That’s not a boast or me trying to convince you writing is easy. I can assure you it isn’t. Of all the writing lessons I was given, all the advice I’ve received, and keynotes I’ve attended, it’s this offhand remark from my first creative professor that has stuck with me the most:

“The thing about writer’s block is it’s not really a thing.”

His tone wasn’t arrogant or condescending. If anything, he was encouraging; reassuring us that the doubt and difficulty we experienced putting words on a page were completely natural.

Perhaps I was too impressionable of a student, too eager to take in the wisdom of a successful and talented writer, but I ate it up.

I don’t believe in writer’s block.

What I do believe in, and what I know to be true, is a kind of “stuckness” that takes hold from time to time. This feeling is often exaggerated and made bigger by the anxiety it induces. And unfortunately, like an animal caught in a trap, our instinct is to fight and fight, only to drain ourselves further and cause the snare to grow tighter.

Each time I’ve come across this feeling, it’s been a little different, but generally fallen into one of three scenarios. Perhaps one (or all three) will sound familiar to you:

1. You’ve been writing and writing and all has gone well but you’ve hit a wall. You have no idea what happens next or how to connect the dots.

2. You’re out of ideas. You try to write but nothing comes to mind and the few things that do are, as Samuel Beckett so eloquently put it, “a pile of loose turds.”

3. You can’t possibly look at a blank page without throwing up or falling into a cold sweaty heap.

While my own writing is rife with flaws and my process could stand to be better, I consider myself an expert on how to become unstuck. Mostly because I am forever getting stuck. So, if you find yourself in one of the above scenarios, here’s what I’ve found works best to get out of the funk and back into a rhythm.

First, a bit of cognitive reframing. Nothing is literally blocking you from writing. As Roger Simon puts it, “There is no such thing as writer’s block. My father drove a truck for 40 years and never once did he wake up in the morning and say: ‘I have truck driver’s block today. I am not going to work’.”

So, if it’s not a block, then what is it?

The stuckness you feel is your mind telling you that what you’re doing at this moment isn’t working for you anymore. Change is needed. The blankness, the indecision, the anxiety—it’s merely a signal from your brain saying, “Let’s do something a bit differently today, please.”

Say you find yourself stuck while drafting your novel. You’re well over a hundred pages into your manuscript but things have just halted altogether. You haven’t yet reached what you thought would be the end but now there’s a big gaping chasm between where your character is and where you need them to be by the final page, and you have no idea how to fill it. Or maybe you never had an ending in mind when you started, but you know this isn’t it, yet nothing else will come.

Turn around and go back to the beginning.

Yes, I’m serious. Writing a novel or a story is like finding your way through a maze. You’re going to be retracing your steps a lot, taking different turns at different points until you find your way out. This requires mapping out different paths. Sometimes many paths.

Go back and read your first few chapters. What is missing? What is there that doesn’t need to be? Are there holes in the plot? New threads that have developed out of the blue since you last put these pages down? Are there gaps in the character’s growth? Addressing issues in the earlier chapters will help you find momentum again. Somewhere back there you took a wrong turn and the way forward is the way back.

Now, let’s say you’ve been trying to write but nothing will come. You show up day-in and day-out but your mind is a void. No ideas. No carefully constructed sentences. No beautifully imagined worlds. Heaven knows there’s no brilliant character inside of you waiting to be brought to life. You’re a writer, why can’t you just do the thing you say you do?

This is perhaps the most terrifying and debilitating thing a writer will go through.

What’s happening is your mind is telling you to stop writing.

But isn’t writing the most important thing for a writer to do? Yes. But the other most important thing for a writer to do is not write.

Your writing mind is like a muscle. It needs rest. You can absolutely overwork and strain it. You’ll feel anxious at first about not writing, but don’t beat yourself up. Let your writing “muscle” heal.

In the meantime, read. Read, read, read, and read some more. It’s the best medicine for that tired, worn out muscle. Use the time you would normally write to read. This way you’ll feel you’re accomplishing something. Because you are.

The third and final form of stuckness is the inverse of the last. That anxiety you feel about the blank page isn’t from a lack of ideas, it’s you writing muscle dying to be put to work and not knowing where to start. You’re avoiding writing because you have an idea (or ten) and are afraid to commit to any one of them.

The best thing you can do here is give yourself some low-stakes writing prompts. Your only goal is to get words down on the page. No one is going to read them except for you. Don’t spend more than a few minutes on each prompt. You’re not committing to anything yet. If it sucks, throw it away and move on. You can try another later. The important part is that you actually wrote. If it leads to something—congratulations!

Keep doing this until the blank page is no longer scary but a welcome sight. It’ll happen sooner than you think, I promise.

Remember it’s all temporary. The thing about writer’s block is that it’s not really a thing. It’s a condition that only exists if you allow it to and is only as powerful as you let it be. Feeling stuck is inevitable. You will move past it. Trust your intuition.

If all else fails, read a good book.

How to Get Unstuck in Your Writing

I know, I know.

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