Nothing is worse than opening your laptop, or notebook, and staring at that blank page, unable to pen anything down. And after you just had that amazing idea in the shower! Or, you see a scene in your manuscript that really needs to change, but the words just turn into a clutter when you start.
Don’t worry! There are ways to fight that horrible monster called writer’s block. I’m here to give you thirteen tips that can help you get your creativity back and to get that beautiful prose flowing!
Photo by Steve Johnson
1. Find the cause
It seems obvious, but many people tend to skip this important step. Often, when we're having trouble getting the words out, there's something behind it. Perhaps you're tired, you've been working yourself too hard, you're not actually happy with your own story, or maybe you're worried about something else that's taking up all your thoughts.
So, before you move on to the next tips, try to take a moment and think about what it is that's blocking you.
2. Exercise
There are two important components to creativity. Convergent and divergent thinking. The first one involves thinking for one solution to a problem, while the other one involves thinking about many solutions for one problem. Exercise is believed to improve convergent and divergent thinking, which in turn will improve your creative thinking.
Not only that, exercise helps improve your concentration and releases serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins, all of which help lower stress and make you feel good. And when you feel good, your creativity flows more easily.
There really is no hard rule to what kind of exercise you have to do to improve your creativity. Personally, I love to take long walks through the forest. The wind brushing against my face, the green trees, and beautiful views all around me completely empty my head, which means there's suddenly a lot of room for more stories. It also gives me a bit of pressure-free time to think about the world I'm building, as well as to have a little chat with the characters I'm writing, which often leads to interesting new ideas.
All in all, except for a few sore muscles, there really is no downside to exercising!
3. Read
Often, writer's block is the lack of inspiration or ideas. And there are many ways to get those, many of them in this list, but one of the best ones in reading. As a writer, reading is part of your job. It helps in so many ways, improving your prose and keeping up with trends for example, but most importantly with inspiration. There are so many beautiful and interesting stories in the world, and what's to stop you from reading them all? Well, time and money, of course, but even reading only one incredibly creative book is sometimes enough to spark your own creativity, and to get right back into writing.
Looking for recommendations? I've lately been reading Brandon Sanderson and immensely enjoying it!
4. Talk it out
As writers, we have a tendency to get into our own heads. That makes sense, of course, because that's where the magic happens, but it also means we can end up going in circles until we can't tell what we're doing anymore. That's why it's good to talk it out. Find a friend, or a family member, or a fellow author who you can bounce some ideas off of. Someone who isn't scared to be constructive and honestly tell you when you're either nailing it or getting off track.
5. Condition yourself
Humans are beings of habit and routine. That's why, even though it seems difficult to believe, you can actually condition yourself to be creative. Make sure you create a space where you do all your writing, at the same time of day, under the same circumstances. Do this every day, and eventually, your mind and body will be so used to having to produce creative content in that place at that time, it will happen automatically.
6. Jump to the part you can write
A lot of the time, writer's block comes from not being able to get one specific part of your book done. Perhaps it's a part you haven't completely figured out yet, or you can't seem to get enthusiastic about it. Instead of stubbornly focusing on getting that one part down, leave it for now, and write a part that you have figured out or that you can't wait to get to.
This might mean you have to skip a bit ahead in your book, and ultimately it probably means you'll have to rewrite it again when you get there naturally, but that's okay. At least you'll be able to finally get those words out!
7. Take a shower
My best ideas always come to me when I'm in the shower, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one!
When we're in the shower, we relax a lot more, simply because there's nothing else we can be doing. We can't answer emails, we can't get on the phone, it's just us alone with our thoughts. Because of that, we turn our minds inwards, and we start to make connections and create ideas we didn't see before.
Not only that, but because of that relaxing stream of warm water, our brain produces as lot more dopamine, a neurotransmitter that enhances creativity.
The dilemma remains, of course, that we can't let all those great ideas we have in the shower go to waste. So, even though we're supposed to be completely relaxing in the shower, we also want to take something with us to quickly shot those ideas down so we don't forget. Personally, I often tend to jump out really quick halfway to put them in my phone, but you can also take a small, water resistant notebook with you to hang from the shower wall.
8. Change your tools
Overcoming your writer's block can sometimes be as easy as changing your tools. There are very simply ways to do that. With changing your font probably being the easiest. I usually write in Times New Roman, but when I get stuck, I sometimes change the font to change things up. Which font you choose is completely up to you. If I'm writing something with a royal or elegant mood, I might change it to something pretty and curly. If I'm writing something silly, I might even change it to (and don't get mad now) Comic Sans.
It can also help to change the program you're writing in. Change is from Word to Google Docs or to Scrivener. There are a lot of both free and paid programs that can help get you out of a rut.
And of course, you can even go back to just picking up a pen and writing your amazing story on good old paper.
9. Write for you
As writers, we don't just want people to read our story, we want them to love it! Because of that, it can become easy to try to please everyone, writing your story in a way that you think everyone will love. But unfortunately, you can't please everyone and it can quickly lead to a mess of a book. Not to mention the pressure to live up to perceived expectations.
It's important to keep an eye on the market and to know your public and what they expect, but it's just as important to write what you want to write. Write something you would want to read. Especially when you're having trouble to get those words down.
10. Outline more/less
Are you a pantser or a plotter? Both are great ways to write amazing books, but both also come with their own downside. Pantsers might run into a point where they're not sure where to go or how to end, while plotters might lose their enthusiasm for writing after already planning everything out once.
In both cases the advice is to lean a little towards the other side. As a pantser, try to outline your book a bit. Loosely work out what you want to do in your chapters and come up with an ending. It's okay if you end up going somewhere completely different, but it will help to keeps those fingers typing when you hit a wall.
For plotters, do the exact opposite. Don't plan too much, don't already have everything worked out. Give your mind some freedom to explore and to come up with things as you go along. That freedom will help you improvise and improve your creativity.
11. Look at it from another POV
If you get stuck on one character, try looking at the scene from the point of view of another character. That doesn't mean you have to make this new person a main character, they don't even have to appear in your book. They could be a fly on the wall if you want. But seeing the scene from another corner of the room, through the eyes of another character might help you to see things you didn't before, and it can help you to not only finish that scene, but to also give it some extra depth.
12. Let it rest
When you're working on something so hard, so passionately, and so much for a long time, there's going to be a point where you can't see the forest for the trees anymore. Especially when you're editing it can be hard to see obvious mistakes that you would normally catch right away. That's why it's always good to take a step back and leave your work alone for a while. This will give you some perspective when you pick it up again.
Especially when you find a plot hole in your work and you can't seem to figure out how to fix it, letting it rest for a bit can really help you.
13. Write, don't edit
And last but not least, make sure you write, not edit. Especially when you're getting that first draft out, focusing on making every little sentence perfect and not making any grammatical errors can really stifle your creativity. Forget about all that, make strange sentences, overuse words, misspell whatever you want, just get those words out, create that story. And then, when you've managed to make something incredible, you can edit the hell out of it. That's the right moment to look at sentence structure and grammar.
It might feel like you're only giving yourself more work afterwards, but being able to keep creating is definitely worth it!
That's all!
All in all, there's many ways to overcome writer's block, so don't let yourself get discouraged when it's not going as smoothly as you wanted and just keep going!
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