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Writer’s Block is Your Friend
Free your mind with this twin strategy
In the middle of one of my worst bouts of writer’s block, I felt annoyed with everything I wrote. My WIP felt unwieldy, and nothing I tried was working. In my desperation, I pulled out pen and paper and drew an actual block.
Why not, I thought, a brain dump might at least make me feel better.
I filled the block with a list of things that I felt might be getting in the way. I wrote such things as: I’m bored; I’m not saying anything new; it’s all pointless.
When I sat back and saw my long, scrawled list in one place, it was almost comical. “Oh,” I thought, “that old stuff again!”
It was time to do some free writing. This is where you set a timer for fifteen minutes and just write whatever comes to mind, with no goal but to get words down. You keep your pen or curser moving. If you can’t think of anything, you just write, “and so, and so” or “um, um, ah” until something new comes.
And this is how I came to see Writer’s Block as a friend. Good ole’ W.B. When you write without a deadline or goal, it can free your mind. And who doesn’t want their mind to be free?
It took several sessions of free writing over the course of a couple of months to see some writing emerge that I didn’t…
