How to Handle Writer’s Block

Beating Writer’s Block with Patience and Consistency

Writer’s block is inevitable for all writers. Dealing with writer’s block, however, isn’t always straightforward. And this is only made more complex and dire when the plateau is drawn out for more than a mere day. 

When the inevitable occurs, what should we do? Should we just try to force something to come out and hope for the best? Or, ought we to throw our hands up in the air and wait for inspiration? 

Perhaps it is a combination of both. 

We should not force ideas onto paper. But if we do, we should evaluate them critically. 

Daoist philosophy centers around “acting naturally.” Consider, for instance, being in a relationship of any sort — deep down, you know it isn’t working, but you force the relationship to persist anyway. Whether this is out of laziness, or out of the fear of appearing to deviate from convention, we seem to default in these moments to ceaselessly ignore our internal admonitions. 

Daoism — or, at least one way of interpreting Daoism — instructs us not to force such relationships, and the reason is that when we force things in this unnatural manner, not only do we suffer but our suffering compounds and worsens. 

This “forcing” is not exclusive to our relationships, however. It also appears in our creative pursuits. Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art actually instructs writers to force words onto paper when they are not coming naturally. By itself, this is horrible advice. It’s the sort of advice that produces listicles and blogs with ‘quippy’ prose — the true denigration of all good writing. 

However, one cannot underestimate the utility of forcing one’s writing in the context of chronic writer’s block. What is one to do if, for months — or even years — nothing of substantiality arises in one’s mind to write? Is it even an option to simply stop writing for a writer? Especially if one’s income is tied to one’s creative pursuits, the answer is surely no. 

In what way, then, can a writer force words onto paper without producing claptrap? The way is to write in such a forced way, and then to critically evaluate what you’ve written. Some of it will be terrible. However, some of it might be good. But when we’ve said or written things that we do not genuinely believe in, if we’re honest with ourselves, we can sense that. The solution is, to be honest with oneself in such moments. When you’ve written something you do not believe in — even if you know the masses will believe in it, and thus, you will be rewarded handsomely for such writing — you must delude yourself in order to publish such writing. Our tendency is to go along with our delusions — but that is a guarantee that your writing will be transparently cliched, and therefore, bad. 

That is, if after critically examining what you’ve written, you feel that your writing is forced and that you do not really believe the ideas that sprung from your mind are valid or true, you should dispense with these ideas. This may come with some personal challenges: perhaps you’ve written something that you do believe in, but it does not conform to consensus. In these cases, you may decide to scrap an idea because of worries about how it may or may not be received. However, it is precisely in these moments where you should capitalize on your idea: it has come from you, and thus, your elucidations of it will flow naturally, creating genuine —and thus, good— writing.