The Truth About Writer’s Block: What’s Really Keeping You From Writing

You sit down to write, and nothing comes.

Maybe you stare at the blinking cursor for twenty minutes before closing the document. Maybe you haven’t opened the document at all. Maybe you keep telling yourself that you don’t know what to write, that you’ve run out of ideas, that you’re waiting for something to inspire you.

So, you call it writer’s block.

But what if the problem has very little to do with writing?

I’ve come to believe that writer’s block is often misunderstood because we focus too much on its most obvious symptom: we aren’t writing. We assume that if words aren’t coming, we must have run out of words. If ideas aren’t appearing, we must not have any ideas. If we cannot make ourselves sit down and write, we must lack discipline.

But writing is deeply personal. We do not arrive at the page independently of the lives we are living outside of it. We bring our fears, expectations, resentment, exhaustion, environments, schedules, relationships, insecurities, habits, and ways of seeing the world with us.

Which means that when the writing stops, sometimes the first question shouldn’t be: What should I write?

It should be: What is keeping me from writing?

What Is Writer’s Block, Really?

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes, “Blocks must be acknowledged and dislodged.”

I love the language of that because it suggests that a creative block isn't an absence. Something is there. And if something is there, we have to be willing to look at it.

Writer’s block is often described as an inability to produce new writing or make progress on a piece of work. But I think we do ourselves a disservice when we stop at that definition. The inability to write is the symptom. The block is whatever sits underneath it.

Maybe you’re afraid the writing won’t be good enough. Maybe you’re beginning to realize the book is becoming something different from what you originally imagined, and you’re resisting where it wants to go. Maybe you’ve become preoccupied with publishing, agents, sales, platforms, or whether anyone will care before you’ve even allowed yourself to create.

 Maybe you’re comparing yourself to writers who appear to be producing more than you. Maybe writing has become another place where you measure your worth. Maybe you’re exhausted. Maybe you’re angry. Maybe your life has changed, and your writing practice hasn’t changed with it. (Learn more about how to build a sustainable writing practice here.) Maybe you are asking yourself to write for two uninterrupted hours when your current life can realistically give you twenty minutes. (Learn more about how to set realistic writing goals here.)

None of these are problems with your ability to write. They are problems asking to be acknowledged.

What Causes Writer’s Block?

There is plenty of practical advice for writer’s block: change locations, set a timer, eliminate distractions, freewrite, create a routine. Those things can help. But sometimes we try to solve an internal problem with an external solution.

You can buy the perfect notebook and still be afraid of what you might say inside it. You can clean your desk and still doubt whether you have anything worth saying. You can create a beautiful writing routine that your actual life cannot sustain. You can block off two hours every morning and spend most of those two hours punishing yourself for not being productive enough.

Our lifestyle, environment, mental capacity, and mindset all affect our ability to create. And sometimes what we call writer’s block is actually friction between the writing life we think we should have and the one we are currently capable of living.

Maybe you keep insisting that you need complete silence, but complete silence is rarely available to you. Maybe you believe you need an hour to make writing worthwhile, so you ignore the twenty minutes you actually have.

Maybe you keep waiting to clean the house, answer the emails, finish the work, buy the desk, organize the notes, feel less tired, become more confident, and generally transform into an entirely different human being before you permit yourself to begin.

At some point, we have to stop constructing ideal conditions and start understanding our actual ones. A sustainable writing practice asks: What does writing require from me, and what am I realistically able to give it right now?

That answer will change throughout your life. Your writing practice should be allowed to change with it.

Why Do I Have Writer’s Block?

If the practical conditions are reasonable and you are still avoiding the page, this is where I think we have to go deeper.

• What are you afraid of?

• What are you angry about?

• What are you doubting?

• What has changed?

• What would happen if you actually finished the thing?

• What would happen if it failed?

• And perhaps more frighteningly: what would happen if it succeeded?

Sometimes the resistance surrounding a creative project contains information about the project itself.

Maybe you’ve reached the part of the memoir that asks you to confront something you would rather keep intellectualizing. Maybe your novel is approaching territory that feels uncomfortably close to your own life. Maybe you know the essay wants to say something you aren’t sure you’re ready to admit. Maybe you have begun writing for imagined readers rather than yourself.

Sometimes the block is not saying, I have nothing to say. Sometimes it is saying, I am afraid to say what I actually mean. Those are very different problems, and they require very different solutions.

How to Overcome Writer’s Block Without Waiting for Inspiration

The belief that we should feel inspired before we write is something I believe keeps writers stuck.  We romanticize inspiration as if writers are antennas waiting for some mysterious creative transmission. But inspiration is not particularly interested in your schedule.

Stephen King’s quote: “Amateurs wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and go to work” has circulated for years for good reason. Whether or not we like the harshness of the sentiment, there is something important underneath it. 

You cannot build a writing life around waiting to feel like writing. You have to meet the page often enough that something has the opportunity to happen there.

Some days you will write something beautiful. Some days you will write garbage. Some days you will write three sentences and delete two. The important thing is that you keep creating opportunities for discovery, because inspiration often arrives during the work, not before it.

Sometimes Writing Is Not Writing

Writers need to write, but writers also need to live.

We need to read. Walk. Listen. Wonder. Have conversations. Sit somewhere without reaching for our phones. Watch people. Ask questions. Become curious about things we don’t understand. Notice what irritates us. Notice what moves us. Notice what we cannot stop thinking about. We have to participate in our own lives because writing begins long before the sentence. It begins with attention.

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard writes extensively about seeing. Not merely looking at the world, but learning how to perceive it. At one point, she describes “another kind of seeing that involves a letting go,” a state in which she becomes “transfixed and emptied.”

Elsewhere, she makes an observation that I think every writer should carry with them: unless she deliberately calls her attention to what is passing before her eyes, she simply will not see it. That is the work. A writer cannot move through life half-awake and expect the page to somehow contain everything we failed to notice.

The woman sitting across from you on the train rubbing the pale indentation where a wedding ring used to be. Your father clearing his throat before saying something vulnerable. The grocery list you find in your mother’s handwriting years after she is gone. The strange way afternoon light makes the dust above your kitchen table visible. The sentence two strangers exchange in line at the pharmacy. The feeling that comes over you when you drive through the neighborhood where you grew up and realize the houses somehow look smaller.

None of these things arrive announcing themselves as inspiration. You have to be there. You have to notice. This is why sometimes writing is not writing.

Sometimes writing is walking around your neighborhood without headphones. Sometimes writing is reading something that unsettles you. Sometimes writing is following a question for three days. Sometimes writing is staring out the window. Sometimes writing is listening carefully enough to another person that you notice the thing they did not say. Sometimes writing is allowing yourself to be fully present in a life that will eventually become material.

The writer’s job is not simply to produce. The writer’s job is to pay attention.

How Do You Get Rid of Writer’s Block?

I don’t think we should begin by trying to get rid of it. I think we should interrogate it.

If Cameron is right that blocks must first be acknowledged before they can be dislodged, then perhaps the block itself is useful. It tells us where to look.

Instead of immediately asking How can I force myself to write again?, try asking: What is my inability to write trying to show me?

Maybe the answer will require changing your writing routine. Maybe it will require lowering an impossible expectation. Maybe you need rest. Maybe you need to stop comparing yourself. Maybe you need to admit that you’re terrified. Maybe you need to reconnect with the reason you began this project. Maybe you need to abandon the version of the project you thought you were supposed to write. Or maybe you simply need to leave the desk and become interested in the world again. Regardless of what that “maybe” is, you cannot dislodge a block you refuse to examine.

A Writer’s Block Assessment: Find Out What Is Actually Keeping You Stuck

If you feel blocked, don’t begin by asking yourself what you should write. Take out a notebook and answer these questions instead. Don’t answer them as the writer you wish you were. Answer them according to the life you are actually living. They make great journaling prompts. So, write it out! 

Start with your life.

• What does my current life realistically allow me to give to writing?

• Am I expecting more time, energy, or concentration from myself than I actually have?

• What would a sustainable writing practice look like in this particular season of my life?

• Am I waiting for ideal conditions instead of learning how to write within the conditions I have?

• What is one expectation about my writing practice that I could release?

Then look at your environment.

• What conditions genuinely help me write?

• Which conditions do I think I need before I can write?

• What preparations have become forms of procrastination?

• What is the smallest environment I need to create in order to begin?

Now look beneath the writing.

• When I imagine sitting down with this project, what emotion appears first?

• What am I afraid might happen if I write this honestly?

• What am I afraid might happen if the work is bad?

• What am I afraid might happen if the work is good?

• Whose judgment am I imagining while I write?

• Where am I comparing myself to another writer?

• What part of this project am I resisting?

• Is there something I know this piece needs that I have been unwilling to give it?

Then assess your attention.

• When was the last time something genuinely fascinated me?

• What have I noticed lately that I cannot stop thinking about?

• What conversation has stayed with me?

• What person have I found myself observing?

• What ordinary object has recently carried an unusual amount of meaning?

• What place makes me feel something the moment I enter it?

• What contradiction have I noticed in myself or someone else?

• What question am I currently living without an answer to?

• When was the last time I went somewhere without trying to document, consume, optimize, or accomplish anything?

• What might I notice if I paid closer attention to my life for one week?

Finally, return to the page.

What is the smallest thing I could write today? Not the chapter. Not the essay. Not the book. One image. One memory. One observation. One question. One scene. One sentence. Start there.

Perhaps the truth about writer’s block is that we are asking the wrong question.

We keep asking: Why can’t I write?

When perhaps we should be asking: What needs my attention?

The answer may be your schedule. Your fears. Your expectations. Your exhaustion. Your environment. Your relationship with the work. Or the ordinary life happening around you that you have stopped noticing.

Writing is the work of putting words on the page, but being a writer asks for something larger.

It asks us to look inward enough to recognize what is keeping us from the work, and outward enough to have something worth bringing back to it.

Sometimes writing means sitting down and writing, and sometimes writing means learning how to see again.

Get Help to Get Unstuck

Sometimes we can recognize that something isn’t working and still struggle to see our own way through it.

If you’ve worked through the assessment above and realized you need another perspective, my Advisement Intensive Consultation gives us 90 minutes to sit down together and figure out what’s actually keeping you stuck—and what needs to change to get you moving again.

Maybe you’ve lost direction with your manuscript. Maybe your writing practice no longer fits your life. Maybe you’re overwhelmed by everything you think you should be doing, unsure of your next step, or circling the same creative problem without knowing how to solve it.

You don’t need to arrive with everything figured out. That’s the point.

We’ll look at where you are, what’s getting in the way, and what you need creatively and practically to move forward. You’ll leave with greater clarity and tangible next steps tailored to you, your writing, and the life you’re actually living.

If you’re tired of trying to think your way out of the same creative block alone, let’s work through it together.