Daily Blog #221: Blocking Writer’s Block
By: Abbi Grasso
Tags: Writers Block, Writers On Writing, Daily Blog, Blog, Writers Life

Greetings and salutations, Blog Readers!

My goal for this blog was to write a blog all about how to beat writers block, but as I wrote, I realized the key was to block writers block from happening, and then, if you happened to get writers block after that, to make your efforts all about rebuilding that base of blocking writers bloc.

What exactly do I mean?

First, let’s talk about what I mean when I say blocking writers block.

One of the best ways to avoid getting writers block, or, the inability to put good creative thoughts onto whatever pages acts as your medium, is to put in place good habits that prevent the block from ever growing.

Like with a good garden, you don’t weed once in a while, you weed the garden every day, to stop small weeds from damaging your crops.

You build a habit, weeding the garden, every day.

Writing is much the same. Every day you write, every day you engage the writing muscles, and every day your brain garden flourishes.

When you skip days, the weeds start to take over and before long you have a whole weed thicket blocking your garden from the sun and nutrients (your vreativity) it needs.

The best way to stop this is to weed, or write, every day. One of the best things I have done to help block writers block, is to have this daily blog.

Please note, I said daily. I am well aware that not every blog is some knocked out of the park, brilliantly formed essay style of blog. Sometimes, they are more diary based with some blog lessons thrown in and some mild to light editing done before formatting and scheduling.

Every day.

I write every day.

The blog forces me to write every day, knowing I have a posting schedule to follow, but also, the blog gets those muscles working.

So often I will say I don’t have the energy to write on my creative writing so “I am going to do a quick blog post and wrap it up for the night” and the turns into a long blog post, and thousands of words added to my current work in progress.

The muscle, once it starts working, won’t want to stop. For those of you, like me, who hate working out, you may find that sometimes if you just get up and start moving, you will not want to stop. For me, I never want to haul the stationary bike out, but once I am on, a simple, short five miles isn’t enough…and normally after ten miles I want to push to at least thirteen (my lucky number) or so miles.

Or perhaps you hate cleaning, but once you get up and do that first thing, the next thing you know you have cleaned the whole space…Once you start moving it is easy to keep going.

This is a key ingredient to actually blocking writers block, actively engaging the muscle every day, and writing.

Another key component is feeding your brain, or the muscles. You wouldn’t work out with out at least hydrating, and many people believe in pre-work out or post-work out nutrients to better the efforts from their work out…and writing is no different. Feed your brain.

You can feed your brain throughout the day. I like to read medium articles in the morning, WordPress blogs after that, short stories during the day, and a few chapters from whatever longer book I am reading, in the evening before bed. I should read more, honestly, and plenty of days go by where I don’t read enough…and I can tell I have shortchanged myself because the writing gets harder and harder to achieve.

I also find it helps, to block writers block, to stay on top of what I am doing.

Journaling is important for any person, but too often creative types don’t journal about their art, and that leads to clogs in the pipes too, in my opinion.

Journal, but not just about your life..Journal about your art. Journal about your characters, the situations, the world you are creating. Feel free to write the ramblings and considerations of the people in your world, the ideas, beliefs, philosophies…journal about the entire process, even if it feels boring to you. It helps block writers block.

The final way I will offer to block writers block is to always keep the enemy in mind. You know what happens if you stop writing every day, and you know what happens when you get lazy.

The block.

Because writers block is, more often then not, nothing more than a terrible side affect of not writing enough. So get to writing. I am going to get to writing the next blog, which is how to beat writers block…because let’s be real…it happens to every one…and can even happen when you are vigilant about blocking the writers block.

Go get to creating! Your art needs you!

Thanks for Reading!

❤️

Abbi