How to Unblock Writer's Block

I’ve come to the conclusion that writer’s block is a heap of shit.

I know a few writers, and if there is anyone in the world capable of coming up with a diagnosis as to why we couldn’t produce something, and articulate that quite eloquently, believe me, it’s us.

Sure, I think we do lose our flow every once in a while. But when I realized I had allowed myself to go four whole months without writing only to blame it on “writer’s block”, I knew my dance with the devil had come to an end.

I had to ask myself, “Why aren’t I really writing?”

I knew I was capable of doing some pretty amazing things with words. People had reached out to me about how deeply some of the things I said resonated with them. That was an awesome feeling. But I hadn’t had that feeling for a long time and I wanted it back.

So I sat and mapped out the next 3 months of my writing. I felt like a Jenny Craig eating coach making meal plans for a client.

That’s when I realized that maybe; writing is just like a meal plan. It certainly requires the discipline to plan and follow it.

I had to look at the target areas. Was I looking to eat less calories? Was I looking for foods that had fibre? Foods that would be good before or after an exercise? In other words, what was the purpose of my writing?

One of the greatest writers I know once said to me, “I write a lot better when I care.” Upon hearing these words, I thought to only write about things I cared deeply for. But when I did an inventory of the things I cared for, I realized the list was quite short, and quite repetitive, phrased differently each time of course.

The thing is, as a writer, whether you write poems, songs, blogs, or books, you’re going to have to get comfortable writing about things you couldn’t care less for. It’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it forces us to write. But it’s a curse because, well, it forces us to write.

I realized that the only way to beat writer’s block is to charge through it like a Spartan.

In the same way that the eating coach’s client would have to be realistic about how frequently they could exercise, we have to be realistic about how frequently we will be able to write. After thinking of school, work, sleep, and all the other not-so-exciting things that transpire in my life, I concluded that I should be able to write and post something at least once a week.

Here are some tips for kicking writer’s block in the gut:

      1. Write in bulk.

Whenever I feel my creative juices flowing through my body straight to my fingertips, I try and write as much as I can. Sometimes, that means writing three posts at once, only publishing one, but being two weeks ahead.

If you’ve got a day off, try and get into the writing zone. This is useful especially if you have a list of topics to write about. Pick the ones that you are most into and start writing.

       2. Don’t make excuses for yourself.

      Do you think a doctor could turn a patient away for the same reasons writers can’t write? Do you think the client’s meal plan will work if they workout but only eat junk?

      Writing is easy but writing is also very difficult. We have to be willing to dedicate time, effort, and consistency to our writing and our audience. Speaking of the audience…

      3. Pay attention to your audience.

When my readers reached out to me to ask why I hadn’t posted in so long, that’s when I realized I wasn’t just writing to write anymore. I was writing to inspire, to connect, and to share my experiences and my insight with people, despite failing to believe it counted for much at times.

Why wasn’t I counting on myself the same way my readers were?

I figured that if I set up a schedule, I could stay a couple posts ahead and publish weekly. This step, of course, isn’t possible without adhering to the first two.

I realized the efficiency of this new tactic today when I realized that this was the third consecutive week in a row I had published a post on a Sunday. While I don’t usually write about well…writing, I thought I would try my hand at it.

At first I felt that the post wouldn’t be appealing to readers who prefer to read and not write, but this kind of thinking is exactly the kind of thinking that doesn’t encourage us to push ourselves. You have to take risks. While I may lose some audience on this one, I might gain an audience of writers. Even better, my audience of readers might try their hand at writing.

So in the end, everything balances itself out.

While writing provides us with a lot of freedom, that freedom, like any freedom, comes with responsibility. And while it can be pretty difficult to get through those droughts where we can barely type emails, let alone a real piece of writing, that is the burn your meant to feel after a really good workout.

Remember: if you keep writing, your readers will keep reading.

Too Picky? Or Too Complacent?

My dad always told me, “Stephanie, you’ll pick and pick until you pick shit.”

It was hard to hear, but certainly provided me with the wake-up call I needed to differentiate my wants from my needs when it came to choosing a partner.

So the other day, when a reader asked me to write a post about how we know when we’re being assertive with our standards or whether we’re just being too picky, I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of it first.

One time, my sister suggested I write a list of everything I could ever want in a partner. Everything. From his background to his bad habits to his interests and his hobbies. Then she suggested I draw a picture of him on the other side of the page. Well aware of my inability to draw, I figured my imagination would suffice. Trust me; I had already seen his face a thousand times over in my head.

During the process of composing my list, I wrote down pretty generic things. I tucked my list into a drawer and kept it there.

Then, a few months ago, perhaps the most thought-provoking and empowering professor I might ever encounter gave an interesting anecdote during a journalism lecture. She discussed her lifestyle choices that made everyone question her sanity; pursuing a higher education, getting married a little later on in life and deciding not to have kids.

She told us about how people always asked her and her husband when they were going to have kids. People would tell her, “You two would have the most beautiful children!” But it wasn’t a part of her agenda.

Keyword: her.

She said that if she cared about what people thought, she would have gotten pregnant and reluctantly had children, only to result in her having a mid-life crisis in a few years’ time because she didn’t stick to her plan. The lesson she wanted us to take was to always differentiate between self-agency and performance.

When I got home, I revised my list. I didn’t want to be with someone who I had to perform for just to be in a relationship with them, and I certainly didn’t want to be with someone who was performing for me.  So I changed “able to hold a conversation” to “able to discuss things that I find important”. I changed “a good listener” to “someone who cares about the things I talk about”. I crossed some of the things off, like “someone with similar cultural interests”. I could live with someone who wouldn’t follow me to a steel pan performance. And after that class, I held on to “someone who wants children around the same time I do”.

Truthfully, there are a lot of things we just can’t live with. And while some of them can sound frivolous to other people, only we know how deeply it will affect us in our relationship. For instance, I couldn’t date someone with a child. I knew I wasn’t ready to for that much responsibility at this point in my life. I also couldn’t live with someone who wasn’t passionate about something, anything! While some people take these things on, I had to accept that I could not.

At this moment, I realized that the only way for me to not follow what my father thought would be my fate was to distinguish between my needs and my wants. Otherwise, I would continue to pick guys I knew were defying my list.

Sometimes, we find ourselves so desperate for companionship that we settle for less than what we deserve, and we stick it out just for the sake of being part of the population with a partner. This is a performance.

But when will we learn that life is not a theater production? We don’t have to act like we don’t have our own agenda, our own plan, and our own list of what we want and need in our partner and what we want and need from our life. But for some reason, we feel the need to, only to disappoint ourselves and wake up in the middle of the night ten years from now wondering where we went wrong.

We go wrong in not listening to ourselves when we make important decisions. Sometimes we feel like we’re being picky because we have yet to meet someone who looks like the human version of our list. We are then faced with a pressing decision: do we change our list, ourselves, or settle?

So the answer to the question of when we’re being too picky is simple. It is to distinguish between your wants and you needs. You have to decide what is and is not a deal-breaker.  

The thing is, you have every right to be selective of what you want in a partner. And yes, you even have the right to be picky. But in being picky, you must also be realistic. When you encounter someone you think you could become romantically involved with, you need to be aware of what could make or break it for you.

Keyword: you.

3 Things You're Gonna Have to Be Honest About in Your New Relationship

At the beginning of a relationship, everyone wants to impress the other person. So we say we can cook with our eyes closed and that yeah, we’re totally interested in that sport. But before you know it, you’re blindfolded in the kitchen or sitting in the bleachers being asked for the run-down of what happened while they were in the washroom.

Thankfully, my ability to see into the future (short distance only) allowed me to see that this is just not the path to take when you’re with someone you intend to be with for a long time. Here are three things you’re just gonna have to be honest about in your relationship.

1. Your past.

Two people meet at certain points of their lives, and if they like each other, they move forward together. Inevitably, there are bound to be a ton of things that happened, whether we like it or not, before our lives crossed paths, at least romantically.

While I can empathize with wanting to erase certain memories, and certainly the people the memories happened with, we have to be honest. I know we probably weren’t thinking that when we agreed to go streaking or do that other crazy thing, but if it made you who you are today, it’s a part of your identity.

So the best thing to do, as I had to learn myself, is to be honest. Don’t put on a façade, don’t under or over-exaggerate things you don’t need to. Be yourself, and if they like you, and definitely if they love you, believe me, they’ll stick around.

2. Your agenda.

The one thing my new relationship taught me is that I do have an agenda. When certain questions came up, I had answers to them. I knew that I wanted to travel after graduating from university, I knew where I wanted to settle down, and I knew that at some point, I wanted to get married and have kids.

As generic as my agenda sounds, these are things that I want to achieve for myself.

Sometimes, relationships bring out the people-pleasing side of us that we grow to hate so much in such a short period of time. The best way to avoid all of that is to let your partner know what you want to accomplish, and when you want to do it. If you don’t, you run the risk of being dragged along on someone else’s journey of life and can miss your stops altogether.

The best thing about you and your partner sharing your agendas is that here, you can begin to plan your life together (cringe). As scary as this might sound, everyone knows that questions about marriage and kids and home-ownership aren’t usually out of mere curiosity. If you had an agenda before this person entered your life; don’t throw it out the window. Hold on to it even tighter.

3. Your habits. Good and bad.

Maybe your room is clean to you, but it might look like chaos to your partner. Is that something that could break you up?

Maybe going out once a week isn’t a lot to you, but your partner might think you’re a party animal. Is that something that could break you up?

One thing I’ve learned is that relationships are relative. This means that what you do doesn’t only affect you anymore, but your partner as well. Plus, our habits offer insight into what our future selves might be like.

Sit down and have a talk with your partner about some of your priorities. They could be anything from smoking to watching that silly reality show every Wednesday. These are things that really might not be a big deal to you or your partner right now but are still important to discuss so that the untouched areas of life don’t rear their ugly heads into your beautiful and blossoming relationship later on down the road.

Besides thinking about what not to lie about, I also thought about why we lie in the first place. Two words came to mind: social media. While it has done a lot for us, it has also worked against us in terms of being accepting and honest. It allows us to hide behind a shield of carefully constructed and edited images, posts, and profiles.

One thing we have to always remember is that there are 7 billion people in the world. That is a lot of people. We shouldn’t have to lie, adjust our truths, or manipulate people into liking us or thinking we are a different version of ourselves. They might not like the real us, but 1, at least 1 of those 7 billion people will.

So while lying is sometimes the easy thing to do; we have to think long-term. Do we really want to create something that might be impossible to fix? But perhaps the most important question to ask is whether we want to be with someone we feel we need to lie to just to get them to be with us.

Hopefully your answer is no.