I was faced with severe writers block for this blog - I usually write once every weekday, but the last two weeks were running entirely on old topics that had piled up. No new ideas at all. I’d already conceded Monday, Thursday’s article didn’t feel quite right, and Friday it was over - brain running on empty.
And nothing was coming - I spent almost the entire weekend fretting about “what to write next”. I read books, desperate for a good idea. I surfed the web. Anything to get an inspiration. After all, my goal is to write an interesting blog that gets lots of visitors - and not writing is directly correlated with lower visitor stats.
Well, Sunday afternoon I gave up. I decided that I’d just have to face it - I had nothing to say. While it’s a scary thing to have nothing to say, I finally realized it’s not the end of the world, either. So I figured simply wouldn’t write anything until I finally had a good idea. And I wouldn’t actively hunt for a good idea, either - I had been trying that for over a week, and the good idea kept eluding me.
Many of you will probably guess what happened next: Within fifteen minutes, I had three new ideas what to write about. It was a very zen experience - “your goal will only be revealed when you stop seeking”. It was certainly an interesting lesson to learn.
What does that mean for you, though? If you like writing, like me, it might help you overcome the fear of writers block. If you let go, ideas will come. And if they don’t, you’ve got nothing to say at that moment - why should you write? So allow yourself not to write - sooner or later, there will be something new you have to say.
In case you’re just an innocent bystander who happens to read my musings, the most direct impact this has is that my writing schedule will be a bit more irregular. If there’s nothing new showing up in your RSS reader or your web browser, I’m not dead - I just don’t have anything that moves me to write.
Tags: writing, writers block, let it go