8 Quick Tips for Battling Writer’s Block

What to do when the well runs dry.

Some days, the words seem to come unbidden from the magical land of sentences, and you feel like nothing more than a vessel, whose role is to simply transcribe these messages from the ether.

Most days, it’s not like that. At all.

I’m a big believer in the butt-in-chair philosophy of creative work, meaning that the work won’t get done unless you are working. But what do you do when you’re staring at a blinking cursor or a blank page, and just… nothing is coming? If you’ve reached a point in your novel or your story or your essay and you just cannot figure out what the next words are? If you’re crippled by self-doubt and you can’t summon up the chutzpah to keep going? (Because let’s face it — it takes some serious confidence-bordering-on-arrogance to think you have anything worthwhile to say.) We’ve all been there. Here are some practical, tactical ideas for getting the pipes unclogged.

1. Free-write. If your internal censors are the problem, try free-writing to simply get words flowing out of your brain again. You can start with a prompt, or just start brain-dumping. The idea is to keep your pen/pencil/keyboard in constant forward motion — no deletions, no re-reading, just write write write any old garbage for a set amount of time. (Start low: two minutes. This is harder than it sounds.) Occasionally, some really gorgeous stuff comes out of free-writing sessions. Most times, it’s nonsensical trash, but it can help get the kinks out so you can return to your work-in-progress fresh.
2. Write something in a different genre. If you’re stuck on your novel, work on a personal essay. Stuck on an academic essay — try some flash fiction. Write something completely unrelated to what is holding you up. This engages different parts of your brain, keeps your sentence-building chops honed, and may yield some fun experimentation with forms you haven’t really worked in before.
3. Write a scene from a different point-of-view. This really only applies to fiction writing, but try looking at your story through the eyes of someone other than the narrator. Is there a minor character in the scene you’re trying to write? How would they see the events unfold? What does their voice sound like? Or if the…