Writing through writers block

When you feel stuck and don’t quite know what to write, instead of shying away from it, follow it.

Start typing and just see what happens.

Don’t focus on how good or bad it is. Don’t focus on whether it’ll be worth sharing online or what people will think. Just write and then write some more.

Keep going until the words start to flow with ease. It might get easier after a few sentences or a few hundred words but keep going and just write.

When you finally decide to stop, you might find that you love what you’ve managed to write but that isn’t the goal or the purpose.

The purpose is to write through the ‘writers block’ because doing so teaches you that maybe it’s not as big of an obstacle that you think it is.

Running out of ideas

When it comes to blogging, daily blogging in particular, there are endless ideas of what you can write about. But unless you’re keeping a journal it’ll be beneficial to keep what you share within a category, niche or even a few words.

However, it may even seem too difficult to narrow down what you write about. After all, how can you base 365 posts on the same thing and then keep on doing it year after year.

There are 2 problems with that statement.

The first is thinking too far in advance. The beauty of daily blogging is that you can choose to think about what you want write one post at a time. You don’t need to take on the burden of 365 days when you’ll probably forget what you write today in 50 days time.

Furthermore, there is next to no benefit in overwhelming yourself with the hundreds of posts you’ll have written a year from now.

The second problem is, if you choose to believe that you’ll run out of ideas, you probably will. It was Henry Ford that said “Think you can, think you can’t; either way you’ll be right.” and I agree.

People in the world have been writing about fashion, philosophy, personal development, marketing, creativity and so on for hundreds of years. So, what makes you think that you’ll suddenly run out of things to write?

There is no cap on ideas or inspiration, they’re infinite.

Struggling to write

After a week or so of struggling to write I got my flow back, the words began to pour.

I began to think about how difficult it had been to post everyday that previous week, until I caught myself and realised why I hadn’t been able to write as easily.

I’d stopped writing.

In that week or so of struggling to write I’d gotten caught up in being busy and I chose to do other things with my time instead of write. And so I suppose I created this story in my head about struggling to write because it was easier than admitting the truth.

Plus, at times it’s almost cool to have ‘writers block’ just so you can shout about when it’s over.

Why I don’t rely on being inspired to write

Some days are easier than others.

I have days when the words pour out with such ease that it can be hard to keep up. But I also have days when I’ll open my laptop to write and after 30 minutes I’ve gone back and forth on the same few sentences and I have a total of 23 words on the page.

But by posting daily I can’t rely on the days when it’s easy to write because those moments don’t come 7 days a week.

Instead I’ve taught myself to work through the days when the words don’t come as easy and still end up with something I’m happy to share.

I find that once I’m willing to try and write the ‘block’ eventually dissolves and out pour the words.

When you’re not in-flow

Having a daily writing practice means that writers block isn’t an excuse I can use.

There are days when writing feels a little more rigid and I suppose I feel ‘blocked’ but I don’t feed it because whether I feel in-flow or totally out of flow I still have to write and share something.

I think one of the easiest ways to loosen up and allow the words to flow is to write and it’s ironic because we’d usually do the opposite.

Perhaps the first 100 or even 500 words might be what you think of as rubbish but once you get past that you get to the good stuff. All of sudden you’re scoffing at that supposed ‘writers block’ knowing that you should have listened to Seth when he said:

Writer’s block isn’t hard to cure.

Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.

Seths Blog: Talkers Block

Where I go

I feel like anyone that blogs daily has this mental space that they go to when they’re writing.

For me I tap into my inner monologue. It’s always running and so I simply stop and pay attention to it for long enough to write a hundred words or so.

For the most part it’s easy to do, to pay attention to my thoughts and write about them.

But sometimes getting to that place isn’t so easy because we get caught in trying to be perfect or underestimating our own abilities.

The amazing thing is that, no matter how you feel you always have access to that place.

It might not be writers block

If you want to write something but nothing good comes to mind, you might think say that you have writers block.

And so perhaps you take a break from writing, convinced that you have nothing good in you to pour out at this time.

But you’ll be back to writing once the cloud clears and all your good ideas are back because what’s the use in writing if it isn’t good.

However there’s a second option, to keep writing. Even when you think it’s bad or when you know it’s not your best. Do it for the practice or for the routine.

You might even find that what you thought was writers block is just a sentence or 2 of ‘bad writing’ and after that you’re back to your usual flow.

3 Months of daily blogging!

Time has flown by and one thing that I can tell you about daily blogging is that it’s not as difficult as I thought it would be.

The act of coming up with something to write every single day and sharing it is more enjoyable than challenging.

I thought I’d get ‘writers block’ but any time I felt stuck for what to write I just tapped into my inner monologue. I’d think about something interesting that had happened recently, what had I learnt or experienced.

Some days I’d be really pleased with what I’d written and other days I’d click publish knowing that it was not my best work.

But it’s unrealistic to expect that everything I write will feel like the best thing that I’ve ever written, that’s something pretty useful that I’m learning on my writer journey.

Over the past 3 months, I missed one day of blogging and instead of berating myself I just posted twice the next day. Through that I learnt to not be so hard on myself with this daily blogging thing.

I love that I’m writing more and sharing more because as a result of it I’m thinking differently and even though this isn’t as challenging as I thought it would be there is some level of challenge involved.

For me, it’s that challenge of committing. I’m an ideas person and I get excited by new things. In the past my excitement has run out rather quickly and I call it quits and just move onto something else.

But I think that part of me has changed as this is post #90 and I’m still excited about this blog.

Everyday I give myself the opportunity to do something I love and share it.