How To Get Over Writer’s Block — Dan Harmon
Over the past two weeks, I set a goal to write every day. It started off as a small habit that I wanted to keep to:
- Get better at writing
- Keep myself busy while looking for a job
- Write down my thoughts to see what I actually think about certain topics or situations
- Give myself a therapy session
I have noticed that my viewership and following base has been steadily increasing ever since I started writing consistently. I showed up everyday and tried to offer something valuable, something interesting that people all over Medium could read.
I have been humbled, amazed and surprised at the relative success that I’ve had.
My article about Marcus Aurelius appeared on a Facebook page that attracted many readers and received a lot of love. More than 3500 people saw the article and the traffic trickled into my other articles.
My fictitious article talking about my rough interviewer who cursed me out and changed my life had explosive growth and many people seemed to love the story. It was one of my first attempts in changing my writing style and I was happy to see that it became popular.
My article on Jordan Peterson’s advice on treating yourself like someone you are responsible for helping is on its way to have 1,000 upvotes. I know the upvote system makes the article seem more popular and inflates the voting system, but I never would have imagined that I would even come close to that number.
My point isn’t to brag about the numbers or the recent success I’ve been having. I have been feeling a lot of pressure these days as more people look at my content.
When I first started, I came in with an open heart. I decided that I would write for only myself, and my goal was to get better at my craft each day.
Writing made me feel better and coming up with entertaining stories and practical solutions to problems in our lives was really fun and rewarding.
But when I started paying attention to the numbers, I started getting obsessive. I kept coming back to check for notifications, and kept getting hits of dopamine whenever I opened Medium and saw the green dot on the bell signifying a new notification.
Every article got harder to write. I didn’t want to disappoint my viewers. I don’t know what it was about the past articles, because they were barely edited and poorly written at best. Some of them I had written in 30 minutes, and felt ashamed to publish them. To my surprise, even they did fairly well.
So I kept putting off excuses and slacked off on my daily habits. I didn’t prioritize my writing, while waiting all day for the perfect idea to come by.
Something that would be better than the idea I wrote about the previous day.
Something that would gain the attention of another 1000 viewers.
Something that would become viral so that I could keep feeding off of the notifications.
The more I waited for an idea, the more anxious I felt. The silence in my head was deafening. I felt myself procrastinating and avoiding the task, and many times throughout the day I contemplated giving up and “taking a break”. I knew I was making excuses. I was crumbling under the pressure that I was creating for myself.
I forgot that I told myself I would be okay with writing crap until I got better.
I forgot that I would never write something amazing in one-go.
I forgot that once I started writing, my mind would start flowing and connecting new and interesting ideas.
I was only able to come to this realization once again and destroy my self-doubt and insecurity by asking for help. I searched for advice on the r/Writing community on reddit. It seemed that many aspiring writers had a similar problem with writer’s block.
One piece of advice that really helped me was Dan Harmon’s answer to a question asking for the solution to writer’s block. Dan Harmon is a writer and showrunner responsible for shows like HarmonQuest, Rick and Morty and HarmonTown.
Question: “What are some good writing tips as in how to stay focused and overcome writers block?”
Dan Harmon: My best advice about writer’s block is: the reason you’re having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly.
By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it’s the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from “writing well” to “writing badly,” you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don’t like to admit it, because we’re raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let’s just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers.
We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that’s a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck. We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands. We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn’t going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster. And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it’s no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC. You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you’re an asshole.
So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit” and then take off your “bad writer” hat and replace it with a “petty critic” hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft. Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough or maybe everyone in the world will turn out to be so hopelessly stupid that they think bad things are good and in any case, you get to spend so much less time at a keyboard and so much more at a bar where you really belong because medicine because childhood trauma because the Supreme Court didn’t make abortion an option until your unwanted ass was in its third trimester. Happy hunting and pecking!
I think Dan identified the exact problem I have. I have a fear of writing badly, but I have to realize that I am holding unreasonable standards and I should know that my first draft is always going to suck.
We shouldn’t expect to write a beautiful prose or a famous novel in one-go. We should expect to write thousands of drafts that inevitably gets thrown into the trash until we can write a decent one.
Change your goal from writing well to writing badly. Write anything that comes to mind. Write about things you know no one will read. Write about your dog. Write about what you did today. Write about your childhood. Write about anything.
The point is to write badly and fail fast so that you can get better quickly, instead of worrying about writing well and never writing at all.
If people show up and tell you your writing sucks, embrace them because you know it’s true. Don’t be discouraged or feel defeated. Ask them what they don’t like about the article or what you could do to fix it. Ask your friends to look at it and criticize you without holding back.
Find people who will tell you the honest truth, so that you will come out a resilient and better writer instead of a weak and mediocre writer.
When you feel the pressure of high expectations, you should ask yourself what you’re worried about. Are you scared of failing? Are you scared of writing badly? Are you scared of embarrassing yourself?
After you pinpoint what has been holding you back, remind yourself of your goal to write badly. Fail fast today so that you can have a better tomorrow. Learn from your mistakes and become 1% better each day.
To defeat writer’s block is to write badly and freely with an honest and open heart.
