Writer's block: two words guaranteed to strike icy terror into the heart of every professional writer (and yes, most academics are essentially professional writers).
Writer’s block is a common yet excruciating experience that can derail all your best-laid plans and deadlines. You know what you need to write. You set aside specific and precious time to write. Maybe you even make it to the part where you sit down at your desk and open a blank document. But hours later, the words still aren’t there.
What’s happening?
At its heart, writer’s block is a form of procrastination, which means it has an emotional core, not a moral or practical one. You’re not lazy or unintelligent (clearly). Nor do you need better time management or productivity hacks. Rather, you probably need to regulate your emotions.
That’s why my six strategies for busting this type of block are geared around soothing, managing, and even bypassing the strong emotions that underlie any case of writer’s block. Because even though most professional and academic contexts are designed to pretend that we don’t really have them, emotions deeply affect us and, in turn, the work we produce for these contexts.
1. Acknowledge your emotional state with compassion
How are you feeling? No, really—how are you feeling about this writing (both before and during the process)? Resist the urge to pick up a screen or check your email and really sit with your attention turned inward for a second. Are you scared of failure? Angry with yourself? Overwhelmed at just how much there is to do? Are those emotions turning into self-fulfilling thoughts and beliefs (“I suck at writing”) faster than you can stop them? Is anything else generating difficult emotions for you right now? Are you eating and sleeping well? When did you last get outside for a walk, or do something you love to do, or laugh?
Shining the light of your own awareness on your emotions means you’re actually listening to yourself, which means your feelings don’t need to scream to be heard. They’ll typically reduce in intensity the longer you stay listening; if they don’t, consider whether writing is truly the most important thing you could be doing right now. Sometimes, our emotions are communicating a truth that our analytical brains can’t see yet (e.g., maybe something else really does need your attention way more than this paper).
2. Assure yourself
Writer’s block is normal. It’s so normal that virtually all of the greatest writers have talked about it ad nauseam (even if they prefer to call it something else). If you expect it, even welcome it as part of the creative process, you again take some of the emotional struggle out of it. You’re not doing anything wrong and this isn’t about you or your intelligence, discipline, etc. Writing is hard. Academic writing can be particularly hard. Pulling thoughts and connections out of your brain and turning them into concrete language (especially if that language happens to be your second or third) is hard. You’re facing the same “hard” as everyone else in your field, even if some of them manage to make it look easy (in which case, you should know there’s a very real possibility that they use an editor). And, at the same time, you undoubtedly have lots of proof that you can do hard things.
3. Embrace the mess
The most important thing you can do when you feel unable to write (or to write well) is to keep writing anyway. Type words that describe the problem or feelings you’re grappling with and see if they eventually meander back to the topic you wanted to write about. Type up your initial reflections on and reactions to other people’s work on the topic (this can easily become the lit review). Write up the most informal, conversational, messy version of the document that you can. “Here’s what I’d like to get at here but I don’t know how to say it… I don’t know… something like ‘Basically, this view is garbage for 3 reasons’ and elaborate on each later…” Etc. To paraphrase a quote found on my own website, you (or my team and I!) can polish just about anything but a blank page and filling that page is a job for your inner creative not your inner critic. We need the latter turned off so we can make the mess that will eventually become the masterpiece.
4. Break down tasks into their least emotional components
“Oh man, I’ve really got to write that paper.” I haven’t written my own papers in 15 years and just saying that sentence gives me an immediate feeling of stress and overwhelm—the same feeling that used to drive me to procrastinate on important tasks. When the task is too big, too vague, too emotionally overwhelming, our struggle switch flips on. Distractions multiply. Temptations get a lot more tempting. Focus becomes impossible.
Bypass this overwhelm by breaking down tasks into manageable sub-tasks. The key here is to make these sub-tasks so small, so minor that they don’t trigger those difficult emotions.
“Write chapter 3”—way too big. ❌
Better:
“Write a messy first outline of what I’d like this chapter to say/look like within the next 25 minutes” ✅
“Write about the methods used because I made detailed notes to draw from during the data collection” ✅
“Summarize the results in one single-spaced page” ✅
“Then break up that summary into its various pieces and elaborate on each to create paragraphs (for a results section)” ✅
And so on. The time that you invest in creating this list will pay dividends as you methodically plod your way through these little steps.
The idea is, again, to take the emotions out of it so we can get back to seeing this process for what it is: work. Just work. Show up, clock in, continue to build the little pieces of this project with consistency, and one day you’ll find that you’ve actually got an impressive amount of the overall project done.
Pro tip: This is the ideal stage to leverage generative AI in your writing. Don’t ask it to write any part of your submissions (doing so is a now-common mistake that can jeopardize your career). Instead, ask it to create outlines and structures that you can tweak and work from (e.g., “I’d like to submit an article to X Journal on Y topic; please create an outline of the article for me to work from” or “My end goal is to write a paper involving X and Y; please create a detailed breakdown of all the pieces I’ll need to write this paper.”).
5. Make writing intrinsically motivating.
“When I get to the end of this page, I can reward myself with a break” or “When I finish this paragraph, I’ll treat myself to a coffee.” These are examples of extrinsic motivation. The problem? It doesn’t really work all that well—or at least, not for activities as crucial to your career as writing is for academics. Instead, we need to find ways to make this vital activity intrinsically motivating—as in, “Wow I love doing this.” What would make writing a more enjoyable process for you? A standing desk? A steady stream of fresh, cold filtered water? Writing gloves? Lighting an expensive candle only while writing? Nothing is too big or too small: if it seems like it will make writing a pleasure, try it.
6. Schedule regular breaks
No matter how tight the deadline is, breaks are essential to overcome blocks and gain any kind of sustained flow for your writing. Difficult emotions sap our inner resources; regular breaks replenish them. Additionally, stepping away from problems in favor of mundane activities like walking, cleaning, or showering often allows subconscious thoughts to simmer and coalesce as breakthroughs—a phenomenon so common that it actually has a name: the shower effect.
These emotion-informed strategies can help you tackle the critical work of writing—without getting blocked up or resorting to the error-prone, mediocre writing produced by generative AI. And if all else fails, try rambling out loud about your topic while using one of the many talk-to-text tools: research indicates that writing and talking are such independent functions in the brain that many people who “can’t write” have no trouble speaking the words that, if written down, would constitute excellent writing.
-Catie Phares
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