Category: Inlet Inspiration

Writer’s block can feel personal—as if your writing is giving you the cold shoulder, because you deserve it, you bad writer you. Sound silly? Good. Because you don’t have to take a block so seriously. Sometimes taking it too seriously is part of the problem.

So call it what it is: a block in your thinking. That’s all it is. It may be a fear, a resistance—one that’s been there for a while or popped up yesterday. Either way, that block is a mindset barrier that can be cleared. Use these three steps to work through it:

• First, identify what’s in the way.
• Second, lower your standards.
• Third, dredge a channel for your craft.

Identify, lower, dredge. These three steps to channel-clearing mimic the literal act of dredging a waterway, so the flow can go back to normal—or even better than normal—and everything can move freely again.

Here’s a good visualization you can use to get a feel for it: Imagine you’re a dredge-boat captain. You set your craft upon stagnant waters, identify what’s in the way, then go low. Yes, you’re scraping the muck where the bottom feeders lie. That’s how you remove silt and sediment and break the block.

And as you dredge and scrape away, grabbing the gunk, whatever and wherever it is, accepting it for what it is, the flow increases. The channel may even expand and widen.

Then, as you feel that flow moving again, you no longer need to collect the muck. Your priorities shift again.

In that increased flow, find new depths.

Go from freeing the channel from gunk and shallow waters, to deepening the waterway.

Hemingway might say that on your way to those depths, you’re working for what he calls that “one true sentence.” Or it may be one word, then one true phrase, leading to a sentence that brings you to your story’s (or poem’s) true source–and the form it needs to take on the page.

That probably sounds familiar. Even intuitive. Though I’m setting out a step-by-step pattern, I’m not revealing anything new—all I’m doing is bringing your attention to what you already know, and already do.

This is you, shoring up your thoughts, going with that familiar feeling of sorting through the bad material and finding good material, moving through thoughts that slosh about as you write, and again, zeroing in on the good stuff, and this flow of movement.

A part of you knows, in the tips of your fingers on the keyboard, in the synapses of your brain: I’ve been here before. And I know how to test the waters to find that one true word, phrase, or sentence, and use it to go deeper, get to the true source, and clarify my concept. And I can do it again.

The blocks just trick you into thinking you can’t do it again. They may have different names, and come in different shapes and sizes, but they’re blocks just the same.

Just keep working through it, as you’ve done before. Every time you hit a block, follow this pattern of thinking, this process, and you clear a channel for your craft.

Restart, and adjust the flow of your thinking: identify, lower, dredge—then the deepening.

Are you rusty? Maybe it’s been a few days, a few weeks, heck, a few months (dare I say, years?) since you’ve written. And you’ve returned to the keyboard, but something feels funny. You place each index finger, respectively, over the trusty “f” and “j,” then the rest of your digits follow, but settle uneasily. You’re not quite sure you can push down all the way.

Has your keyboard calcified into stone? No, it has not.

But can you really do it? Push through any built-up problems? Return to write something good again? Yes, you can.

You can write even if you’re rusty–or blocked. I’ve done it. My students have done it. My writing friends have done it. Pulitzer Prize winning writers have done it. And you can do it too.

Writers, unlike musicians or dancers, don’t need to literally recondition their muscles for weeks and months to get their technique back. For us, it just takes a little time, and a little attention, to work out the kinks and clear the gunk. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes.

Over the next few weeks, I’m offering a series on the Writers’ Inlet newsletter on how to bust through rust and break through writer’s blocks.

By the end of this series, you’ll have a set of block-buster techniques that will help you clear just about any blockage that stands between you and your muse. Plus, I’ll post each step on www.writersinlet.com, so you can return to review each, and use these block-buster steps to get back to the page any time you feel hindered by a writing practice that’s been out of use.

These tips will help you whenever a blockage starts to build up—or, let’s face it, even after residue has built up over a while.

After you break those blocks I can’t guarantee you’ll go on to write a blockbuster, but you’ll be better able to tap back into the wellspring and reenter that good old flow the way you’ve done before, and will do again. My hope is that your writing will even become more purposeful and focused once you work your way through the steps.

So let’s get started.

Step one: Identify the problem.

When Tin Man needed a little help from Dorothy to get his joints moving after the forest rains did him in, the first thing Dorothy did was oil the rusty hinge of his jaw. Why? He mumbled a directive: Oil can. Mouth.

He needed to open his mouth articulate what was wrong, and what he needed to loosen up next.

Unlike the Tin Man, you don’t need Dorothy. You can do this for yourself.

Ask yourself, what’s got me stuck? Articulate it—or more than one “it.”

If you have a hard time identifying it, look closer. It’s right there, between your fingertips and the keyboard. Name it.

For many folks, it’s fear of failure, or judgement. In the form of self-doubt or jealousy or an attachment to certainly expectations.

Or it may be distraction—spring’s ants in your pants. The dish pile. The never-ending stories in your Netflix queue.

It might be a big life issue—a top fiver: stress of losing a job, loved one, a home (moving), a relationship, your health (or a loved one’s health issues).

Or other life pressures—the kids, the dog, the drip from the ceiling, the call from your long-lost aunt.

It could be the doldrums of the pandemic, or other inner angst that has nothing to do with writing itself. Old patterns like that lurk and murk of depression. That bugaboo of ADD.

You may be transitioning writing phases, from first draft to deep revision. From research, back to the page. And you’re having a hard time getting back into that pen-to-page flow you know and love. The wellspring seems to have dried up in the interim, and you’re anxious about getting it started again.

Or, let’s be honest. Maybe you just don’t feel like it.

Being honest—that’s a big part of this first step.

Now that you’ve identified the problem, what’s next?

Over the next few weeks we’ll discuss ways to ease back into writing when it resists. As Wallace Stevens once said, the best poems resist the intelligence, almost successfully.

The worst parts of your writing practice may try to resist your entreaties to return—almost successfully. But you won’t let those voices be successful. It’s all a matter of mindset.

Have you ever prepared to go swimming, and stood before the water, weighing your two options: ease in or just jump right in? The block-buster steps offer ways to ease. But you can skip all of them at any time.

You know what you really need to do. You go to the diving board, or the raft in the middle of the lake, or the rope swing tied to the tree along the river. You acknowledge the resistance to the chill of the water, then look at the flow of what’s before you, what you really want to be part of, the glinting possibilities undulating before you, and you jump right back in.