Editor’s note: In our Friday exclusives, we’ll periodically share craft advice for writers. Today, the first post in that series comes from our own founding editor Megan Kate Nelson, who, despite periodic bouts of writer’s block, has published five books. Are there other craft subjects you’re interested in? Let us know in the comments!
Every now and again, an Instagram post reprinting entries from Franz Kafka’s diary comes across my feed. The German writer was having a particularly hard time in January 1915, as he was trying to write The Trial.
“The end of writing,” he jotted down on the 20th. “When will it take me up again?”
Nine days later, it had not: “Again tried to write, virtually useless.”
Almost a month after that, Kafka was in despair. “Complete standstill,” he wrote. “Unending torments.”
Most of the comments on these types of social media posts express a sense of relief. Famous, successful writers are just like us! They, too, struggle to put words on the page sometimes. They, too, feel paralyzed and unable to get the words out.
There are some skeptics, of course. Those who believe that writer’s block—a kind of catch-all phrase to describe feeling stymied creatively and unable to make progress on a piece of writing—does not exist. That it is a convenient excuse for aspiring writers who don’t want to write, or a mark of privilege among those who need not write for a living.
Whether you believe in it or not, writing anxiety does exist. Writers may experience it in different ways and for varying lengths of time. It may come in the form of panic, paralyzing self-doubt, procrastination, imposter syndrome, or an extreme perfectionism that makes finishing one sentence and moving on to the next nearly impossible.
Often couched as purely psychological, a matter of “internal anguish” (Leader 1991), writers’ block can also be externally catalyzed. Social, political, and economic forces in our lives leave us feeling unable to produce, intellectually and creatively. The emergence of the 24-hour email cycle and smartphones have created a range of demands from colleagues, bosses, and clients who expect that productivity will be continuous and uninterrupted. People perform their output on social media, which amplifies feelings of inadequacy in our own lives. All of this can create anxiety for writers, especially those who do not respond well to external pressure. And in the United States, the daily distractions of our current political dumpster fire have not helped. These external factors, unfortunately, are harder for us to change and control.
So, what is a writer to do about feeling stuck? How are we supposed to get through it?
I have included some strategies below, most of which I have tried myself, with varying degrees of success. Many of them focus on lowering the pressure on yourself as a writer and thinker, and on the words you put on the page.
As the American poet William Stafford has said, “There is no such thing as writers’ block for writers whose standards are low enough.” Ha!
