How Do You Fight Writer’s Block?! Tips & Tricks

If you’ve ever spent much time with a pen in your hand or your fingers on a keyboard you have hit the wall. You’ve felt the suck. You’ve experienced The Block.

Writer’s block is a pain in the butt. We all know this. But in the end it’s just another obstacle that we have to overcome. We’ve all beat it and we all have our tips and tricks. And while things that work for me may not work for you and vice versa, it is pretty interesting to look at the ways that writers engage in this legendary battle.

I asked the Twitterverse what they do to combat The Block and I started getting answers right away. Ideas included, but were not restricted to: reading & retyping old pieces to get things flowing, reading other people’s work to find inspiration, writing a one line sentence to make a story out of, eating candy, watching porn, writing down nursery rhymes or song lyrics, hiking and letting nature inspire you, and write anything (gibberish included) so you don’t have a blank screen in front of you.

Some of the suggestions, tips and tricks were familiar to me. Some were new. And some surprised me to say the least.

As a dude who feels like a life-long student of people and human behaviour I have to admit that I was very interested to see what people would come up with. I wasn’t at all disappointed.

I’ve been waging the war against The Block for as long as I have been writing. It started in high school when I was turning out bad teenaged poetry in spiral notebooks and on scrap pieces of paper. In those early days my go to tool was to start writing out the lyrics to the chorus of Tonic’s “If You Could Only See”,

If you could only see the way she loves me, maybe you would understand, why I feel this way about our love, and what I must do. If you could only see how blue her eyes can be when she says, when she says she loves me…

I wrote it on scrap paper. I wrote it in my notebooks. I even used a black Sharpie to write it around the edge of the 2 piece hexagon table in my Student Government office. I loved that song, still do, and writing those lyrics got me in the rhythm. It was calming I guess. Whatever the reason may have been – it worked.

It was during those years that I started smoking and as cheesy and cliché and romanticized as it sounds, writing and smoking at the same time is brilliant. I did it hidden in my bedroom when I lived with my grand-parents. I did it in the park under a tree. I did it anywhere that I could put my notebook down and hold a cigarette in my right hand and a pen in my left.

When I got to college I kept writing for me and also for my profs. I found myself writing more late at night and into the early hours of the morning. Sometimes because of 8am deadlines. I also used to go to the common room that was often empty so I could stretch, think, breathe and just find my centre. This was before Yoga was cool, but I can tell you now that I wish I had known about it then. Either way, it got the noise out my head and allowed me to sit down and write again.

By my 2^nd year I was in a cigarette friendly living situation so there was a lot of smoking and typing. I wasn’t cool enough to have a glass of scotch beside me, but it worked out anyway. The most fun I had with writer’s block in college was during a writing lab in that 2^nd year. We were given a timed assignment of some sort and I had no idea where to start. So, in a moment of childish brilliance and tomfoolery I wrote this -> In west Philadelphia, born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days, chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ all cool and all, shootin’ some b-ball outside of the school, when a couple of guys that were up to no good, started makin’ trouble in my neighborhood, I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said you’re moving with your Auntie and Uncle in Bel Air.

Then I hit print.

It was ridiculous. I just left it there in the printer of the 1^st person to find and I got to work. I was loose, relaxed and ready to go. And I finished the assignment on time.

When I started writing my (still unfinished) novel in Ottawa I found that people watching was a big help in my fight against The Block. I would sit on the patio at The Highlander with a pint of cold beer and watch as business folks, students and parents walked by. The helped me write characteristics of people in the story and kept things moving. I loved it and kind of miss it.

Side Note: Ottawa is also where I started writing in the laundry mat.

And now, as I blog for me and write for work I find myself drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, tweeting mundane thoughts, asking people random questions and wondering what causes The Block in the first place.

I may never know the answer to that question. Maybe there are just too many contributing factors. But I know that as long as I have my old stand-bys, as well as new tricks I pick up along the way, I can beat it one day at a time.

Didn’t get your tip or trick included here but still wanna share? Tell the world in the comment section below or tweet it to me. The more we all know the better prepared we’ll be when The Block shows its ugly face!

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Joshua Murray

creator of content, daddy blogger, writer, coffee drinker, fan of the Batman. proud mo bro. prouder dad.