Someone asked me to do a segment on writers block, which I thought was pretty ironic because it’s an issue I’m currently facing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any “hard” advice. Meaning, like everybody else who's ever written about it, there was no one thing I felt I could say that would fix the problem.So, I thought I’d share my own experience with the subject in the hopes that that might help.
A lot of people have been asking me where I’ve been over the last five months. I haven’t read anything, on Wattpad or other, and I haven’t written anything either. In fact, since February, I’ve done almost nothing involving writing except stare at a blank screen.
The truth is I’ve been suffering from writers block.
Now, understand, I’ve probably read all the same articles you have on writers block and how to get over it. They all say the same thing.
Keep trying.
Even if it’s just a paragraph you have to write
Start on something new
The list goes on.
Believe me I tried every single one of these. The result was, On A Dime, a story which I will more than likely never finish (Sorry to all those reading it).
The problem was, as I’ve recently come to discover, that the writers block I was experiencing was not your typical writers block.
See, my problem wasn’t that I was stuck at the middle of a novel, or at the end of one. In fact, I’d already written the first and second drafts of my novel. I just couldn’t go any further.
I knew what needed to be done to make it better, but every time I tried to write, I ended up making it worse.
Finally, I gave up.
Mind you, this was a terrible decision on my part, as I was taking a creative writing class at the same time. I ended up re-using old stories just to get through it.
As a writer, I’ve never been so frustrated with myself. Here I am, two months from going off to college and majoring in creative writing, and I seem to have lost the ability to write. I felt like I had nothing to offer, and I contemplated rejecting the school I’d gotten into because of it.
This whole thing was made worse by the fact that my love of writing never diminished in the slightest. That itch that all writers get to write never disappeared. I cannot begin to tell you how terrible it is, wanting to do something, but feeling like anything you have to write is going to be terrible.
So last week, I re-read, Blubber, by Judy Blume. It’s one of my favorite books, and the original reason I decided to try my own hand at writing. Re-reading that book, which means a lot to me for so many different reasons, was a reminder of all the things I love about writing, and that it doesn’t matter how perfect a sentence sounds, so long as you can tell a story.
I’ll say that again, IT DOESN”T MATTER HOW PERFECT A SENTENCE SOUNDS, SO LONG AS YOU CAN TELL A STORY.
That was a hard lesson to learn, and even now I can't say I've fully come to terms with it. But it did bring to mind something else.
Years ago, a teacher of mine once said, “Procrastination is just another form of fear.” I didn’t understand what she meant then, and I didn’t think it applied to writing, but I’ve come to realize that that’s exactly what writers block is. Fear.
Fear that I’ll make things worse
Fear that nothing I do is going to go anywhere
Fear that I’m not good enough to measure up to the people getting their books turned into movies
Fear that writing might just not be what I’m meant to do
It took me a while to realize that I’m always going to feel like this at some point or another, but that (yes I know it’s cheesy) If I want to go anywhere, and this applies to everything, not just writing, I have to turn these negative thoughts into positive ones.
It’s true that I could make things worse, but I could also make them better
It’s true that I could go nowhere, but I could also go everywhere
I have to realize that I’m only as good as I believe I am, and the only person I have to measure up to or impress, is myself.
I have to realize that if writing isn’t what I’m meant to do, it just means that there’s something better out there for me.
This break has allowed me to discover a love for film writing, something I never thought I’d be interested in, and journalism, something else I never thought I’d be interested in.
So, no I’m not going to tell you to keep at it no matter what, because sometimes you need a break. And my daily paragraph turned into my own personal whining session about why I couldn’t write. Believe me, it was not pretty. For some people, starting on something new really does work. It did for me. Right up until it didn’t. I’m just trying to say, that writers block is a mental thing. You can use all the tricks you want, read all the online guides you can get your hands on, but if you’re not into it mentally, they’re not going to do you any good.
So, when people ask me, how did you get over your writers block, this will be my response.
I didn’t. There’s no such thing as, getting over writers block. It’s always there. Every time you can’t come up with a word, or you find yourself continuously re-writing a sentence because it just isn’t perfect enough. In each of these smaller instances, we keep at it. Why? (Cheese Alert) Because we know that whatever word or sentence we’re searching for is out there. However, it will never be found if we simply give up.
Today I actually managed to write an entire page. It’s not perfect, but it’s not the trash I once would’ve thought it was before. It just goes to show that it may take five months, it may take five days, but eventually it will come back to you.
P.S. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d discovered a new love for journalism. I wrote my first movie review on Frozen (which I hated for a whole lot of writer reasons), and I really enjoyed myself doing it. Keep at it folks. You never know what you might discover about yourself.
