Doing Great Creative Work and Overcoming Writer's Block
I remember when I first started writing seriously some years ago, trepidation prevented me often from not only sharing my work but getting words on paper in the first place.
I put the cart before the horse by worrying about what others may say of my work rather than simply doing the work first.
The work is something that takes attention, concentrated action pointed in a specific direction. Even so, the work itself is more about the process of writing, thinking, and rewriting than actually publishing. Sure, writers want their words to be read and loved and appreciated. But that can’t happen until the process is nourished and treated with the deference it deserves.
As a young writer I read books and articles about writing, about the craft and the toil. Across these readings, writer's block was by far the most pervasive motif. Different writers described it in different ways.
Some writers regard writer’s block as an inevitable and frequent obstacle, and advise taking a step away from work to clear your head. Others recommend staring at your blank screen or paper until something happens.
This usually does not work for me. I prefer something much more active and pointed.
Though it may sound counterintuitive at first, I’ve always found writing to be the best antidote to writer’s block. When I feel stuck or stumped or stupefied, I pull out my journal and begin writing, by stream of consciousness and without premeditation. This “loosens the gears,” if I may use the hackneyed expression, and words come to me quicker as I write more and more. The act of writing long-form, rather than with a keyboard, seems to also have an impact here.
By writing in a journal, all expectations and barriers are blown away because the only audience is you. Within the private and quiet pages of a journal, suffocating thoughts of what others may expect of you can be gently dismissed. Words can flow freely when you rid them of expectations.
I’ve found so much success in mitigating writer's block through journaling that, in the last couple years, I usually start every writing session with 10-15 minutes of pen-to-paper writing in my journal. It has become my warm up and part of my routine. Journaling prepares me because of its meditative quality, the slow and rather mindless act of putting words to paper at my own pace, and without a prompt or deadline. It gives writing a rare ease and comfort to exist in, even momentarily, a pleasant escape from one-day deadlines and being paid cents per word.
In addition, by writing in a journal as a warm up to “real” writing, it gives you the illusion of productivity. It is a pointed action in a specific direction — the direction being to simply pen words without an agenda — and this can trick us into thinking we don’t have writer’s block, or better yet, we forget entirely that we were blocked in the first place.
In the last several years, I’ve filled half a dozen journals. Pages upon pages of writing, of course without much rhyme or reason, but pages of writing nonetheless. All those words dumped onto paper have provided me with a way of getting out all my bad ideas so that I can get to the good ones. Like unpacking all the junk that floats to the surface so I can see the treasures that lay just beneath.
I attribute much of my modest success as a writer to this practice, these daily deposits of largely garbage writing. I’ve found that, on accident and as a consequence of regular journaling, I’ve become a faster and smoother writer and a more articulate thinker and speaker. Plus, my handwriting has improved (my journals of 2016 look like they were written by someone else’s hand compared to my more recent journals).
By adopting this habit, I subsequently adopted the philosophy of doing the work. Whenever I feel stuck or discouraged, I ask myself honestly, have I done the work? This question gives me the frame of mind to reflect properly and take responsibility for the things I have yet to write.
And that’s where the journal comes in — I often write about whether or not I’ve done the work, put in the requisite effort, to achieve this or that goal, or write a story or article. The question, have I done the work? leads directly into the journal, which points me in the right direction afterwards. This cycle is productive and reflective, and has made me a better writer.
There are creative benefits to keeping a journal (and doing the work), too. Unedited and unfiltered pages provide a landscape to test out ideas and grapple with philosophies that you may not be prepared to share publicly. Notwithstanding the obvious self-exploration, a journal allows one to practice the very act of articulating. And the words one may articulate in a journal are the words that may not have ever been written otherwise.
Here’s what Virginia Woolf had to say in A Writer’s Diary about keeping a journal and the practice of journaling,
“I note however that this diary writing does not count as writing, since I have just re-read my year’s diary and am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along . . . still if it were not written rather faster than the fastest type-writing, if I stopped and took thought, it would never be written at all; and the advantage of the method is that it sweeps up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated, but which are the diamonds of the dustheap.”
Words, when arranged without an outline as they are in a journal, can take on a rough and haphazard form. But this sharpens over time and with practice, and eventually so does your true voice (in so far as one’s writing is their “voice”).
In all likelihood, nobody will read your journal entries unless you are Ernest Hemingway or Virginia Wolfe, and there’s a good chance that you won’t even reread what you have written in them. But they are a good practice and a strong antidote to writer’s block.
Before you complain about writer's block, ask yourself, have I done the work?
Whatever your answer may be, open your journal and write.
If you liked this article, you can check out my most recent short story here. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter, too.