How to Stop Writer's Block

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By justind
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Stop Writer's Block

Writer's block is evil. It's a terrible, crippling, mind-numbing, anger-inducing problem that plagues all writers at some point. But good news: although every writer will at some point go through writer's block (most likely several times), there are ways to beat it quicker than just letting it naturally go away.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Whatever you use to write with
Patience

Step 1

Obey the old adage: just write. There are days, weeks, maybe even months when you just don't feel like writing. You keep putting it off until tomorrow, but tomorrow comes and the words still don't hit the paper. Procrastination is writer's block's best friend; you're feeding it what it wants by saying "Oh, I'll write tomorrow." Give yourself a certain amount of words to write each day - even if it's only 300 words - make yourself write those 300 words. Don't think about what words they are, or if they have any correlation to what you want to write; none of that matters. What matters is you're putting pen to paper, or fingers to the keyboard and you're writing. Up your desired amount of words each day by small increments, until you're back to where you were prior to having writer's block.
Step 2

After obliging by the number one rule, number two is: don't edit. Let me repeat that - DO NOT EDIT. When you're having a very difficult time putting your thoughts on paper, one of the worst things you can do is edit your work as you're writing, or editing prior work. When your struck with writer's block, you become frustrated, and that frustration clouds your judgment. So, when you go back and look at work from the past, you're not in a good writing mindset, and you can't accurately judge if what you wrote is good or not (and most likely you're going to think it's trash), so you may end up axing something that you'll end up regretting later on. Secondly, editing while you're writing (at least while you have writer's block) just slows you down. It's a series of stops and goes, and just like a car that eventually wears out from the stop and go city travel, your mind also wears out, except much quicker. So do yourself a favor and save the editing until you're sure you're done writing for the day.
Step 3

The third rule is: if you're having horrible writer's block, take the last sentence of the 2nd rule and forget about it. Don't even edit when you're sure you're done writing. Even though what you wrote deserves to be sent to literature hell, don't do anything with it at that
moment. Open a new page, jot down what you would like to change with what you wrote and save it. Do this each day, for one week. At the end of the week, go back and reread what you wrote and the things you thought you'd like to change about it. You may find out that your desire to do away with a paragraph, or entire page, may not be so strong now. You may find that what you wrote is actually decent and just needs a few fixer-ups. When you're in writer's block this deep, don't do anything in the heat of the moment. Simma down.
Step 4

Read. This is a simple rule, but it's the golden rule of writer's block. Reading stimulates your mind, generates ideas and motivates you. If you ignore all but one rule on this page, do not ignore this one. It is key to overcoming the all too often feared writer's block.