I’m so happy you guys appreciated my last ‘reader-mail’ series, where I answered the questions of becoming a Full-time writer and being a professional. Trust me, I have a lot of emails in my inbox, and now that I know this is helpful for you guys, will continue to answer them on the blog! So this was another email (in short) I received from one of you awesome Misfits,
“Hey TheBlondeMisfit,
Do you ever get writer’s block & how would you suggest breaking it?”
Sigh. It is, sadly, the one curse that is doomed to happen to every writer at least once in their career: The dreaded Writer’s block. I have never met a writer, or artist even, who feels 100% constantly inspired. I guess people think that because we like to write, we would never run out of ideas to write and expound on. Negative. I find myself hitting a writer’s block even more often than before, but I’ve realized that for me, it’s not necessarily that I’m out of ideas, it’s just I don’t have a set outline of them.
I love lists. My senior year in college, I took 21 credits in the Fall and 24 in the Spring. While many of my friends were taking 6 or 9 credits and strolling on down their merry way toward graduation, I was working out an average of 3 term papers, 2 projects, 12 coffees, and no social life every two weeks. Many people ask me how I made it out alive, and aside from the simple name “Jesus”, I learned I had to be highly organized and make daily lists to keep my brain from daily overload.
Writer’s block is quite similar. When I’m feeling inspired, I write it down on a list I have called “inspiration” (witty, I know). As a visual learner and thinker, I love using platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram to look up ideas for inspiration and add it for a time when my brain is simply…blank. When I suffer writer’s block, I don’t just sit around and not write (because money isn’t going to just fall from the sky unless you’re at KOD), but I revisit my Inspiration list and work off of that. Usually it’s not the fact you can’t think of ANYTHING, but it’s just that you can’t think of anything you WANT to write about or HOW to go about it.
As far as suggestions go for how to avoid writer’s block, the simply answer is you can’t 🙂 & that’s perfectly okay, because it happens to all of us. I would say if you’re feeling uninspired, try looking for different ways in which you might gain some new ideas. Change your scenery. Go to a coffee shop instead of sitting at your desk. Try that new art gallery or restaurant downtown. Sit outside and disconnect from your phone for a while (yes, it surely is possible). I know it’s super Boho of me to say, but let the Universe speak to you instead of you trying to force the conversation. The reality is sometimes you just won’t be able to ‘break’ writer’s block, but I have always found that my best work comes from a place where I haven’t pushed or forced anything. Kind of like a great relationship.
Hope this helps, and I’ll have another one next week!
