How Writer's Block Is Best Cured

Posted on May 30th, 2012 in Writing by Vickylass

Procrastination is a writer’s worst enemy. If one likes writing, one should be writing on a regular basis rather than once in a blue moon.

Blank page waiting for your ideas.

How does it feel when you want to write and you feel empty? It seems that you’ve ran out of ideas. Everything is perfect to write. You’ve just had a shower or a bath. You’ve prepared a cup of coffee or tea. The house is quiet… You sit at your computer or in front of an empty notebook, but nothing seems to come up. You write few sentences to cross them out shortly after. If you do smoke, you light a cigarette to stare at the blank page or at the wall. If you don’t smoke, you go to the kitchen for umpteenth time to have a glass of water or another cup.

Writer’s block is more mental than physical

Obviously, one won’t set to write straight from work or when one is most tired. If it happens that writing is our work to earn a living, then, it must be that we’ve been way too long writing, non-stop. We’ve forgotten that not only we are writers, but we are also readers and a good writer has to be a better reader.

Are we too ambitious?

We mustn’t forget that writing like any other creative work is a craft and crafts take some time to be what an artist or craftsmen want it to be. Before reaching to the final painting, a painter will have done many sketches and small, detailed drawings and he will have erased it several times to start again on a different angle. Writing is quite the same. One can’t expect to achieve to a perfect article or story as soon as he or she sits at the computer or takes pen to paper.

Writing is a daily activity for as long as we wish to. It is better to write half an hour everyday if we don’t have much time to devote to our writing than writing for three hours once in a blue moon. Therefore, patience and persistence is a must. Procrastination is a writer’s enemy or what it’s commonly known as MacDonald’s writing, which means that one seems to have many ideas to write about, but they never sit down to write. They keep saying that they have to write on such or such idea on one day, but this day seems to be the twelfth of never.

To fight with writer’s block, I always advise to free write or to brainstorm. Have a thick notebook and a pen at hand’s reach to write on something that passes on your mind. Don’t even care about grammar or misspelling, because at this this stage, what matters is that you’re writing. When this notebook is finished, get a new one. After a while, read what you have written. chances are that on that writing there’s an idea for an article or a fictional story.

Your childhood years are a mine to find topics to write about . Or, someone else’s in your family or circle of friends too. It doesn’t mean that one has to write a childhood memoir or autobiography. but one may wonder why auntie Mo never married being as she was so beautiful and she had so many courting men. Or why in one’s family there were more women than men. What happened to them?

As I usually say writing is a lonely activity and one has to be prepared for this. If one thinks that one can’t spare some time everyday to write in utter loneliness, then, one can’t be a writer.

Whether unpublished or not, one is a writer if one takes the time to write everyday and so doing, writer’s block will cease. It is as simple as this.

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