How to Deal with Writer's Block, and Does It Really Exist?

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now, here's your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. Episode 28, in today's show, we're exploring the writer's nemesis, writer's block. What is it? Where does it come from? And how can we move past it?

Welcome back to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast. My name is Brad Reed, and I am so glad that you're spending some time with me here today. I'm excited about today's topic because it's something that affects almost every writer I know and something that I think there are some simple solutions for, especially once we understand its source.

But we'll get to that in a minute. First, I want to thank everyone who's checking out the now free-to-everyone Patreon video resources that we made available last week. I'm really excited about opening up these companion videos to the podcast, and I really appreciate the feedback that I'm starting to get on those. If you haven't checked them out yet, you can head on over to patreon. com slash bradreedwrites. Again, they're all free for everyone.

You don't have to be supporting the show as a member of the Patreon team to have access to those. If you do find value in what we've got there for you, though, and in the podcast in general, I really hope you'll consider spending just a few bucks a month and sending that our way to help us pay the bills here at the podcast and keep working to produce great content for you. One other quick thing before we dive into today's topic. I just discovered a few days ago that our bradreedwrites. com email system has been down for who knows how long. It forwards to a catch-all email address, so I hadn't noticed that I wasn't getting email through that particular email address until I had people start to contact me through Twitter and say, hey, why haven't I heard back from you?

I emailed you a few days ago or a week ago. As you can imagine, that's more than a little frustrating for you as well as for me, especially after my announcement last week that we're starting to accept guest host audio submissions. Anyway, as of this morning, it looks like that email address is working again, so please, please, please reach out to me if you sent me an email in the past week or two, maybe three or four. I don't know how far back it goes. And if you didn't hear back from me, so please touch base again. The email address that I'm talking about is bradreed at bradreedwrites.

com. Oh, and if you're interested in being a guest host on the podcast, like I talked about a week or so ago, you can now check out all the information related to that. I just added that to the website about how to do that, what it entails, and how to submit your guest host podcast segment.

So just click the Be a Guest Host link on the bradreedwrites. com website. But enough about all that stuff.

Understanding Writer's Block

Let's get into today's topic. It's an important one because we're dealing with one of the banes of a writer's existence, writer's block. So we're exploring writer's block today, what it is, what causes it, and how to get past it or get through it.

Now I'm going to warn you of a couple of things right up front in today's show. I have some pretty strong opinions about writer's block that some of you, maybe even a lot of you, won't share. You won't agree with me or you'll at the very least find them hard to accept.

Now I get that, and I don't expect you to take everything I say on anything as writing gospel, right? As always, simply take what works for you and leave anything that doesn't work for you behind, right? That's what I do with writing resources as I find them and read them and listen to them.

Controversial Views on Writer's Block

But I hope that you will give some consideration to what I'm going to talk about today because I think it can be a huge part of pushing through the really difficult parts of writing and pushing yourself into a place of productivity and creativity. So let's start with probably my most controversial take on writer's block, and it's this. I don't believe that writer's block exists. That's right. I don't believe that writer's block, at least not in the sense that we usually think of it, is actually a real thing.

Now if we mean that there is some process that takes place in the writer's brain that occasionally just turns off the water spigot of creativity and forces us to sit in front of a keyboard with a sense of panic and fear, then no, I don't believe that that's actually what's happening when this thing happens that we want to call writer's block. Now perhaps you think of writer's block as something different. Maybe you think of it as just a reluctance to write or the frustration that sets in when you're struggling to write a scene or if you're not sure what to write next. Well, if that's what you mean by writer's block, that's just writing, right? Writing is often full of joy and excitement and creative insights, but by its very nature, it also has within it those moments of struggle, moments of panic, moments of self-doubt, and those are all just a natural part of writing, just like the highs are, right? We're going to get the lows as well.

Writing is like solving an incredibly complicated puzzle, and we don't get puzzling block when we're stuck looking for the right piece in a puzzle, right? We know that piece is out there somewhere, right? It's lost in that myriad of pieces or maybe it's dropped on the floor and we have to find it there.

But we know it exists somewhere. And as long as we just keep looking for it and we keep trying out various pieces that look like they might fit, eventually one of them is going to click into place and we're off and running again. Now that's the world of writing, too.

But actually that analogy takes us kind of temptingly close to the solutions that we're going to talk about towards the end of the show, so I want to leave that puzzle analogy there for a moment. We'll return to it. All right, so let's jump into our controversial claim number two, right?

The first was that writer's block, I don't think, even actually exists. Controversial claim number two, I think of the idea of writer's block, I think it's come about as a means to justify procrastination. Now I can feel some of you gritting your teeth right now and probably cracking your knuckles to get ready to send me a flaming email or tweet. And I don't mean to minimize the fear and frustration that people experience with what they call writer's block. I know it can be incredibly debilitating and it can even start a downward spiral of self-defeating behavior.

So I don't make this claim lightly about writer's block being just another form of procrastination, but I am making that claim. And here's why. I hope you follow me on this.

So yes, as writers, we are artists. There is absolutely some sort of almost mythical alignment of stars and muse and that perfect cup of coffee that results in bursts of astounding creativity and productivity. But as writers, we also have to see our art as our job. Even if we don't do it for a living or ever even make a dollar from it, after all, we're seeking to create a product for a consumer.

Now I know that's hard for some of us to hear, especially those of us who lean much more towards writing as art rather than writing as business. But I want you to follow me through kind of this logic because I think it will help unlock this puzzle of writer's block. So remember, we're seeking to create a product for a consumer. Our product might be a book for a consumer who's a reader. Our product might be a screenplay for a consumer who's going to be a producer or an actor or eventually an audience. If you remove kind of this artistic halo from the act of writing, and that's admittedly hard to do, but if you remove that..

I don't know why I'm saying halo, but that's kind of what I think, right? This kind of artistic atmosphere that surrounds the act of writing. It really boils down to you're producing a product. You can even look at it as part of the service industry, right? We're seeking to entertain or inform our audiences with what we write. And once you look at writing as even just a little bit business, it becomes clear how writer's block sounds like a concept that you can't really back up.

Let's take a plumber, for example. I can't imagine that plumbers wake up every day excited and joyful about plumbing. I'm sure there are days that it is the last thing that they want to do. I'm sure they have off days where they're not even very good at doing it, right? Because they're not invested in it. They're not actively engaged in it in a passionate way.

But they still get up and they plumb. I guess that's what plumbers do is plumb. There's no such thing as plumber's block, right? A plumber never sits in front of a job, even if it's an incredibly complex one, and finds that they can't do anything. No, what they do is they jump in and maybe they make a total mess of it, but eventually they're going to figure it out, or at the very least, they're going to call in someone with more expertise to help them figure it out.

So there's no such thing as plumber's block, right? There may be astounding reluctance for them to want to do their job, but it's not kind of the psychological phenomenon that we think of like writer's block. So years ago, actually, it's been decades now, I used to be a letter carrier for the Postal Service. And for whatever reason, I hated that job. Not initially, but eventually I hated that job. Towards the end, there was nothing I felt less inclined to do than go out and deliver another day's mail Let me finish my route, but somehow it got done, right?

Mail got delivered. There was no such thing as mailman's block. So essentially, here's what I'm saying about the concept of writer's block. Unless you've literally lost the use of your hands or are injured or disabled in some way that absolutely prevents you from writing, you don't have writer's block. You've got something else going on that is legitimately really hard to deal with. It would have to be for writers all over the world to come up with the concept of writer's block in the first place.

But here's the thing. You can write. You could put your fingers on the keyboard and write something, right? Even if it was pure gibberish, you could scrawl a few words across a piece of notebook paper, even if they end up just being random words kind of pulled from thin air.

Techniques to Overcome Stagnation

So you can write something, so you don't have writer's block. And I think that's one of the first steps in getting past writer's block, is doing away with this almost mythology about what it is and how it works. Okay, so even if you haven't completely bought into my claims about the non-existence of writer's block, I hope you'll listen through some of the techniques to break through whatever is hindering your writing. And the good news here is that these things are going to help whether or not you accept my previous premises or not, right? I think the most common advice for getting past writer's block is just write through it. I know I've heard this, right?

When I've been stuck before and had writing mentors or teachers say, well, the best thing to do with writer's block is just continue to write. And I don't think that advice is all that helpful. There's a negative truth there, but it's not all that helpful because we're stuck, right? Whether it's writer's block or not, we are stuck. And while I may not believe that such a thing as writer's block exists, there definitely are times when we get stuck in a very real sense for whatever reason.

So the techniques I'm going to show you go beyond that trite advice of just write your way through it. Because these techniques are intentionally designed to reduce the pressure, to change your perspective on what you're writing, and find that way back to that creative space that you're trying to get to. So all of these ideas are based on one simple truth, and that truth is this. Writing begets more writing.

In other words, once your brain and your hand are in sync and putting words on the page, it's more likely that the creative system will kick back in and get to work. And in fact, I think of it like push-starting a car. Now I drive an old restored 1963 VW Bug. Her name is Lucy. She's blue and white, and all my students know her pretty well. I get lots of waves and peace signs as I drive around town.

But I drive this old car, right? This old 63 bug. So I know a thing or two about push-starting a car.

So here's the scenario, right? The car is dead. There's no battery, no power.

Now to get it started without jumper cables from another battery, you have to push it, right? And what you do is you push it until you can get it moving as fast as you can, then you quickly leap into the driver's seat, you pop it into gear, and let the clutch out. And what happens is the engine starts turning because of the forward momentum of the wheels on the ground.

So the crankshaft is turning. The pistons are moving up and down. The fuel pump begins to squirt a little fuel into the engine.

So the car isn't really running yet, right? You can't say it's alive. It's not under its own power. It's not running yet.

So it's still dead. But everything in the system is moving as if it's running. Then at some point, if you've got it rolling along fast enough, a spark plug will fire. And that sets off that little explosion of gasoline that begins to turn the engine. Then your engine is actually running, right? And now you're off down the road.

That's essentially what these techniques I'm going to show you are designed to do. To give your brain a sort of push start. So it starts going through the motions until the engine finally fires and you're off and running. There's one other aspect of this analogy that I think is really important to understand. When you push start a car, you don't really care about what direction you're headed. I mean, if there's kind of a downhill slope, you're definitely going to push the car in that direction because you want that help of gravity to build up even more speed.

So in other words, the act of push starting the car is not part of getting where you want to go. In other words, you're not concerned about how much ground you're covering in the direction of your ultimate destination when you're push starting the car. All you're really trying to do is get the dang thing running, right?

So you can go where you actually want it to go. Now, some of these techniques I'm going to show you work the same way. They may not feel like they are related to what you're actually trying to write at all, but they are working to get that system fired up and running.

So there is value in them, even if it feels like it's writing that isn't going to serve a purpose in your story. What I've found, though, is even when I think all I'm doing is kind of jumpstarting my writing brain, I almost always find value in what I've written to get that system running again. So without further ado, here are the techniques. I wanted to introduce you to three of them today. There are certainly more, but these are three of my favorites that I find really effective. And we're starting, we'll start with my favorite one.

Writing the Opposite Scene

And that technique is this write about what definitely will not happen next. So if you're stuck because you have no idea what the next scene is going to be, start writing the scene that you absolutely know won't be what happens next. So, for example, if you're trying to write about a couple falling in love, instead, write about a huge fight where they break up. Or if you're trying to come up with some sort of inciting event that will kick your story into gear, write the opposite, right? Attempt to write the world's most boring scene where absolutely nothing happens. Or maybe if you're stuck writing an ending, this is almost always where I get the most stuck is with endings.

Then write a joke ending or a tragic ending if it's supposed to be a happy ending, right? The point of writing the opposite of what you're actually trying to do is that it bypasses the perfectionism program in our heads that is so often the real reason for what we call writer's block. And it gives us a license to write a piece of total crap. Because we never intend to use it, right? It's push starting that car. You never intended to cover the ground that you're covering as you're push starting that car, but it's a means to an end.

And this approach even allows you to have some fun with what you're writing, which is huge in the middle of the panic and desperation of being stuck. And, you know, more than once, it's been through this kind of writing, where I'm writing what definitely won't happen, that I've discovered the actual thing that will work. And suddenly I'm kind of off in this creative writing fever because I've unlocked that puzzle piece. I've even tried this technique and discovered that the thing I thought was the opposite of what should happen is what the story actually needed.

So let's say you're ready to get the lovers together, for example. So you're stuck kind of writing that scene. So instead you write a fight scene. And you discover that what your story really needed was a fight to add tension and conflict and that the scene you were trying to write actually needed to come later.

So, like I said, that's my favorite technique, writing the opposite of what you think should happen. If you've never tried that, I hope you'll give it a whirl. Even if you're not stuck in something you might call writer's block, it can be a great warm-up exercise before you get down to the serious work of actual writing.

Character Letters for Perspective

So there's technique number one, writing the opposite of what you think will happen. Or maybe you could look at it as the least likely thing to happen next. Our second technique is one that I actually hinted at as one of our weekly challenges on the podcast. Oh, I don't know, it was a month or maybe two ago. And this technique asks you to write a letter from your character to you, to yourself, as the writer. And I like this one because, again, it's not something you'll actually use in your story.

So it removes all that pressure of writing something good. It also breaks you out of the perspective that you've been using in the story. It breaks you out of the world that you've been inhabiting to write that story. And that can sometimes shake things loose to see them in a different perspective.

So there's a few different ways to approach this letter. My favorite way is actually to write two letters. One from my character as if they are writing to me before I've even started the story. And then another letter as if they're writing to me after I've finished writing the book and it's come out and they've read it.

So in the first letter, what they're doing is they're telling me about the kinds of things that they hope I will write about them, right? So these letters often come off as worried, right? They're worried about how I'm going to portray them in the book. And they're trying to influence me to present them to the world in a positive light.

The second letter, so once I've written that one, I write another one. And I pretend that this is after the book comes out and the character is furious with me for what I've written in the book, right? So the books I find it really helpful and a lot of writers swear by this.

The Value of Journaling

So it's probably something that's not unfamiliar to you, but I wanted to, to bring it out as one of the great tools to get past this thing we call writer's block. And this third thing is the idea of keeping a writing journal. Now, John Steinbeck journaled consistently during the writing of most of his books and his journals make for absolutely fascinating reading. I mean, here's John Steinbeck, and you read how he was often convinced he was writing a complete piece of crap while he was working on the Grapes of Wrath, right? The Grapes of Wrath, one of the great American novels, and he often thought it was garbage as he was writing it. His journals from that time period show him wrestling with some pretty severe demons and really wrestling with what we might want to call writer's block.

He used his journal as a warmup before he got around to working on his novels nearly every day, right? And he started with a, I was going to say a short journal entry, but sometimes they become quite long and he'd write about all sorts of things, right? What was going on in his life, who had come to visit him recently, how he was feeling about the book that he was writing, good or bad, what his plans were either for the book or just for his day, right? After he got done writing. And then the journal would end and he'd dive in and he'd get the work done.

So there was something about the process of putting words down on a page that primed his creative pump. And I have no doubt that the same thing will almost certainly work for you. You know, if you're a fan of the Grapes of Wrath or really any of Steinbeck's works for that matter, I recommend that you pick up a copy of a book called Working Days, The Journals of the Grapes of Wrath. And this is all of his journal entries as he's writing this great American novel. I find it oddly inspirational to see the behind the scenes struggles of one of my favorite authors while writing one of my favorite books.

So it's really fascinating reading and I think you'll get a lot of value. It's a little bit hard to find, certainly in a bookstore or anything like that. Go on amazon. com or something and look for Working Days, The Journals of the Grapes of Wrath and you should be able to pick up a copy.

Seeking Help from Others

So those are the three techniques that I find particularly effective in getting things moving again when I'm stuck in my writing. And I hope you give them a shot. Try them out and I bet you'll have some success with them as well. One thing I didn't fully flesh out from my push starting a car analogy is the idea of getting help. Sometimes you just can't push the car fast enough to get it to jumpstart or to pushstart. I've been there, right?

Sometimes you need that good Samaritan to come along and offer to help you push or better yet, pull out a set of jumper cables from their trunk and, you know, jumpstart the car rather than have to pushstart the car. But this is equally true of writer's block. If we try to tackle it alone, we may not always have the energy or the strength that we need to push through that. Sometimes we need help. I know it often helps me sit down with somebody I trust, usually a writer, but not always, and just talk through what's going on. Not so much about the actual writer's block that I'm facing.

I'm not rehashing kind of my fears and and desperations, but I'm talking through what I'm trying to accomplish in the story. See, the brain uses different pathways when it's speaking about something than when it's thinking about something. And sometimes just using these new pathways in the brain unlocks something new. It frees whatever was stuck and you'll find the solution just talking it through.

So it's either that or your trusted writer friend sees things in a new perspective that gives you the insight that you need to get moving again. This is one of the things I actually love about the Twitter writing community. And it's not so much that people are helping each other with actual writing live on Twitter, right? There's probably not enough characters to do that often doing it in DMs, but it's definitely where I've met those trusted friends that I turn to when I need somebody's help when I'm stuck. Speaking of Twitter, I'd love to connect with you there and have you as part of my writing community. I'm at at Brad Reed writes.

If you're interested in connecting on Twitter, I'd love that. We're going to leave our exploration of writer's block there for today. Now, I'd really love to hear from you about today's show. I'm guessing I struck some nerves and that you probably have your own kind of go-to techniques for pushing through the rough times as well. Techniques that other people could benefit from, including me.

So what I'd really love for you to do this week is to call our message line and leave us some feedback that we could use on a future show. I'm going to give you the phone number here in just a minute. So this is your chance to either find a pen or if you're driving, please don't find a pen. Maybe ask somebody who's writing with you in the car to jot it down. When you call, there's not a live person is going to answer. It's just a message phone so you can leave a recording.

So on that recording, let me know your name, where you're calling from. You could even mention your twiddle hand or I don't know why I can't say that Twitter handle or your website or whatever you may want to promote. And then tell me about your reaction to the show along with any techniques that you use to get through writer's block.

Okay, here's that number if you're ready for it. It's. One more time in case you're writing that down. And if you're not in a place where you can write it down, just when you get to a computer or a phone, head on over to bradreedwrites. com and click that talk to us link. You'll find the number there.

So I'm really looking forward to hearing from you and hopefully getting your voice on a future episode of the podcast. Today's wise word is a little bit longer quote than usual. It comes from Malcolm Gladwell, and he's talking about his approach to encountering writer's block. And here's what he says. I deal with writer's block by lowering my expectations. I think the trouble starts when you sit down to write and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent.

And when you don't, panic sets in. The solution is never to sit down and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent. I write a little bit, almost every day. And if it results in two or three or on a good day, four paragraphs, I consider myself a lucky man. Never try to be the hare. All hail the tortoise.

So that's Malcolm Gladwell. And I don't think there's anything I can add to his take on this. So I'm just going to leave that quote there for you today. And it's time for the weekly challenge. We've talked a lot about writer's block this week. And instead of just having you do one of the techniques that we talked about on the show, I want to flip things up just a little bit.

Weekly Challenge for Writers

So this really isn't even a writing challenge this week, but it's still a weekly challenge. This week, I want you to reach out to a writer friend and have a conversation about writing. Perhaps you're feeling stuck and just need someone to talk through it with. Or better yet, maybe you can find a fellow writer who's stuck and take the time to help him or her sort through whatever it is they're dealing with. You could be that good Samaritan that comes along to help them push start their car.

So this could be in person. That'd be great. This could be done on Twitter. It could be done in a writer's group, whatever. Just try to connect with someone who you can lean on and who can lean on you when your creative car is dead and needs that push start.

So that's going to wrap it up for us this week. Our real-time revision videos, which are now free for everyone through our Patreon site, are releasing on Thursdays now. It used to be Mondays, but we're starting those on Thursdays now.

So watch for a new one of those coming in just a few days. And I'm continuing to work through the story grid editing system with my current work in progress novel. And I'm about ready to start on the graphing step. If you're familiar with story grid, you'll know what that means. If not, you might check out storygrid. com or at storygrid on Twitter to familiarize yourself with it.

But right now in that real-time revision, you're seeing me live kind of work through that revision process. And that's probably what you'll see in this week's video. I'm hoping to be ready to begin the graphing portion of that editing process.

So until next week, remember the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do. And I hope you're off to do the same.

Let's get some words on paper this week and we'll meet up again next week for another episode of The Inside Creative Writing Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast with your host, writer and educator Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.