Sometimes I find myself staring at my keyboard but, as much as I want to, I don’t write a single word. When that happens, I know that I have fallen prey to the dreaded “writer’s block”.*
Fortunately, I have found the cure. Unfortunately, this cure is like Buckley’s®, it works wonderfully but leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
You see, I’ve found that the only way to cure my block is to write. It doesn’t matter what I write about as long as I write. Sometimes, all I do is to repeat the same word or sentence for a few lines (or pages) and occasionally I will journal about my day in all its boring details.
It’s difficult. I overuse the backspace key and it can take hours to write even a paragraph. But after that first paragraph, comes the second paragraph which takes less time. The third paragraph takes even less time than the second. Before I know it, I’ve written a page.
I’m not saying that what I write is the next classic. Most of the time, when I’m overcoming a block, I find that I’ve written absolute drivel. But I’m ok with that because it means that I wrote something.
*Writer’s Block should not be confused with a stress block. While they are similar and usually occur around the same time, a stress block cannot be cured by forcing yourself to write. The only way I’ve found to overcome a stress block is by finding out the cause of my stress and dealing with it on a base level.
