New or experienced, amateur or professional—all writers get blocked. It not only slows productivity and kills deadlines but it can also squash our sense of self-worth, sending even the best writer into a tail-spin of fear and doubt. At its worst, it can end a writer’s career before it starts.
No wonder we hate it so much! But what if we have the wrong idea about writer’s block? What if it’s not some dreaded disease that targets unsuspecting scribes as they stare hopelessly into their blank computer screens? What if it is something totally different?
What if writer’s block is necessary, inevitable and vital to the creative process? What then? Well, with just a slight shift of perspective, we might start seeing it as the cure to stalled creativity instead of the cause.
And before you get the idea that this post is just another one of those “positive thinking” articles that tries to get you to see the glass as “half full”—think again.
We are actually going to explore what writer’s block is, what is actually happening when we hit these creative walls, and how NOT to be defeated by them. Then, I’m going to tell you how to use writer’s block to supercharge your writing.
First you have to understand one simple rule:
You cannot create anything that exists outside your current field of reality. That includes your writing.
Now, stay with me. This is powerful stuff and it’s far more practical than it sounds.
You might think that such a rule would have a limiting effect. After all, it’s not like you can change reality, but you can expand your reality to include your writing goals.
You might have writer’s block right now. That next line, paragraph or chapter might seem well out of reach, but it doesn’t have to stay that way—especially if you use the power of writer’s block against itself.
This has changed the way I write, decreased my stress, reduced my self-doubt and dramatically increased my productivity. It has been, in a word, empowering.
The great part is that it’s so simple!
Nowadays, I kind of look forward to getting blocked because I know it’s a signal that a breakthrough is just around the corner.
Before we go any further let’s go back to the above rule for a minute and have a closer look at what “your current field of reality” means and it how relates to what we are talking about.
Essentially, your reality is your belief system—all the things you believe are possible for you. Your belief system develops over time through your experiences, education and other information gathered—including your beliefs about your writing.
Anything you have experience and confidence in doing, is a part of your belief system because you have already done it.
Writers face a unique challenge. Every time we begin a new piece, a blog post, story or book it represents a completely new landscape. Yes, we may have written a post or story before, but we have not yet written this one.
By its very nature a new piece of writing is new. We have yet to build it into our current reality. So logically, we will not be able to write the piece until it is within our belief system.
So we hit the inevitable wall, (writer’s block) which represents the leading edge of our current belief system. This will be the farthest we can go at that moment.
Unfortunately, it is here where many people quit, thinking that they can’t do it—that the thing they are trying write is impossible—at least for them.
The truth of the situation is that they have simply hit the outer edge of their belief system—the boundaries of their current reality.
Here’s the cool part: That outer edge, that boundary is not fixed. It’s constantly expanding, pushed out ever further by our ongoing creative energy (our experiences, knowledge, accomplishments and even our failures).
But, because we are always positioned at the leading edge of our reality, we have to allow some time to pass to let that energy “catch-up”. This is creative growth—this is where people break through the boundary and have a “breakthrough”.
Picture it this way:
Imagine you are floating downstream in a river. The surrounding water represents your current belief system (the reality of what you believe you can write). Within that flow of water resides all your current creative energy, made up of your past and present writing experiences, the successes and the failures.
That energy moves along with you and allows you to accomplish your writing benchmarks and goals. Since those benchmarks and goals are within the water flowing immediately about you, you will have no trouble reaching them—they may even seem easy.
But, just up ahead there is a dam. The dam represents the outer limit of your reality, everything before the dam resides within your current beliefs regarding what you can (or can’t) write. When your creative energy hits the dam (the outer boundary of your reality) it’s blocked. That’s writer’s block.
But it will only be held back for a short time. As the creative energy builds behind the dam it will eventually spill over, creating a new boundary—a new reality of what is possible for you.
If you go away and give things a rest (take the break) whenever a block happens, you are allowing that energy to catch up and overflow past the problem. When you come back to the work, after a break, you will be amazed that the solution often presents itself.
That block which seemed very real just a short time ago is now gone. The solution to the problem is now a part of your reality.
Leonardo da Vinci once said: “Every once and a while, go away and take a relaxing break, and then when you come back to your work, your judgment will be better—because remaining constantly at work will hinder your power of judgment. Move some distance away, because then your work will appear smaller, and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and any lack of harmony or proportion… will be more effortlessly seen.”
The solution is to give yourself a break, and allow the creative energy to break through the block.
By walking away, and allowing yourself a break you actually open yourself up to a “breakthrough”.
I’ve broken it down into five steps…
1) Seek out new writing experiences and set
new exciting writing goals. Try newer, bigger stuff. Be fearless.
2) Write. Write and write some more. This builds creative energy.
3) Anticipate writer’s block—it’s inevitable. Don’t fear it. Appreciate the
block when it happens. It’s signaling a pending breakthrough.
4) Step away. Give the energy time to expand the reality of what you believe is
possible for you and your writing. When you come back, you may very well find
that the block is gone.
5) Repeat steps 1 through 4.
Do you agree that in order achieve our dreams and goals they must first be inside our belief system and that belief system is essentially our reality? I’d love to hear your opinions. Please leave me a comment. Thanks for dropping by.