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Being a writer is honestly one of the hardest jobs because of the lack of motivation it brings. It comes and goes often or not, and it’s hard to be focused when the passion isn’t there. So today, I’ll be talking about a few things writers use to navigate through writers’ block since it’s never going away (not fully, at least).

Consuming Related Content

It’s important to have a reference or visual of what you’re interested in writing about, especially since you’ll probably end up not remembering important details you might want to add to your work. And this can go for anything, honestly—from opinionated articles to original story ideas and journal entries. Say for instance, an example can be reading up on anything going on in the world. Your brain might short-circuit and be interested in writing about how this affects everyone. So, you pull up a Google doc or a piece of paper and get to writing while having the article up. Not only does this make referring to the article easier, but it keeps things accurate and not off-topic.

Practicing Writing Strategies

This can range from timed writes to a word limit. As long as it’s a strategy to keep your hands in check and in motion, then it’ll work. But it helps with branching out and having fluent writing before you find your specific style, which is something that can be practiced eventually. And speaking of styles, try to practice writing styles too—like shakespearean, POVs, stuff like that.

Advice From: Mrs. Lyon

“Um…so, I always have to give myself a break when I have writers’ block. Because if I step away from it, do something completely opposite and something totally different, usually my brain has like a reset. Um, because if you keep going at it and if you kind of just…keep trying to beat the dead horse, nothing good is going to come from it. So for me, like, if I go on a walk, if I take a couple of days away from it, if I have that time…then usually I can come back to it. And often, what happens is when I come back to it, I look at whatever I’ve written and go “oh, this is trash.” I start over with…just like a newfound, I guess, realization about it…and then it comes out way better than it started.”