Chapter Twenty-Six
Break the Blocks to Creative Flow
Techniques for Combating Writing Inertia
There is nothing as heady as the initial spark of an idea that flows into a rush of pure inspiration—it’s a feeling both holy and euphoric. Who wouldn’t be addicted to the thrill of writerly gush? But like all things, eventually that gush becomes a trickle and possibly even stops. If you’re like me, that happens about two-thirds of the way through a project. I make it over the great muddle of the middle and then find myself stranded on the path, wondering if I can go on.
And as exhilarating as inspired flow can be, its opposite, writer’s block, is incredibly demoralizing, even when it means different things to different people. Some of you may struggle to find inspiration or to finish work that’s been hanging in limbo for a long time. You may think you don’t have anything to say, or you may struggle with procrastination. But most of all, I find that creative block comes down to one of several elements I’ll explore here.
Rather than calling it writer’s block, I like to think of the state of being unable to produce material as inertia: a powerful force that keeps you from doing your work. I argue that inertia actually serves a purpose: to give you something to work against and to force you to set or shift goals, plunge deeper into the writing, or let something go. For something happens—dare I say “magic”?—when you focus your attention on overcoming an obstacle: Your work begins to move, grow, and expand, and has a much greater chance at success.
While I am more than familiar with inertia now, at age forty, I rarely experienced it in my twenties and only a few times in my thirties. Then I had a baby at age thirty-three. Before, I could always force myself to write when I wanted or needed to, but after my son’s birth and during the exhausting months of caring for a newborn, I became intimately acquainted with inertia—not only in my physical body, which habitually collapsed onto the nearest piece of furniture whenever possible, but mentally as well. My mind also caved inward and away from work: Returning to the keyboard or the page seemed unbearably hard, an act I might never undertake again because I’d fallen so out of practice. Once inertia strikes with its powerful gravity, it’s incredibly difficult to pull yourself free again. It’s easy to consider writing, much less the pursuit of publishing, an exercise in futility. You lay your weary muse in the road, and the vultures begin to circle, taking her for dead.
But she’s not dead. You’re not dead. There’s life in you, and your project, yet. But now you will have to provide yourself with the momentum formerly granted to you by the tailwinds of inspiration, deadline, or competition. This effort against inertia may come as a big adrenalized burst—forcing yourself into a day of writing—or it might be slow and steady progress, bits here and there.
It’s hard to remember that your great ideas won’t birth themselves. They may appear to you of their own mysterious volition, but they require you to finish the process of creation. If you find yourself stuck in the glue of inertia, it’s time to take advantage of one or more of the following strategies.
ASSESS YOUR STAGE
The way I see it, there are only six main stages in writing and finishing a project. (Please understand that “revising” is often a stage that involves multiple drafts, but for our purposes I’ll describe it as though it is one phase.)
- outlining and plotting
- writing the first draft
- seeking feedback
- revising
- proofing
- submitting to agents and/or editors, or self-publishing
Your block may stem from trying to do the work of a later stage when you haven’t actually arrived at it yet. For instance, I know many writers who slow themselves down or even cut off their creative supply by trying to edit as they write. I always recommend refraining from revision during the drafting stage. Drafting is a wild process that requires room to roam and wander; if you try to crimp each thought right after you have it, you’ll naturally stagnate.
Or you might find that your energy gets bound up in anxiety about the submitting stage. You worry about the competition, writing the perfect query, or how original your idea is—and the next thing you know, you’ve crimped off your creative stream. Be sure to take an honest look at the stage you’re in before you trip yourself up by racing to a later one.
MAKE WRITING A PRIORITY
I know sometimes it seems hard, impossible even, to put writing first. But if you write first, before you do anything else, you’ll carry that buoyant feeling around with you all day rather than the sludge of “I still haven’t written.” This doesn’t necessarily mean to write “first thing in the morning” but at whatever time you set aside for writing. Make it the priority, and don’t let anything else pull you away. If you think you don’t have enough time, see the next tip.
TRY MICROWRITING
My friend Barbara turned me on to an idea called “micromovements,” a concept that suggests that when you take things in small bites and give yourself credit for these little movements, rather than berating yourself for how you didn’t do “everything,” these small things add up and you’re nicer to yourself in the process. So if all you can get done is a page, a sentence, a scene, that’s more than you had before. And when you remove the pressure to do a specific set or amount, the muse has a funny way of taking hold of that single sentence or paragraph and running away with it.
SET A WORD COUNT GOAL
If you are, in fact, motivated by deadlines, then word count goals are elegant, simple, and time-tested. Set a minimal word count, and be amazed at how you’re not only more likely to hit it but to exceed it. This is what has made National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) so wildly popular. The only thing writers must do to complete a 50,000-word novel draft in thirty days is use a daily word count goal to urge them on. Most writers I know who have successfully completed NaNoWriMo (myself included) found themselves writing more than the minimum (1,600 words or so) each day. But even a much smaller daily word count goal can help trick you into productivity without pressure. There’s no need to be perfect—only prepared to write.
FIND AN ACCOUNTABILIBUDDY
When you’re feeling the grip of inertia, you might need a writing friend—an accountabilibuddy—to keep you on task. Just like in your word count effort, you hold each other to some sort of standard and cheer and reward each other for getting it done. My accountabilibuddy sends me texts while I’m working and checks in with me about my goals. There’s nothing like receiving a little cheerful pressure.
GET TO THE HEART
Sometimes inertia strikes because you don’t want to explore or feel something that the work exposes. When it comes to writing, inertia is often a sign that you must go more deeply into the work, think in a wider direction, or cut something that isn’t working. This is especially true if you’re writing something personal (though most writing has a personal element, even fiction) and is one of the hardest aspects of writer’s inertia to curb. This is when it’s good to call a supportive friend. And if talking to others doesn’t work for you, then I recommend taking a step away and writing in a journal about the feelings that have created the claws of inertia. If nothing else, it’s important to acknowledge that your inertia stems from a personal place so you can be aware of it.
CREATE CLIFF-HANGERS
One of the most effective techniques for finding your way back into material you’ve started is to leave off a writing session midsentence, paragraph, or scene. Creating these cliff-hangers has a way of jogging the brain into finishing that line of dialogue left unresolved or answered, or that scene about to culminate in a high point. It also takes away the burden of having to finish everything you write in one sitting.
FINISH THE UNFINISHED
Speaking of finishing, think for a second about your own unfinished projects: that roughly drafted NaNoWriMo novel, the short story you intended to send to that contest, the stack of essays you think might make a memoir. They may only physically live on your desk or your laptop, but you may not realize that they also live inside you, in all their impartial nature. They take up psychic residence in your mind, your heart; they’re like the cluttered attic of your creative muse. And when the muse is weighed down with what hasn’t been completed, it’s harder for her to help you create new material.
"But what if it’s crap?" the cranky voice in your head may ask.
Crap (i.e., raw, unpolished words, or words that detour from where you imagined they would go) never turns into creative gold until you finish it. It can’t. And you won’t ever find out if you’re hung up on perfection. Sometimes starting a new project is a form of avoidance. From personal experience, I know that when I have to go deeper, tear something apart, or stretch into new territory, my urge to start a new project hits an all-time high. Finishing is doing the work.
More important, completion brings pride. I always feel a thrill of elation when I finish a draft, even when I know I’m still at an early stage of a project and that I have so much more distance to cover. Because without this draft I have nothing to revise, just a jumble of words in my brain.
Finishing also lets you see the merit and potential of an idea. Yes, some ideas will never reach an audience. But they almost always give birth to other ideas, new avenues. And you test and stretch your skills with every word you write, so something you did as an experiment will still pay off in your next project.
Finishing a project is a way of valuing yourself, your work, your words. It allows you to take you seriously. It lets you be true to your work. It’s also one of the most important steps in building a long-lasting, sustainable writing practice that will give back to you during difficult times.
Finishing frees up head space and creative and emotional energy. Once you get the weight off your head, productivity has a funny way of returning. When you leave a project undone, it stays inside you, a squatter taking up unwanted residence. Finishing comes with an endorphin rush all its own. It’s something you can check off that list and give yourself credit for.
MOVE IT
Physical movement is effective at shifting energy about 75 percent of the time without employing any other strategies. Thoughts and feelings have a way of getting pressed down too tightly into the cellar of the subconscious, trapped beneath the skin, and have the power to launch you into frustration, anxiety, and discouragement.
“Sweat is like WD-40 for your mind—it lubricates the rusty hinges of your brain and makes your thinking more fluid,” says Christopher Bergland, author of The Athlete’s Way: Sweat and the Biology of Bliss.
Here’s the great news: You don’t have to be an athlete to take advantage of exercise to stimulate your creativity. If you’re blocked while sitting at the computer, simply break your focus. Get up, pace the room, do jumping jacks, or even just walk to another part of the house and take deep breaths. Or, if you’re blocked but you have the creative urge, go for a walk or run. Many professional writers break up their workday by adding physical exercise. The list of famous authors who run is quite surprising and includes Joyce Carol Oates, Haruki Murakami, and Laurie Halse Anderson. Having a dog to walk, animals to feed, and children to tend to can often provide crucial break time. When you move your body, you engage the conscious part of your brain in the activity, which wedges open the door to the unconscious, where your creative magic hides.
MEDITATE
Meditation may seem like nothing more than sitting with your eyes closed while you battle to keep your thoughts from having a wrestling match in your head. But science has taken an interest in discovering what makes Buddhist monks in remote parts of Tibet calmer, less anxious, more focused, and able to withstand intense cold, heat, and other painful sensations. What is it about sitting still that has such a profound effect on our psyches?
Respected institutions, from the Mayo Clinic to Harvard University, have undertaken studies that reveal that even just a little bit of meditation, from five to fifteen minutes a day, can put your brain into the state most associated with clear, calm, and creative thinking. Not to mention that when you’re feeling stuck creatively, sitting quietly without any intention or pressure allows access to the subconscious mind, where creative ideas are often stored.
DAYDREAM OR LET YOUR MIND WANDER
If meditation won’t work for you in this moment—if you don’t feel “ready” to calm down—try this time-tested, imagination-boosting method, practiced by kids all over the globe: daydreaming. It requires no tools, you can do it in any setting, and no one has to know what you’re thinking. We spend so much time with our noses buried in computers that send constant streams of data into our minds; in just the decade or so since the birth of the smartphone, we rarely take a break from incoming information. Daydreaming is a form of letting your inner wisdom emerge without pressure. But don’t take my word for it. Researcher and psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman co-authored a paper with Rebecca L. Miller called “Ode to Positive, Constructive Daydreaming” for Scientific American.
“Daydreaming is a way to ‘dip into [your] inner stream of consciousness,’ and personally reflect on the world and visualize the future,” Kaufman says. “This sort of impromptu introspection can even help us to find the answers to life’s big questions.”
Try daydreaming about your characters and their stories, or about a theme or idea that’s haunted you or compelled you to write. Don’t give yourself any parameters or rules about writing what you dream up, but keep your notebook nearby just in case.