Advice regarding writer’s block from a writer’s blockhead.

I made the mistake of reading advice about writing, about embarrassing pitfalls and newbie blunders, and worst of all, about who has talent and who doesn’t. I now have an enormous writer’s boulder and can’t even bear to write my name, let alone stomach anything else my pen might sully.

First, buyer beware. All I formally learned about writing came from writing research papers in university, so I’m not really qualified to give advice on this topic. If you’ve ever read an academic journal, then you know that these papers do not lend themselves to the development of a natural writing voice. What it does develop is a wooden, dry, stilted, awkward monotone, devoid of all personality and eloquence. Hell, those qualities are strongly discouraged in such papers. Use a single contraction and your career is over.

So I’m not a professional by any stretch of the imagination. You see, right there I used a cliché. That proves it. I just share the same dream as 99% of people on earth. I’m also someone who puts an insane amount of pressure on myself to perform. I think a lot of people do the same thing; we want too much too fast, we do side-by-side comparisons of our first attempted drafts with the masterpieces of the greatest authors, and then we give up.

From what I gather from every website and how-to book about writing, most people (if not all) have writer’s block at some point (or many points), especially new and aspiring writers. We often feel like failures before we’ve even begun. And we won’t consider ourselves “real writers” until we publish something that either has 1,000,000 views from our 1,000,000 followers, or greets us wearing a New York Times Bestseller badge when we walk into Barnes & Noble.

But I did have some thoughts that comfort me and help me keep going, and maybe they’ll help you, too.

I figured out that as soon as I have a pen in my hand and I write a single letter, or sit at the computer and press a single key, I am a writer, as long as I don’t stop. So for however long I can physically keep that up, I am a writer.

I find it difficult to refute that. Because how could someone say, if they come in and see me writing in one form or another, “you’re not a writer”?

I’m taken by surprise that they said that out loud to me; nevertheless, I reply, “but I am sitting here writing something.”

“But you aren’t writing anything important.”

“Is everything written by professional writers important?” I ask. My interlocutor pauses here for a moment. If he says yes, then he’s stating that everything that is published is important, and no one could seriously take that position with a straight face. But if he says no, then he admits that professional writers sometimes write unimportant things, and then he will have to admit that even if what I am writing is unimportant, that isn’t enough to separate me from so-called professional writers.

He ignores it. “Well, nothing you write has been published.”

I think for a second. “But aren’t published books unpublished manuscripts before they become published? And you just said the word “write” too!”

He tries to sidestep my question: “It doesn’t matter, because no one will ever read what you write anyway.”

“But there, you just said yet again that I write things. What do you call someone who writes things?”

“I call you an amateur!” Ha, he thinks he’s won!

“Amateur what?” I ask. “Amateur cook? Amateur baseball player? Amateur what?” See, I’ve set another trap for him… and he walks away, bored of this conversation.

But we defeated him with impeccable logic. And that’s all that matters.  

To speak practically: make sure that you at minimum freewrite every single day (this is not remotely original advice but it’s still good and necessary). I call this my diarrhea writing. You can’t get anything good out until you get rid of the bad. You can’t tell yourself that you’ll think hard in your head and then write it down later. Doesn’t work. You can’t refine stuff in your mind. You have to empty yourself out of all the shit and then you’ll discover a little nugget of gold you didn’t know was there, an insight or a funny idea. But you have to get it all out first. It could take pages and pages and pages of drivel and then all of a sudden something will pop into your head that makes the preceding efforts worth it.

So it’s all good. Even if only a couple of people read your work, so what? That’s still more that would see it than if you just stored it on your computer or in a notebook. When I was in college, I used to break my ass for hours writing research papers for professors and they were the only people that read them. And I mean hours, sitting in front of the computer screen all day until I was ready to vomit. (And I didn’t start my papers the day before, either, and neither should you!) And all for only one person (who probably skimmed it anyway).  So if I could do all that work for one person, I can write blog posts for two internet people, or even only one. (All of whom I am grateful for.) And if no one reads our stuff, that’s okay too, because we did it, and no imaginary naysayer can say we didn’t.

Oh, and by the way, don’t think you’ll “save your best stuff for later” when you’re more popular and people will see it.  A crowd of people aren’t going to gather and wait on your doorstep until you decide when there is enough of them for you to emerge and bestow your magnum opus upon them.

Just remember, don’t lift your pen or your fingers for as long as you can. If you give up, eventually you’ll spend more time hating yourself for giving up than hating yourself for being a crappy writer–and besides, all of us could have used that wasted time to become at least less-crappy writers. In the meantime, learn to make loving the process your prize.

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