The haggard writer sitting in front of a typewriter, a blank sheet in the paper feed, a wastebasket overflowing with wadded-up paper next to them: It’s one of the great clichés of the writing life. And yet, sooner or later every author finds themselves in this position (sans typewriter perhaps). The experience is so ubiquitous that it may seem strange that there isn’t a standard way to deal with it. If so many people have faced this problem, why don’t we have a solution?
The answer is that writer’s block is not one single phenomenon. In fact it’s a catch-all for a variety of problems that all manifest as an inability to write. Thus, the first step to solving your writer’s block is identifying what’s causing it. I’ve rounded up a few of the most common causes below.
You might be working on the wrong project
If you find yourself stuck in the very early stages of a project, unable to figure out how to translate your ideas onto the page, it might simply be the case that the project doesn’t have as much potential as you originally thought, or that you’re not the right person to write it. Many conceits sound brilliant on paper, but turn out to have fundamental structural or plot-related problems that aren’t apparent until you begin to write. Others just aren’t as compelling in practice as they were in theory. This is the reason you so often see book ideas go viral on Twitter but rarely see them turn into finished products: They sound funny on the surface but focus on characters who actually don’t have that much to do, or worldbuilding conceits that you’d exhaust very quickly. I once had an idea for a fantasy parody were the hero’s mentor fails to die, and the story is a series of increasingly deadly situations that the mentor manages to survive in more and more improbable ways. Funny? Sure. A novel? No.
Sometimes an idea turns out to not have enough material for a full-length novel—it turns out to work best as a short story, or a Tumblr post, or a Photoshopped fake book cover. This can be a big disappointment, but it’s better to acknowledge this up front than to bang your head over how to flesh it out enough to fill 300 pages. My short Frankenstein retelling, “Axolotl,” was originally a novel idea that stalled out 10 years ago. This year I revisited it and realized that this intimate study with only three characters was a ten-page story, not a novel.
And sometimes a story might have genuine potential, but you’re not the right person to tell it, or it’s not the right moment in your life. If you’re attempting a new genre for the first time, you may be discovering that your brain just doesn’t click with mystery, say, or romance. Definitely read some genre-specific craft books to get the hang of it, but if you’re still staring at a blank page, it may be time to accept that not every author is a master of every genre.
You might be working on the wrong scene
There’s an adage that, if you’re bored writing a scene, the reader will be bored reading it and you should cut the scene. This isn’t always true—sometimes you have to write a structurally important scene even if it isn’t the world’s most compelling material—but, if a project was going well until you hit a particular scene and now you’re stuck, it’s always worth examining whether you truly need that scene or whether there might be a way to tell the story without it.
If the difficult scene really is essential, skipping around is an option. I tend not to recommend this strategy for the simple reason that eventually you will finish all the easy parts and then all you’ll have to work on all the difficult parts at once. Rarely do you return to a difficult scene to find that it’s become easier in the intervening time. But if you’ve been at it for days and the scene seems truly intractable, skipping it may be the best choice.
You might need to recharge
A car doesn’t run without gas, and if you’re hitting a wall in the midst of a project that seemed to be going really well, it’s likely that you’ve simply overworked yourself. This is common sense, but it’s easy to forget when you’re in the mist of drafting and you’re making great progress. Get a snack, take a nap, watch some TV, and try again tomorrow.
You might be overly critical of your draft
This is the problem you’re probably facing if you find yourself writing a sentence and then deleting it over and over. First drafts are always rough, but depending on your personality, you may find it more or less difficult to overlook the obvious problems that will need to be fixed later.
Be aware that fast-drafting a messy manuscript and editing it later is only one way to write a book. Some people prefer to work slowly and meticulously, polishing one section before moving on to the next. If that’s your method, there’s no reason to feel bad for not working as quickly as authors who don’t edit as they go. But if you keep reworking the same words without making any progress—especially if fast-drafting is your usual method—you may need to be less critical of your own work.
You might be depressed
While it rarely gets discussed, one of the most common causes of writer’s block is depression. This can be hard to identify because depression has a broad range of symptoms, and creative drought can be one of the first to manifest. So you may find yourself unable to write while still being perfectly able to get out of bed, go to your day job, do work around the house, and so on. It may appear that the creative drought caused the depressive episode (which can also happen) when it was actually just the first symptom.
If you’re trying to fix your depression-triggered writer’s block, you’re asking the wrong question and you’re unlikely to make much progress. Much as it’s not a good idea to run a marathon with the flu, trying to tough it out and keep writing through a depressive episode almost never works, and can cause a cascade of guilt and negative feelings.
The better solution, difficult as it is, is to be gentle with yourself and recognize that you may not be very productive at this moment in your life. Managing your depression with medication or therapy is a wise idea if you can, but your primary motivation should be your own well-being, not your productivity. No treatment can force your creativity to return in the face of depression, and you need to come to terms with that.
The term “writer’s block” is deeply misleading because it implies a single problem with a one-size-fits-all solution. But as you can see, if you’re hitting a dead end in your creative project, there may be a wide variety of explanations, some straightforward and easily solved, some deep and intractable. I hope this post has helped you better understand the reasons you might be facing writer’s block and how to deal with it.