Breaking Through Writer’s Block
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.
When you’re ready to move forward and work through, Guest Author Jeff Lilly of Druid Journal continues the conversation, from a different perspective, with the following post.
“99% Inspiration, 1% Perspiration: Breaking Through Writer’s Block”
by Jeff Lilly
Oh my gosh, what should I write about??
Almost everyone experiences writer’s block at one time or another, and for some people it’s downright chronic. In my experience, it comes in two forms.
First — the usual kind — you don’t know what to write about. For some people, figuring out a topic for a weekly column or a term paper or dissertation is a huge problem. There’s something related, and almost as bad, that happens to me quite frequently: I get halfway through an article and I am brought up short because I have no idea what to say next. Maybe I’ve laid out some kind of problem or situation, and when I started I thought I knew how to end it, but in the course of writing it, it got off track, and the original plan just won’t work anymore. Or maybe I had a plan, and it should still work, but it doesn’t inspire me anymore, — I can’t think of anything interesting to say about it.
The second kind of writer’s block is also common, but a lot of people have it without realizing it. It’s what happens when your words won’t flow, and you have to work and scratch and scrape and sweat blood over every phrase. You have a topic, it’s an interesting topic, you have interesting things to say about it, but the words just won’t come; it’s like you’re trying to write in a foreign language. The sad thing is that some people write like this almost all the time, thinking that it’s normal; they really think the writing is supposed to be 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Well, it doesn’t have to be. If you learn how, you can make it so that every time you sit down to write, you can start with a fully formed, crisp, clear topic; you can start at the beginning and work your way through the end with a smooth, flowing stream of inspiration to guide you the whole way; and the words will come so easily, so effortlessly, it’s like taking dictation.
What’s the secret?
Automatic Writing
Automatic writing occurs when you act as an open channel for spiritual influences, allowing them to dictate what you are writing. People usually use it as a way of accessing their subconscious, communicating with spirit guides, and the like. What people don’t realize is that you can open a channel to access inspiration for other things as well — fiction and nonfiction, self-help and poetry, book reports and travel writing. Anything you can write, you can write “automatically”, and thereby infuse your writing with inspiration — inspiration in its original sense, injected with Spirit.
Of course, inspiration isn’t free. It comes at a price. It takes effort, it takes practice, and it takes a commitment to writing certain kinds of pieces — honest pieces, powerful pieces, transformative pieces. You can’t call on Spirit to help you write a better grocery list (unless you want your grocery list to be in haiku, or be the blueprint of a radical new life changing diet). What you write has to matter.
If you’re ready for the challenge, here’s what you do.
Step-by-Step Inspiration
1. Set a goal. As with any other kind of intention manifestation, get a picture in your mind, or feeling in your heart, of what you want to achieve with your piece. Or, if you don’t even have a topic, visualize and energize your overall goal for writing in general. Imagine how you’ll feel afterwards — the gratitude and elation of having written a truly inspired work of art. If you have time, cultivate this intention for a week or two, until it’s ripe enough that you’re desperate to start writing.
2. Relax. As you sit down to write, get comfortable, take some deep breaths, and unhinge your mind from attachments, outcomes, and distractions. If you meditate, you know how to do this: you are going into a semi-meditative state. Empty yourself, open yourself up, surrender yourself. If you’re not a habitual meditator, this may take some practice; but anyone can do it. You can also download my free guided meditation and listen to the first ten minutes, in which I guide you through some simple visualizations and relaxation techniques.
3. Gently rest your mind on your topic. Let the words come to you. Usually, I imagine that I can hear the words being spoken, or that I’m seeing them on the page. Sometimes I imagine that I’ve finished the work already, and I’m very pleased with it, and I’m about to read it again to check it for errors. I look forward to reading the words again, to seeing them flow like liquid gold across the page. Then I listen…
4. Get out of the way, and write. The words you see might not be anything like what you expected. Let them be what they’ll be! If you end up writing about something that you didn’t intend at all, that’s okay — you’re probably writing something that’s much more important. Sometimes it’s hard to get out of the way; sometimes your anxiety or preoccupation makes it so that you can barely hear the words. Take it in phrase by phrase, word by word, or syllable by syllable if you have to. I’ve had times where I was so stressed out I could only “hear” a few random syllables of what was going to come next, syllables that made no sense; but when I started trying to figure out what the syllables could mean, I got wrapped up in what I was doing, my anxiety was forgotten, and everything resolved into crystalline prose.
Example 1: Finding a Topic
A couple of months ago I was in the middle of writing a piece on intuition vs. logic when I completely ran out of gas. My goal in the article was to show how peoples’ intuition had been systematically undermined by an over-reliance on science and logic, and people needed to re-connect. The first half of the article was spent building up the point of view of the scientist, showing how intuition was flawed and unreliable. The second half would tear apart that point of view, and show how intuition was reliable after all.
Well, that was the original plan, anyway. But when I got to that part of the article, I realized I hadn’t actually prepared properly; I didn’t know what to say! I had just written:
So what should you believe in? Well, nothing, obviously. Agnosticism — in the broad sense of acknowledging ignorance of EVERYTHING — is the only rational choice.
This was the pivot point of the article. But what could I say? I had no idea. I began to panic… After all, if I couldn’t think of what to say next, maybe the whole point of the article was backwards — maybe intuition was flawed, and only logical agnosticism and skepticism could be a reliable guide…
Then I calmed down, relaxed, set out my intentions, and tuned in. It was hard, because of my emotional panic, but I managed to tune in well enough to hear a couple of syllables. Para. Para. What was that? Paralyze.
What was that? Paralyze. Paranoid. Yes. My own fear was paralyzing me. I was paranoid that I wouldn’t finish the article. I wrote those words, and then I made the connection:
But agnosticism is paralyzing. It’s paralyzing and paranoid. If you know nothing, there are no good choices; all choices are ill-advised; so you are paralyzed into non-action. And doubt leads to fear; because if you don’t know what’s around the next corner, or under the bed, or at the bottom of the dark staircase… you imagine something horrible there.
If you allow doubt to sit by the throne of your soul, then you are reduced to a shadow of what you should be.
The rest of the article flowed out in a torrent, and I got some great responses to it. You can read the whole thing here.
Example 2: Finding a Voice
Earlier this year I was working on a large project, a sort of “Oz Encyclopedia”, in which I’d create encyclopedia entries for the Oz universe, recreating it and adding my own twist, in much the same spirit as the Dune Encyclopedia. (I haven’t worked on it for months, but I intend to go back to it one day…) I was sweating bullets trying to write the entry for the Good Witch of the North, Gayalette. Here’s an excerpt from what I had:
The Ruby Palace stands on the southern slopes of Mt. Edgewater, poised between the high white snows and the rushing Munchkin River below. At dawn, standing on one of the Ruby Palace’s many wide balconies, the sun seems to rise from the riverbed.
The river is wide and fast, though it is only a few miles from its source: the eternal snows of Mt. Edgewater. Hikers to the peak can stand on the precipice of Oz, and feel the deadly hot winds blowing up from the Impassable Waste below. These winds continue throughout the day, melting the snows and birthing the Munchkin River. At night, cool wet winds come up from the Gillikin Country to the south, covering the peak in a new layer of snow.
The Ruby Palace is the home of Gayalette, a powerful sorceress and ruler of the lands roundabout. Whether she is, in fact, the Good Witch of the North is a matter of considerable dispute.
And so forth. I thought this was ok — but totally blah. I felt uninspired when I was writing it, and that came through in the prose.
When I calmed down, relaxed, and plugged in to inspiration, here’s what came out:
The Ruby Palace of Queen Gayelette is a glittering crystal tower, standing tall in the cleft at the top of Mount Qaia, a jeweled dagger stabbed into the top of the mountain. By the light of dawn it looks like a shaft of faceted rose-colored sky.
The guest rooms of the Ruby Palace are perched near the top of the tower, directly underneath the royal audience chamber at its very tip. At sunrise, a guest can steal up into the audience chamber and marvel at the view in all directions. To the west, where a few stars still linger, the forest of the Winged Monkeys spreads out like a rumpled blanket from the feet of the mountain to the edge of vision. To the south, the scattered farms and cots of Gayelette’s subjects dot the purple Gillikin countryside. To the east, the newborn Munchkin River drops in a waterfall and pools at the foot of the mountain, thence winding eastward like a silver snake in the dawn’s light. To the north, the craggy, rifted expanse of the mighty Impassable Waste seems to return the gaze with casual menace.
It’s like a different writer entirely tackled the subject. (Maybe it was!) And believe you me, it was a thousand times easier to write, and infinitely more satisfying.
And this is what writing should be: thrilling, exhilarating, joyful exploration. Don’t believe them when they say writing is hard work! If you’re working hard, you’re trying too hard.
Just relax… And listen.
About Druid Journal
“For the spiritual searcher who feels called or connected to Nature and the Ancient World, my articles and recordings provide spiritual guidance, inspiration, and beauty, by fostering communication, openness, groundedness, and a sense of childlike awe.”
– Jeff Lilly | DruidJournal
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9 Responses to “Breaking Through Writer’s Block”
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I use automatic writing almost exclusively in my work (and in this comment). Inspired by something sparkly, I take off, writing and writing and then… inevitably, I find that I’ve written myself into a corner, gotten off point or gone in a direction I had no intention of going.
That’s when I pull out this process, stolen from some famous writer whose name escapes me: “Murder your darlings.”
No matter how great a little piece of prose may be–if it ain’t working, it has to go. I take out my red pen (or my delete button) and cut and shape and sculpt my little piece of wordcraft until it shines like a freshly Zamboni’d sheet of ice.
This one thing, the willingness to not let my writing become so precious that the message is long to the form, has done more to make me into a “real” writer than any other.
So is knowing that, ultimately, I am always writing the same message anyway: All is well, We are all okay just the way we are, We need only do our best to shine out into the world that which we’ve got… one step at a time.
When I get that message screwed into place, the rest is like ice skating on a freshly Zamboni’d surface–smooth and slippery as glass, easy, breezy… my skate blades slicing along, swish, swish. (And see now, that last graf, really could be cut… it’s pretty but we don’t need it… )
Amy, you’re absolutely right. I feel as if automatic writing provides near-limitless amounts of beautiful sculpting material… And then my job as a writer is to cut away everything that doesn’t look like a horse.
Marvelously said!
I personally love starting in the middle. I can jump right into the thick of what I want to say, make my point … and then worry about crafting an introduction and conclusion.
I try very hard not to edit as I write, but to just allow the words to flow - and then I go back, and just like both Amy and Jeff, cut away a lot of excess!
This was a great article, Jeff!
Blessings,
Andrea
Jeff,
It’s so simple, but it works wonders. I actually read up until half of your post yesterday, then went over to my blog to write something, and just came back here now to finish reading the piece.
The fear that we have nothing valuable to say is often what paralyzes us. It can be hard to punch through that kind of block.
Yes, Vitor–and I think that what makes us feel paralyzed, and what may even make us feel as if we have nothing to say, is the idea that we will be judged for our efforts.That they won’t be good enough or eloquent enough and that, ultimately, that will show everyone (who is this everyone anyway?) that WE arent good or eloquent enough.
It’s that flipping EGO again, that monster of self-consciousness, isn’t it, that makes us hesitate at the blank page?
Thanks, Vitor, Amy, and Andrea, for adding your voices here. It’s amazing how closely the creative process is tied to spiritual inspiration, at least for those of us who write from the heart!
My best articles were done with automatic writing. I don’t edit it as I write it. I usually hand write my articles to begin with then they get edited as I go to the computer. The second copy gets read and edited again before posting it on my blog except for those times when my fingers push the publish button instead of the button I intended to push. Some of my automatic writing articles don’t feel like it was me that did the actual writing. The recent article that I wrote about my mom on her birthday was like that. I knew I needed to write something about her but had no idea what I was going to say or the direction that the article was going to take. The words flowed and I went with it. I liked the end result even though I still wasn’t sure exactly why I wrote it.
Slade, both of these articles on writer’s block have been really helpful. I appreciate the different angle of Jeff’s too. Both are valuable ideas.
All my articles are written (almost) automatically as if somebody else is writing through me. Usually it starts off with a topic idea and a few words. Then, I sit down and it just flows. Sometimes I am compelled from within to write my articles. The thought about writing a particular article would overtake and drive away all other thoughts. Until I sit down and write that down that thought would not let me do anything else.
On those days when nothing comes, I just enjoy the void–that is okay.
Thanks,
-Desika
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