Overcoming Writer's Block

All professional writers need to learn how to manage writer's block, so they can work fifty productive hours a week.

Everyone has their own methods of dealing with this problem. I play video games or read. Other writers do creative writing exercises, or visit their e-groups. Still, other writers start a new project. Each person must find their own method of surviving writer's block, but first, they need to understand what it is.

No writer should take writer's block too seriously

This condition plagues all writers. The hardest hit are writers whose inspiration stops in the middle of a work-in-progress. When left untreated, this condition can result in a filing cabinet full of unfinished manuscripts, submissions that are never mailed, or worse, writers who quit.

Writer's block is a problem, and all problems have a solution. The knack to solving this problem is separating the symptoms from the causes.

I do not believe writers actually fear a blank page. What they really fear is their inability to write like a published author would. They doubt their inspiration, ideas, and style. This self-doubt is the problem, not the blank page. If they really feared a blank page, they could fill it with nonsense and solve their problem.

A writing professor once claimed that most authors never finish their work because they love the writer's lifestyle, but do not want the writer's life. It is true that the writer's life is filled with rejection, deadlines, late nights, and tears, but I disagree with this professor. I do not believe the fear of success stops writers. I think self-doubt is the first and biggest roadblock writers must face.

Very few writers consider their physical state of being when addressing the problem of writer's block. It is too easy to blame lack of inspiration for the problem. We all have bad days. Days we spend anticipating the moment we can crash in front of the computer and pour our hearts out. The moment arrives, and a blank screen stares back at us. If we are too tired to do physical work, we are probably too tired to write. I know one author who writes before her children rise in the morning, and does the laundry when she is exhausted at night. Re arranging your schedule so you write when rested, may solve your problems.