Types Of Writerās Block (And How To Fix Them)
1. High inspiration, low motivation. You have so many ideas to write, but you just donāt have the motivation to actually get them down, and even if you can make yourself start writing it youāll often find yourself getting distracted or disengaged in favour of imagining everything playing out
Try just bullet pointing the ideas you have instead of writing them properly, especially if you wonāt remember it afterwards if you donāt. At least youāll have the ideas ready to use when you have the motivation later on
2. Low inspiration, high motivation. Youāre all prepared, youāre so pumped to write, you open your document aaaaandā¦ three hours later, that cursor is still blinking at the top of a blank page
RIP pantsers but this is where plotting wins out; refer back to your plans and figure out where to go from here. You can also use your bullet points from the last point if this is applicable
3. No inspiration, no motivation. You donāt have any ideas, you donāt feel like writing, all in all everything is just sucky when you think about it
Make a deal with yourself; usually when Iām feeling this way I can tell myself āOkay, just write anyway for ten minutes and after that, if you really want to stop, you can stopā and then once my ten minutes is up Iāve often found my flow. Just remember that, if you still donāt want to keep writing after your ten minutes is up, donāt keep writing anyway and break your deal - itāll be harder to make deals with yourself in future if your brain knows you donāt honour them
4. Canāt bridge the gap. When youāre stuck on this one sentence/paragraph that you just donāt know how to progress through. Until you figure it out, productivity has slowed to a halt
Mark it up, bullet point what you want to happen here, then move on. A lot of people donāt know how to keep writing after skipping a part because they donāt know exactly what happened to lead up to this moment - but you have a general idea just like you do for everything else youāre writing, and thatās enough. Just keep it generic and know you can go back to edit later, at the same time as when youāre filling in the blank. Itāll give editing you a clear purpose, if nothing else
5. Perfectionism and self-doubt. You donāt think your writing is perfect first time, so you struggle to accept that itās anything better than a total failure. Whether or not youāre aware of the fact that this is an unrealistic standard makes no difference
Perfection is stagnant. If you write the perfect story, which would require you to turn a good story into something objective rather than subjective, then after that youād never write again, because nothing will ever meet that standard again. That or you would only ever write the same kind of stories over and over, never growing or developing as a writer. If youāre looking back on your writing and saying āThis is so bad, I hate itā, thatās generally a good thing; it means youāve grown and improved. Maybe your current writing isnāt bad, if just matched your skill level at the time, and since then youāre able to maintain a higher standard since youāve learned more about your craft as time went on
