Stuck again! Words won’t come, or those that do feel forced, wooden and awkward. You’ve lost interest in your article. You feel panicky because your deadline looms. You need suggestions for coping:
• Stop trying. Take a break and do something different — for five minutes, an hour, a day or two—whatever you can manage.
• Move your bones. Take a walk, run around the parking lot, jump rope, go to the gym, ride your bike. Even if you’re on a tight deadline, try to get away from your desk for a few minutes. Writing bogs down when the mind starts floundering around in abstractions. Physical activity grounds you, keeps you focused in the present, and fosters a return to concrete words and images.
• Skip over the part where you got stuck and move on to another section of your work. Stop thinking of writing as a linear process. You can knock off or come in at any point along the way.
• Without referring to your text or notes, write the subject of your stuck point in the center of a page and do a branching exercise around it. The nonlinear aspect of branching may put you in touch with fresh ideas and new avenues of approach to that section of your writing project that has you stuck.
• Pick the stickiest, muddiest aspect of your topic and freewrite about it. If you can’t bear working on your topic, freewrite about anything at all. Keep your pencil moving for at least 10 minutes.
• Talk it out. Hold a conversation about your topic, alone or with somebody else. Speaking out loud helps break through the abstractions that bog down writing.
• Whenever you stop writing, stop in mid-sentence. Having to start off by completing that thought may give you the psychological push you’ll need to get moving again.
• Give yourself permission to trash what you’ve written and start from scratch. Your first thoughts and ideas about the project may have gone stale. Begin with branching and freewriting to see what fresh observations emerge.
• Just before falling asleep at night, tell yourself to wake up knowing how to start or get back into the writing project at hand.
If you find yourself procrastinating:
• Create a routine for writing. Comfortable clothes, cup of favorite tea, same time of day, same location. Think of it as spiritual discipline.
• Alternatively, move out of your rut. If you have the option, take your pen and notebook or your laptop to a café, a riverbank. Buy a funky pen and dub it your magic writing wand.
• Write out your resistance. Begin with: “I don’t want to do this writing project because,” or “I can’t do it, because…” Keep complaining for five minutes. Read what you’ve written out loud. Talk back to yourself as if you were a trusted friend offering advice and counsel.
• Join forces with a buddy. The buddy system works well for quitting smoking and maintaining an exercise program. Why not use it to help you keep faith with your writing? Team up with a friend or co-worker who also faces writing deadlines. Make a pact to meet in the office conference room, the town library, or a local cafe at regular intervals to write or review and edit one another’s work.
• Just do it. Sometimes the old nose-to-the-grindstone method works best. Make a pact with yourself that you will freewrite for, say, 15 minutes on your topic twice a day for five days. If you get a good flow going, keep it up longer. But pick up the pencil or sit down to the keyboard for both sessions without fail. Freewrite without concern for the quality of your work.