What to do when you can’t seem to write

There can often be a great chasm between buzzing with ideas and actually sitting down to write them. With many of my writers, it’s not that they are unwilling to do the work or are novices to structure and technique. It’s actually more often than not the human side of writing: finding the time, feeling guilty about not writing (or guilty for wanting to write instead attending a family function), or the very common experience of ‘locking up’ when they finally sit down to write.

When I get an email from one of my clients or during a coaching call, I always assure them that this is a super common hurdle that writers face. Something about the creative process, no matter how much we want to engage it, produces a surprising amount of anxiety and we can freeze up pretty quickly. 

If this ever happens to you, here’s what I tell my writers to help them get out of freezing up and have better, more productive writing sessions. 

Logging your ideas

First, if you’ve been having ideas throughout the day, make sure you write those down! By hand, in a notebook, if at all possible. One of my favorite tools for staying connected to your writing is a good old fashioned notebook and pen. Logging your ideas in a notebook, rather than typing them into your phone, will help you remember them better. Then, when you show up to a work session and want to refer back to them, you’re pulling out your notebook, rather than your phone, avoiding the potential for email, text, or other phone-related distractions.

Even if you haven’t been having ideas throughout the day, start keeping a notebook and pen with you – if you catch an interesting snatch of dialogue or have even a thought about your story, or an interesting line of prose, write it down. Forming that habit will regularly remind you of your story and get you thinking about it more often, which will help you stay connected to your story outside of your writing sessions, so that when you do sit down to work, it doesn't feel like starting from scratch.

Setting the intention 

I recommend setting an intention or focus for your writing session the night before. One of the things that can quickly derail and demoralize a session is feeling lost at the very beginning, or having too many options, inevitably choosing none of them. Choosing what you’re working on the night before 1.) treats it as a foregone conclusion that you are going to write tomorrow, warming you to the fact well before you get there and 2.) focuses your attention when you sit down to work. 

If there’s a particular idea or insight from your notebook that you’re especially excited about, you may want to start there if motivation is an issue you’re experiencing during your sessions.

Analogue and digital

When you actually show up to your session, especially at the very beginning, I would avoid the computer if you’re getting locked up. Staring at a blank screen can make your mind likewise go blank, and when you add on to that being physically stationary, you have a recipe for a session spent staring off into the middle distance before calling it quits. 

Instead, grab a notebook, or loose leaf paper, or printer paper, a napkin if you must, just something physical, and a pen. You may start with something like Morning Pages, to get the dross off the top of your mind and get the gears moving. Or, you might start just writing about and around the intention you set the night before. The point here is that writing by hand will engage your body, which will help engage your mind on the topic. 

Movement is your friend

If you start to run out of ideas or things to write, pace around the room! Don’t stay stuck in your chair staring at a blank page, but move around. Again, this helps your mind stay engaged on the topic at hand and keeps you from getting physically, and as a result, mentally stuck. 

Minimize decision fatigue 

Finally, one of the things I’ve found the most helpful is putting writing times in my schedule. This is age-old advice. “Put it on your calendar. Stick to it.” For the longest time, I didn’t actually find it helpful. I’d put writing times on my calendar and then just…not do it. But when I divorced it from this idea of an obligation sitting over my head, some other discipline I’m requiring myself to do, and reframed it as: “These are the times I’m able to give to my story so that I don’t have to wonder, ‘Should I try to write today?’” the advice actually became meaningful and helpful. 

It may take some experimenting to figure out when you can reasonably expect to set aside time to write. But if you can find the days that do work for your schedule, and then put them in the calendar so you aren’t expending energy wondering, “Should I start now? Or later?” or “Am I done?” it can preserve your energy for the work itself. 

The other huge benefit to this is that it also alleviates the pressure on any one writing session. Not all of them will be bangers. That’s just how creativity goes: some days are amazing, some are awful, and most of them are pretty good or just okay. But if you know what times you’ll be showing back up to your story, whether your schedule accommodates five sessions per week or just one, you won’t show up feeling like this is the one time you’re finally working on your story and it had better be good. Because that kind of pressure is also a recipe for locking up when you sit down to work. 

Increasing capacity

Taking all of these into consideration will also greatly increase your overall writing stamina. Locking up doesn't always just happen at the start but sometimes in the middle when you are working through a plot problem or trying to figure out your character’s internal arc. Get up, pace around, and move to pen and paper to get the creativity flowing again. You’d be surprised what comes to you if you don’t call it quits too soon.