Overcoming Writer’s Block 

We’ve all been there.  Whether you’re sweating to come up with a witty one liner for an Instagram caption or writing those dreaded first few sentences of a final paper, regardless of the task at hand, the feeling of your mind going blank when you need the words to come feels all the same: torturous.  Writer’s block comes for us all.    

For many of us, it’s a manifestation of our perfectionism and the pressure to have paragraphs flow out of us fully formed as if already copy-edited by a full writer’s room.  Whatever may be at the root of this “freeze” response, we have some practical tips to help you move forward, one word at a time.  

Tip 1: Skip the introduction.  

Start writing wherever it feels easiest.  Writing doesn’t need to be a linear process. Besides, you don’t even know who the paper/chapter/book will be yet, so how can you know how to introduce it to someone?  You can come back to the introduction at the end of your writing process, which will help you construct a more accurate introduction, anyway. 

Tip 2: Talk to someone about your ideas.  

Ask someone to listen to you talk through your ideas for your writing assignment.  It could be your roommate, your mom, the person trapped in line with you at the post office, anyone who will listen to you for just 5 minutes.  They don’t need to be familiar with the topic, and they don’t even need to listen very closely. The act of trying to communicate your ideas to someone else will force you to attach words to hazy ideas which will bring clarity to budding connections.  

Tip 3: Record yourself in a voice memo talking about your ideas.  

If the idea of talking to someone else about your half-baked ideas makes you want to crawl out of your skin, we get it. Another way to do this is to record yourself talking about the assignment. Then listen back to the recording and take notes as if you are listening to a lecture. As you are taking notes, try to rearrange any facts or arguments to build a more logical flow.  

Tip 4: Every time you sit down to write, force yourself to generate 5-7 sentences.  

A professor (thank you, Dr. Campano!) once gave me this tip and it has stuck with me ever since. Every time I sit down to write, I force myself to get something down, no matter how poorly worded or nonsensical it may feel at the time. The goal is to just get SOMEthing written so that you have a starting point from which to move forward. It always feels better to see a few lines of text rather than to be haunted by the vision of a blank page.  

Yes, writing is hard.  But it’s something we all do all the time in our everyday lives as we compose text messages, emails, and social media captions. Even if it doesn’t feel like it, we are all expert writers, navigating many different contexts of writing. Take heart in this knowledge and if you need to write your essay as if you’re composing it one caption, one text at a time, so be it!  Every word gets you one step closer to completion.