What To Do When You Have Writer's Block: 4 Tools to Keep Writing

Transcripts
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The transcript discusses strategies to combat writer’s block, focusing on four key techniques:

  1. Walk Away: Taking a break from writing can help clear your mind. Stepping away allows you to recharge and not feel defeated, as it’s just a temporary pause, not a sign of giving up.

  2. Yoga: Engaging in yoga can stimulate both the body and mind, encouraging blood flow and enhancing creativity. Simple yoga poses can help alleviate the mental strain associated with writer’s block.

  3. Find a Community: Connecting with fellow writers or a creative community can provide support and inspiration. Sharing experiences and engaging with others can renew motivation and ideas.

  4. Use Prompts: Writing prompts are an effective way to spark creativity when you feel stuck. They can offer new perspectives or directions for your writing, enabling you to explore ideas unrelated to your main project, which could invigorate your creativity.

The speaker encourages the audience to explore these strategies and shares resources for further support, including links to training and community groups.

Today I’m going to be talking about a question that I see out in the wild a whole lot: What do I do if I have writer’s block?

It’s a big question. It’s an important question, and it’s something that a lot of people are wondering. It’s something that I have a little bit of experience with. So today we’re gonna talk about four things that you can try when you have writer’s block. We’re talking about in-the-moment writer’s block—when you’re working on something, it’s going well, you’re in the middle of a project or maybe in the middle of National Novel Writing Month, and you can’t think of anything to write. You can’t figure out how to get to the next point or what you want to say or do next. We’re talking about in-the-trenches writer’s block. What can you do? Four things.

First, walk away. Yep, I’m serious. Walk away! You’re not giving up. Trust me. Keep that in mind—you’re not giving up here; you’re just taking a break. You sit at your desk, try to bang your head against the desk, or sit and stare at the screen, and nothing is happening. That’s not going to help. Walk away. Go do something that doesn’t have anything to do with your writing.

And I don’t mean watch TV or social media. Don’t go scroll TikTok for a couple of hours. You could go to my YouTube channel and watch a few videos; that might be helpful! But something like a walk, doing the dishes, taking a shower, or cleaning—these activities don’t distract your mind; they just give it a break.

So the first thing you can try when you have writer’s block is to walk away.

The next thing you can try when you have writer’s block: yoga. Yes, it might seem a little unconventional, and I can hear you right now—you might be saying, “But I can’t do yoga! I don’t know how to do yoga! I’m not flexible enough to do yoga!” Trust me, I’ve heard it all, and you can! Yoga can be simple, and it can be really, really productive when it comes to your writing. (Not the word I was looking for; maybe I should do yoga!)

It can really help. Yoga gets the brain and the body moving. It helps rush blood to the brain. So imagine you’re just sitting here for hours on end trying to think of something. This is not going to help; you’re not getting blood flowing to the brain. Get up, get moving! You might even do a forward fold, or you can stand in mountain pose. You can find all these poses on my channel, by the way; I’ll link them in the comments.

That gets the blood flowing. It gets your body moving; it gets the creative energy moving. So yoga can be a really useful tool when it comes to fighting writer’s block.

The next tool: find a community. Find your people. Find another writer or a writing partner—someone who can relate to your struggles, someone you can bounce ideas off of—someone who knows what you’re going through. Being part of a creative community is a great way to fight writer’s block in the moment and before it starts. Being around other creative people can really inspire your brain and get you excited to work on your own projects.

So go to your creative group if you have one—online, an online community, or a real community. Go to it! However you access it, in person or online, just read past conversations or engage in a conversation. Trust me, talking to people who understand what you’re going through will help.

Find a community; find a writing partner if a community feels a little overwhelming to you. You can find that community on Facebook in the Creative Warriors group. I will link that in the comments as well. There’s already a community of people on Facebook waiting to help you fight for your creativity.

The fourth tool and the final tool for this video: prompts! Prompts are amazing tools when it comes to dealing with writer’s block. Are you stuck for an idea? Use a prompt! If you have an idea but you don’t know where you want it to go next, use a prompt! Prompts can inspire new ideas. They can help you think of things that you might not have thought of before. They can give you a new perspective.

So if you’re in the middle of a sci-fi story that you’re working on and you do a prompt that’s romance-inspired, maybe that gives you ideas for your character that don’t have to do with sci-fi. Maybe that helps you write a bit of dialogue between two characters, and that bit of dialogue moves you forward to the next scene.

So prompts don’t have to start a new project, and they don’t have to have anything to do with what you’re working on. In fact, it might help inspire you even more if they don’t. So prompts are the fourth tool that you can use when you have writer’s block. You can find a ton of prompts right here on this channel.

I have a writing sprint—25-minute writing sprint with prompts included. You can just push play, and you have a 25-minute writing sprint built into the video. You can see the prompt on the screen, and you can just write for 25 minutes. Trust me, 25 minutes when you’re feeling overwhelmed is great. It’s just a little chunk of time that can help you move forward and hopefully get out of writer’s block.

So, ladies and gentlemen, my dear warriors, those are four tools that you can use when you’re asking yourself, “What do I do when I have writer’s block?” I’ve got you covered, and you can get all the resources in the comments.

If you found this video helpful, please subscribe, like, and comment if you use any of these tools and they help. Or do you have another tool that you use for writer’s block? I would love to hear it! Throw it in the comments for myself and the Creative Warrior community.

Also in the comments below, you can find a link to my free training, “How to Fight Writer’s Block: The Four Tools of a Creative Warrior.” We will talk more in-depth about some of the tools we discussed today, as well as some other ones that we didn’t cover, so you can get the free link to that training in the comments.

Thank you so much! Now, go fight for your creativity!

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