Blessing Your Blogger’s Block
Last week, I received this email from a blogger suffering from writer’s block:
I seem to have lost my ability to blog. I feel completely uninspired and everything I write seems wooden and disconnected. I am not sure how to get out of this block… Any suggestions?
First Suggestion — Stop Trying!
Trying is not doing. Trying is its own form of self-fulfilling failure.
I could start throwing tons of How to Get Ideas or How to Write an Article tips your way — but a course of treatment can be ineffectual or even damaging without an accurate diagnosis.
The Curse of Writer’s Block
Many times, the features separating a curse from a blessing are matters of context and perspective. By now, you’ve probably read so many basic laws of attraction and manifesting techniques that you’re drowning in thoughts of what you should be doing.
- You know that you attract more of whatever you place on the throne of your attention.
- You know that gratitude for what you already have is the primary force that governs your having more.
Shift your perspective
Your writer’s block is a present condition — the complaint is not that you don’t know how to write, have no talent for writing, or have yet to launch your blog. There’s no reason to presume that this block is permanent — that would actually be a highly illogical conclusion. You can write, you’ve been writing, you will write again.
Cast aside this absolute perspective and be with what is — work the situation you are given. That’s what you have to work with.
Maybe your best course of action in this moment is to do nothing. Stop trying, stop pushing the river, and practice the Art of Surrender.
How can you become grateful for something you perceive as undesirable? How do you shift your spirits into the creative mode of transforming a block into a blessing?
How might the block be a blessing? Why would not writing be the best possible course of action for you at this time?
You’re driving along a road you normally take every day. Little do you know, a bridge washed out in a rainstorm the night before. You come upon a flashing orange barricade, a detour sign, and a workman waving at you to stop and turn around.
This block is not there just to thwart you and piss you off — it’s there to protect you from danger. The block is a blessing. Even if you don’t know until later that the bridge was out, you trust that there’s a very good reason for the detour.
- Your fuel gauge warning light is on, it doesn’t necessarily mean your car is totaled or you weren’t mean to drive. You’ve been blessed with the knowledge that you need to go get more gas before you’re on empty.
- Your creative bonfire has burned down to ashes. You’ve still got plenty of matches, but your wood bin is empty. The obvious course of action is to leave the fire pit and go gather more wood.
- Your well is dry. Your bucket is empty. Taking a shower is out of the question… Go find a water source.
- Your Muse, usually so dependable and chatty, is suddenly absent. She’s not answering her phone. This doesn’t mean she’s quit and will never return — maybe she’s just taking the day off — jeez, give her a break!
Keeping these metaphors in mind, assume your blogger’s block is a pretty good indication that you simply should not be writing right now:
- Who might need your attention?
- What activities are you neglecting?
- What responsibilities have you pushed aside too often for the sake of writing?
Maintaining creativity requires a balance between Receptive energies (source material, inspiration, idea gathering) and Projective energies (making, building, sharing). You must do some of both. When you find you can’t do one, do the other.
What do you do?
Excluding tips for creating, writing, blogging — what are your suggestions for NOT writing? How do you fill your well, find inspiration? What do you do when your Muse is taking a much needed vacation? Please share your advice in the comments.
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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11 Responses to “Blessing Your Blogger’s Block”
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Hello Slade
Always like to borrow from what you present, so Christmas it is. Even though it’s on loan from SYS’s current post.
It is easy to forget how many gifts Santa left when the sweater I want seems to be missing from under the tree, by midday on the 26th no less. I’m not entirely sure I have any other strategies/ideas than what you’ve presented. One of my gifts are those I give myself. I have an entire drawer full of sweaters that I love or in the case of writing, an ongoing list of things I haven’t gotten around to expanding or expounding.
When I have inspiration, ideas seem to come in droves. Honestly, there is more there than I could possibly write about in a day, week, month. And what comes is not necessarily only writing material. There’s all kinds of doing possibilities. So I keep a running tab of on hold titles, starting points, middles that need beginnings and ends, whatever. I can then go back and explore what I didn’t actually miss, but maybe it needed to mature, become appropriate, be funded. In other words, waiting for its better or best purpose. Or me to see it.
Slade,
I have found that I become very unproductive and in anxiety when I put too much pressure on myself and end up TRYING too hard.
Here is why I love your statemnt:
“Maybe your best course of action in this moment is to do nothing. Stop trying, stop pushing the river, and practice the Art of Surrender.”
Surrender works for me and to me it means ceasing to try to perform an action for myself and do it for my Higher Power. Often that means just getting away from the computer and going somewhere quiet, praying, meditating, reading scripture and reconnecting to my Higher Power.
Often I am amazed that afterwards something to write about comes quickly and easily.
This process for me is similar to what Adam @ Monk at Work talked about in his “Silencing Overwhelm” ebook.
Mark
This is a great reminder, Slade, to honor ourselves and our writing. I personally only blog when I have something to say - which usually means an article twice a week, but sometimes not. If the inspiration is not there, I am not going to force myself to write just for the sake of writing something.
Usually, I have one or two ideas spooking around in my head at any given time. My inspiration comes from whatever I’m working on personally at the time. Since I’m constantly working on my spiritual development, things are always shifting and changing - lots of fodder for my blog!
I think if we write about personal growth, inspiration comes from constantly growing. If we write about spirituality, we must focus on our own spiritual growth. If we’re blogging about business, we have to be working on our business … I guess what I’m saying is that, to me, we have to be doing it in order to blog about it.
And, when all else fails, taking a day off or getting a massage always helps.
Blessings,
Andrea
Slade - I love this post! You give such practical, spiritual solutions in simple terms. We should remember this advice not only in blog writing but other areas where we seem stuck. This is a good read.
Barbara,
This is one reason why I make a distinction between writing a certain number of sessions per day / per week and publishing / posting. Write a lot when the writing is flowing, and stockpile your drafts.
I am also a “plate-spinner” — I like to have a lot of pieces and projects going in various states of completion, so that I can move between them as my inspiration dictates.
Mark,
I’m with you, man! Getting away entirely usually does the trick for me, too. This also puts me in mind of the experience you have when you’re looking for something you’ve misplaced — you find it when you stop looking for it.
Andrea,
I think what the blogger who originally wrote to me for advice meant by “wooden posts” was the disconnect between that authenticity — what you’re really feeling, pondering, working with at any given time — and a forced energy. Kind of like a “forced smile” that ends up looking painful.
I think choosing to skip a session entirely and wait through a dry spell is preferable to writing because you “have” to. I feel ultimately what you’re getting at is a sense of ease and desire — wanting to — feeling it — as opposed to making something happen. The disconnect in energy can show through. It’s like skipping the gym when you have a cold.
Pat R,
Thank you for the compliment! You just made my day.
Amen!
When I can’t blog, which has been happening lately, it is time to refill the well. For me, this means immersing myself in beauty–visual and verbal. I run my hand along a bookstore shelf, pulling a book of poems at random to discover with a cup of green tea. I scan the newstand for intriguing cover lines–stacking up the magazines that capture my fancy… i follow the thread. I look to The Sun, O Magazine, British House Beautiful (because it;s so ECO)… I dig into “green” issues, I study the twelve houses of astrology because doing so takes me deep down into the psyche where I like to swim around. I scribble notes from overheard conversations and magazines I dont intend to purchase into my little black sketchbook (knowing they’ll spark a blog later on, when I’m rich with inspiration again). I take long walks when it’s warm enough in NY. When it’s not, I watch Grey’s Anatomy and Project Runway. I sleep and I try to remember my dreams. I take myself out to lunch and watch the goings on at other tables, in the place between kitchen and dining room where the veil is thinner…
I spend alot of time reading other blogs and catching up on email… eventually, something catches hold of me, I feel the weight of my muse fluttering back, alighting on my shoulder and I’m blogging again. Mostly, I have faith that there is no such thing as Blogger’s Block–these pauses are for refreshment, renewal and realignment. I always emerge dripping with inspiration.
Amy,
Wow — this is one of the richest comments I’ve read in a long time — thank you so much!
I loved every word of it, but what a strong conclusion:
Absolutely — I couldn’t agree more. (I think your comment may be a better read than my post!)
Thanks, Slade. But your post is pretty cool, too.
[...] Before prescribing solutions for working through writer’s block, I wanted to simply put the idea out there that maybe it’s OK to be blocked. [...]
Well, Amy just said everything that I was thinking as I read your article Slade.
When I can’t write, it is usually because I am too tired which means I need to take care of myself first. Sometimes, it is because I am blocking feelings that I want to deny I am feeling. Writing always has a way of bringing the feelings out for me and sometimes, I just don’t feel like dealing with them. When I stop blocking the feelings, usually the words and the writing returns.
Like Andrea, I have learned that I don’t write by schedule. Some days the words flow and some days they don’t. I write a lot more than I post too. The ideas come, sometimes too fast. Sometimes the writing is just for me and not for my readers. Sometimes, the timing is off.
Life should be easy, shouldn’t it? Should we try so hard? Most of the time, I think we shouldn’t. Excellent points, and nice and straight-forward!