Suffering from writer’s block can call one to feel guilty, shameful, and depressed. I have four simple things that I do before, during and after my writing sessions that help me defeat writer’s block.
Have a writing ritual
The beautiful thing about writing rituals is they can be pretty much anything you want! The key is to find a few things that help you get into the mood for writing and do them consistently. I use Tarot cards, candles or essential oil diffusers, and music as my writing ritual. These help me slow down and break away from my day, gives me a chance to journal or do some prewriting to help prime the well, and ground me into the scene I’m going to write.
Having a ritual that you do every single time you sit down to write helps tell your body that it’s time to settle down, settle in, and start creating. And even if the writing ritual is the only thing you get done that day, if you are consistent, eventually your brain and body will connect and words will start to flow.
Keep your Big Why in mind
Before I start writing any book, I like to think about my Big Whys – both the specific book project and how it fits into my overall writing goals. I like to keep this where I can see it so I can review if I start feeling disconnected or if writer’s block starts to creep in. Reading it at least once a week might be helpful or re-writing it every so often might work better – try both and see what feels most helpful for you. Just make sure you are thinking about why you wanted to write this story in the first place to keep your motivation high and writer’s block at bay.
Befriend your Inner Editor
This is going to sound a little nutty, but I have befriended my inner editor. We all have that negative voice, that inner critic that tells us – this doesn’t sound good OR no one is going to want to read this – which can affect our ability to sit down and write new words. I don’t believe this voice can ever truly go away, but I do think if we work on making that voice a bit more friendly we can work with it rather than have it work against us.
By becoming friends with my Inner Editor, I can give it jobs to do so it feels important and like it’s part of the writing team and therefore will leave me alone more often than not while I’m writing my drafts and editing. Now, I’ve chosen a Tarot Card that personifies my Inner Editor and then started a conversation with them in a journal – and yes, I wrote out both parts … Again, it sounds nutty but it works!
* If you think this is a cool idea, wait a few weeks as I have a whole blog post just about this concept coming up!
Track your data
Every week I like to write down what worked this week, what didn’t work this week and what needs to be adjusted for the following week. You can also do this every time you write as well, especially if you are testing writing times or rituals, by jotting down when you wrote, where you wrote, what rituals you performed and any other notes that will be helpful.
If you track data you can catch problems before they become huge issues. For example, every time you sit down to write at 10am the words flow out of you with no issues but 2pm feels super hard to even write a sentence, let alone pages of words. The trick here is to leave emotions out of it – yes, we want to note how you felt during your writing sessions, but I don’t want you to judge the amount you wrote. It’s a fine balance but if you can take the judgement out and just look at the data you can see that 10am just works better for you – that’s good information, useful information that can help you plan out the next week’s writing schedule.
Catching things early keeps us moving forward, rather than getting off the rails and then writer’s block just comes in and causes guilt, shame and depression all over again.
I would love to know which of these four tips was the most helpful? Which one are you just itching to implement?
And if these ideas got you excited to get back to writing, then I invite you to sign up for the waitlist for my signature course – Turn on the Tap – to get early intel and a discount the day before the cart officially opens in early February!!
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