to terms with.
The pain point comes in when you’ve sat down and written 3 great articles in which you’ve amassed followers and claps one week; and the following week, you can barely form a sentence without coming up with new ‘I am’ statements to loathe yourself.
Don’t add fuel to the fire.
As writers, and especially novice writers like myself — we tend to de-value our ideas and knock them down a peg due to the fact we’ve just started doing the thing.
We feel ideas are few and far between when in actuality, they’re abundant.
One way of overcoming writer’s block- have a conversation
I had a meeting with my writing coach a few weeks ago when writing for an essay contest. We were discussing this exact topic and how it can be so difficult to put words to a page or thought.
I was stuck on a particular scene in my personal essay and couldn’t end it with an emotional gut-punch like I wanted to.
We then got a little off base and I started asking questions about her move to New York City — how scared, excited, and frustrated she was with the moving process. I had also brought up the topic of her mother living in Missouri and being so far away.
The result was that she was excited to be attending a creative writing masters program. She would surely miss her mother, but she was going to finally be pursuing her dream.
She asked me questions about my job as an ER nurse — mainly how satisfied I was with my job at the time.
I went on a rant about how shitty CEOs just care about lining their pockets, how the hospital is a giant conveyor belt of sick people, and the apathy nurses succumb to as a result of all of this — which will eventually lead to the hospital systems imploding.
After my grumblings of healthcare, she says to me “wow, I would read that for sure.”
I said “what? Me bitching about healthcare?”
She said “yes, I think that’s a very authentic view of what you just described.”
I thought about what she had said, and then I reflected on the entire exchange. We literally had a gold mine of ideas in one conversation — interesting topics that would actually be fun to write and share with other people.
When trying to put fingers to keyboard — pen to page, we think too hard. It doesn’t end up resulting in the masterpiece envisioned and can be discouraging.
Basically, as a new or aspiring writer, it’s possible to care too much about the outcome.
However, when you’re having a conversation with a good friend or colleague, you end up with a treasure trove of new ideas. The genius presents itself that was hiding the whole time because you aren’t firing every single neuron to come up with one shitty sentence — only to delete it.
Food for thought: Bring a journal and a pen with you next time you meet someone for coffee. Don’t bring the journal in with you or else you will think about it too much. After the conversation, reflect and write down the most interesting details about that topic.
You may just have a brilliant idea, disguised as a conversation between you and a colleague — which will then domino into a Pulitzer prize-winning piece.
Thank you for reading,
