As a writing instructor, academic writer’s block is something I deal with almost every day. I like to help students think through their ideas when they get blocked because I know how that feels. Nothing is worse than sitting down in front of your laptop, fingers on the keys, and…nothing. Here are a few ways that help to break the log jam when you’re writing an essay for a class:
- Plan your ideas in an outline or map. I know it sounds like an extra unnecessary step, but you will actually save time by making a plan in advance, and then sticking to it. If you are a concrete-sequential thinker, make a list or outline so you have the order you need to proceed. If you are a random-abstract thinker, recall the webs you used in middle school; make yourself a color-coded, non-linear cluster so you can group ideas together. Try an app like SimpleMind Free to make your map portable.
- Talk through your ideas with a friend. Nothing adds perspective like a good conversation about things you care about, and inspiration almost always comes from it. You won’t see things from the way you are used to thinking about them. Letting someone else in on your work helps you generate ideas you wouldn’t think of alone.
- Map your ideas on a whiteboard. Sometimes writing on a board in large letters and shapes, rather than typing on a small screen, can help you visualize the ideas in a new way. It puts your ideas where you can step back and consider them separately, outside of your writing. Putting it into a visual form helps you troubleshoot problems and make sense of nebulous ideas.
- Write backwards, starting with the conclusion. Just because people read your introduction first doesn’t mean you must write it first. Starting with the conclusion sometimes can help because you are forced to think about the takeaways first; then after you flesh out the main ideas, you can ask yourself, “what does my audience need to know in order to understand my thesis/theme?” Writing the introduction last can also help you identify and add needed context that you may miss if you write it first.
- Write what you feel most confident about. Just like writing backwards can help, so can writing things out of order. If you pick your favorite section, that writing will naturally go faster, which might just break loose your thoughts on something you have been struggling with. Using the easy parts as a warm-up can help you get into that writing groove we all sometimes struggle to find.
- Write about how far you got before you got stuck, and what you would need to break the jam. Meta-cognition, or thinking about how you think, can really help with writer’s block. Writing about how you write can have a similar effect; focus on the process, not the product. Write about how you came up with ideas, what attracted you to the topic, what questions you have asked about it, and what you still need to know. At the very least, this type of reflection will be interesting to look back on later.
- Take a walk. Getting outside, or at least standing and moving around, can help the chemicals re-adjust in your brain. Focusing on things in the distance in natural light can help your eyes relax, especially if you have been working with low ambient lighting. If it’s a sunny day, you’ll also get Vitamin D, which jump-starts your creativity.
- Sprint. Set your clock timer for 20 minutes, and then writewritewrite. Don’t take your fingers off the keys the whole time; no stopping, no checking time, no re-reading, no revising, no particular topic. What comes out, comes out. If you think, “I’m going to crank out at least 300 words in the next 20 minutes, and it doesn’t matter what they are about,” you’ll approach writing as a number goal, rather than a subject one, which makes you think about filling the page rather than what you fill it with. It can really help loosen things up in your head.
- Follow the advice of a master. Isaac Asimov, one of the most prolific writers of our time, has written almost 500 published works. He is also the only person with at least one book in every section of the Dewey Decimal System except for one (philosophy). He says, “Sit at the typewriter for eight hours, and don’t get up until you’re done.” He also advises writers to pick up a different writing project when they get stuck. Often, when writing science fiction novels (his hardest genre, he claimed) he’d get blocked, so he’d pull out some scholarly article on human physiology or another completely unrelated project. Doing so helped him have a fresh approach when he came back to the blocked section later.
My favorite part of teaching writing is one-on-one meetings with my students. When I conference with them, the first thing I ask is how they feel about the paper they are working on. I’m more interested in their confidence level than I am the content. It’s an indicator of how much writing they have been able to complete, and it lets me know if they have writer’s block. It also breaks the ice better than, “do you have any questions for me?” Sometimes they don’t know what to ask, and with a little prodding, I can get them to tell me what they need.
I also ask, “how many pages do you have?” because they are concerned with reaching the page limit, and they think their grade will suffer if their paper isn’t long enough. (Truly, their grade will suffer if they don’t develop their ideas, which has more impact than page count). If the paper is one page short of the limit, then I suggest ways to deepen their interpretation and analysis; that’s the number one reason writing doesn’t meet the page limit. If it’s more than a page short, I also add in a suggestion to pick up another sub-topic. It’s better to write more deeply about a few subjects than it is to cover many subjects on the surface. I also suggest a bigger vocabulary and to write for a specific audience, as I suggested in Flex Your Lexicon.
Writer’s block snags everyone, even the most expert and prolific of writers; how you deal with it is as individual as you are. Procrastination, a natural human tendency, can add urgency to the writing process which helps some people. But it can also add anxiety, which helps no one. Next time you have a writing project, understand that you will go through the stages of composition (thinking, pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing) regardless of how much time you give yourself to go through them. Plan your time wisely, and you will keep that writer’s block at bay.
