A Guide to Writer’s Block
Writer’s block is a huge buzzword (more like a phrase, but you get my meaning) in the writing community.
We think it’s something that happens to us. Something we have to try and claw our way out of.
But what if there was a simple way to overcome “writer’s block” in less than 5 minutes?
What if writer’s block came down to one thought—one sentence—we didn’t even know was happening in our brain?
Is your mind blown yet? No? Well, buckle up.
Here’s the first thing I want you to wrap your mind around: your book, and in fact ALL circumstances are neutral.
Meaning, it’s just something that exists in the world. It’s not good or bad. The meaning (thoughts) we give to things are what make them good or bad in our minds.
Your brain is going to want to argue with this. “But X is bad!” “But Y leaves devastation in its wake!”
But the truth is, everyone has different thoughts and feelings about things.
So, since we’re writers, let’s take your current book as an example.
I’m guessing you clicked on this post because you’ve dealt with writer’s block a time or two. You sat down to write and came up with…nothing. You thought, “My brain is empty.”
It’s. Not.
Your brain is crazy beautiful, crazy creative, and crazy smart. You’re a writer, which means you’ve got incredible stories in your brain. And it’s NOT blocked. It’s not empty.
Here’s what’s actually happening:
Remember when I said that circumstances are neutral? Your book is one of those neutral circumstances.
One writer might sit down to write and easily type 2,000 words.
Another writer might do the same thing—meaning face the exact same NEUTRAL circumstance (sitting down to write)—and crank out maybe 150 words. Slowly and painfully.
So what gives? What’s the differing factor between these two examples?
The difference is their thoughts.
The thing is, we have thousands of thoughts each day. We can’t possibly be acutely aware of every single one. Our brain is designed to work efficiently, which means filtering out the thoughts it doesn’t think we need to be consciously aware of in the moment.
So next time you sit down to write (if you fall in the writer’s block camp, or even if you don’t—it’s always helpful to get intel on our brain, which is what you’re about to do), here’s what you can do:
Figure out how you’re feeling OR what you’re thinking.
The thing is, either one of these pieces of information (your current thought or your current emotion) is extremely helpful. Because all humans work the same.We confront a neutral CIRCUMSTANCE.
We have a THOUGHT about that circumstance.
We experience a FEELING created by that thought
We take ACTION based on how we feel.
We create RESULTS from the actions we take.
What this means is when we figure out exactly how we’re feeling or what we’re thinking, we can plug it into something called the Model.
The Model is a coaching technique developed by Brooke Castillo. It is what I was taught by my coach and what I use in my own day-to-day life and teaching.
So, as an example of what I’m talking about, what happened when I applied the Model to my writer’s block? Glad you asked.
Example of the Model applied to Writer’s Block
For several weeks, I was dealing with what I would have called “writer’s block.” It wasn’t even that I didn’t know what to write, it was that I did not want to write.
Every time I sat down to work on my book, I shut down. I felt stuck. I didn’t want to do it. It felt bad. So I got up and told myself, “My brain must just need a break. I’m sure I’ll get the desire back eventually. I’ll start writing again once I do.” And let myself off the hook.
But then one day, I realized I had yet to apply the Model to this experience. So I did! Here’s what I found.
At first, all I could identify was my thought: I felt stuck and anxious.
I knew that a thought (or maybe several thoughts) ALWAYS creates whatever you’re feeling. Always. Nope! Let me stop you right there before you try to argue. Always.
So I had to ask myself, “What thought am I having about this circumstance (my book) that is making me feel anxious?”
Here’s what it was. The thought was “I’m too close to success.”
And boom, it all made sense. That one single thought slid into place like a perfect puzzle piece.
This was an unconscious thought I realized I had been having for YEARS. Every time I had begun working on a project, this thought crept in. But I had never taken the time to identify it, so it just did its work behind the scenes.
For example, I applied this thought to another RESULT I had created a few years previously:
CIRCUMSTANCE: My health coaching business (yes, I was a health coach for a few years)
THOUGHT: I’m too close to success.
FEELING: Anxious
ACTION: Avoid working on my business or reaching out to people. Take down blog posts and offers to work with me from my website. Etc.
RESULT: No health coaching business (I shut it down)
I wasn’t about to let the same thing happen with my book!
Here’s the Model I was able to plug in once I identified the FEELING and then the THOUGHT.
CIRCUMSTANCE: My book
THOUGHT: I’m too close to success.
FEELING: Anxious
ACTION: Avoid writing, or in some cases, force myself to write, even just one sentence. If I hit my goal of 500 words in a day, it was excruciating, like I was dragging every word out of my brain kicking and screaming.
RESULT: No finished book or a finished book a long way down the road that is not my best work (because I was in resistance every time I worked on it).
That is the result I was headed toward. If I never write, I never finish my book. Or if I write in resistance, I finish a so-so book that takes a long time to complete because I continue the pattern of avoidance when I hit my “writer’s block.”
So what? So I figured out I was having an unhelpful thought that was causing me to avoid writing. What next?
I created a new intentional Model. Here’s what it looked like.
CIRCUMSTANCE: My book
Intentional THOUGHT: I am close to success. (See what I did there? I only removed one word, but it changed the way this thought made me feel.)
FEELING: Excitement. (The reason I chose the thought above, was because of an association I had made several years ago. I once heard that fear/anxiety are very closely related to the way excitement feels in your body. So I wanted to choose a thought that felt exciting. Something I could easily jump over to from the anxiousness.)
ACTION: Write every day with joy and excitement.
RESULT: My best book.
One simple change in one single thought.
After I did this, I pulled my book up on my computer. At first, my brain wanted to revert to its original thought. I didn’t want to write. But then I consciously focused my attention my new thought and let myself feel the excitement it created in my body.
And instantly I was able to start writing—and writing joyfully—again.
A few notes:
Sometimes there may be more than one thought going on.
It might be helpful to write down every thought about your book that pops into your mind or to fill in more than one Model.
But as soon as you are able to choose a Model (a thought) where you can actually physically feel the feeling your intentional thought is creating, I promise you will suddenly be over your writer’s block.
Yes, it can be that simple. It doesn’t mean you’ll never have to repeat the process, but it does mean you’ll have a tool you can use over and over so that you can put the joy and passion back into your writing. And so you can finally finish your book.
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Resources:
The Model
To understand what’s happening in your brain, sometimes you have to start in different places. Those places might be:
The circumstance that’s triggering your writer’s block (for example, your novel)
The thought you’re having about that circumstance (for example, “I don’t know what to write”)
The feeling that thought is creating (for example, uncertainty or feeling like a fraud)
The action that feeling is causing you to take (for example, not writing or writing in a way that is joyless and slow-going)
To figure out what’s going on in your brain and consciously choose a different thought, you need to lay it all out in front of you.
Here’s the model you’ll write for yourself:
Circumstance:
Thought:
Feeling:
Action:
Result: (the result you’ll achieve from taking that action - whether now or in the future)
The fastest way to write a strong story is with an effective outline that plots your novel’s beating heart.
In Outline Your Novel, you’ll learn exactly what these beats are, why they matter, and how to outline them effectively to make your story sing.
