Recently I’ve been struggling with every new and seasoned writer’s worst nightmare, writer’s block. This has resulted in inconsistent blog uploads and quite frankly is affecting the quality of my writing as well. This creative slowdown is terrible. I feel like there was momentum and I was riding the writing wave, and now I’m stranded on still waters. This led me to look for ways to bring back some momentum and look for methods that I could use to not hit still waters again. I came across a sea of solutions, but I’ve only applied two of these so far.
Developing a writing ritual
Thomas Frank, in his video about ways to improve the skill of writing, suggests building a writing ritual! A writing ritual is a set of habits that enable you to dive into the writing process easily. Thomas suggests that the ritual helps to get over the resistance we feel before we have to start a cognitively demanding task. Steven Pressfield, the author of The War of Art, calls resistance the greatest enemy of every artist. And a writing ritual helps to overcome resistance. This ritual can involve writing in a specific place or having a list of things that you do before you start writing. I’ve slowly been developing a writing ritual, it involves making a warm beverage, either tea or coffee, right before I look at a blinking cursor. In addition to making the beverage, I make sure I have a playlist of instrumental Study With Me music running in the background. So far, it’s been helping me to focus. I’ll be writing an update blog about either the continuation or evolution of this ritual.
Write a stream of consciousness
Another suggestion posed widely to overcome writer’s block is to just write a stream of consciousness on a blank page. Just write whatever crosses your mind. Doesn’t matter how insane it is, how weird it is, how irrational it is. Just keep writing. Many writers swear by this method to overcome their creative block. Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work, argues that we need to elimiante the need for our brain to do context switching in order to undertake cognitively demanding tasks. When I write, I have a tendency to go back and edit the sentence that I’ve written. According to Cal Newport, that’s where my brain is compelled to do context switching from writing to editing. Writing and editing are two different tasks. So, in order to eliminate context switching, I need to separate writing from editing. It’s easier said than done, but I’ve been trying to put all my thoughts on paper and then building on them later.
I will slowly be incorporating additional methods to overcome writer’s block. I don’t want to be inconsistent with my writing anymore. And ofcourse updates will follow.