Happy New Year! It’s January 2016, and the year is overflowing
with opportunities. We’re hunting for jobs, joining gyms, and learning new
languages. Everyone seems to have a long list of New Year’s Resolutions, and
everyone is ready to capitalize on the unlimited potential that a new year inevitably
brings.
I have my own list of things that I want to accomplish in
2016, and, so far, I’ve been doing pretty well. My progress on most of my goals
is exactly where it should be for the end of the first month.
Unfortunately, my writing goals are the exception to this
rule. Particularly my goal to write 1,000 words per day. I think I’ve stuck to
that once or twice in all of January.
It’s not that I’m not trying, because I am. But, aside from
the challenge of making time to write each day, I often feel powerless to turn
a blinking caret into literature the way Rumpelstiltskin turned straw into
gold.
Each of us has a well of inspiration that we draw from. And
the water levels in these wells are usually well-maintained by those very
special springs unique to the mind of a creative writer, the springs that turn
everyday people and events into fiction fodder.
Yet sometimes the springs fail us. Sometimes, when we come
to draw water, we find a vast, echoing emptiness.
What’s a writer to do when their well’s run dry?
I think that the answer depends on what’s causing your writers’
block.
Your writing couldn’t
possibly be good enough. At least, that’s what you tell yourself at times.
And, during those times, you revise your work to death, uprooting the good
along with the bad.
Sometimes you’re
bogged down by a single routine, a single mindset, or a single writing method.
Trapped in tunnel vision, you become incapable of seeing things creatively and you
kill new ideas before they’ve even taken shape.
Or sometimes the
problem is simply a lack of inspiration. The laws of physics tell us that
energy can’t be destroyed or created. It just changes form. And the same goes
for your creative energy. You can’t create something out of nothing. Of course,
you can’t just sit around waiting for your muse to show up—muses are
notoriously fickle—but you also can’t expect fantastic output when there hasn’t
been any input. Creating anything worth your time will become exponentially
harder if you’ve failed to nourish your imagination.
So, now that you’ve identified the cause of your empty well,
what do you do about it? Curing writers’ block is like curing hiccups—all your
friends may swear by a remedy that just doesn’t work for you, and it can be
difficult to find what does. Based on what I’ve learned from experience and
from other writers, there’s no one-size-fits-all advice, especially in the
world of creative writing. But here are several methods that have often gotten
me through creative dry spells.
Believe in yourself. I’m
aware of how cliché that sounds, but confidence in yourself and your work is crucial
to producing quality content. One thing that boosts my confidence is going back
through old pieces that I’ve written that I’m proud of, especially ones that
other people have enjoyed as well. This reminds me of the things that I’ve done
right, which I’m fully capable of doing again.
It also helps to remember that each of us has doubts. We’ll
all have moments when we don’t believe in our own abilities.
Vary your routine.
Take a different route to work, eat lunch with someone other than your usual
crew, or take a class on something you know absolutely nothing about. Breaking
from your everyday traditions can free your mind and get you thinking
creatively again.
Vary your thought
process. Approach the familiar as though seeing it for the first time. Try
to observe your world through someone else’s eyes. I use my fictional
characters’. You’ll be surprised by how a small shift of perspective will
transform the mundane into a wealth of inspiration.
Vary your writing
process. If you’ve outlined each of your recent projects, do a couple of
writing exercises that require spur-of-the-moment creation. Or, if you’ve been revising
on a computer, print your next draft and mark up the hard copy before typing
the corrections.
Store up input. Consistently
churning out original content without taking any in, you’ll eventually run out
of ideas. So read books, watch movies, and listen to music. Absorbing the
stories around us keeps ideas forming and flowing.
Writers’ block is practically a rite of passage for us; it
just comes with the territory. Luckily, restoring your well can be as simple as
reminding yourself how amazing you are, breaking free of routines you’ve been
stuck in, or spending an afternoon curled up with a cup of tea and a library
book.
