Sometimes, even for the best writers, writing feels more difficult than it should be. For people who don’t enjoy writing, just the very thought of writing is punishment enough at times. You hit what feels like an impossible hurdle (criticism from someone else, self-criticism or self-censorship, etc.) in the process of writing, and you go airborne for a few seconds, struggling to get yourself back into the writing groove. But instead, you end up landing hard, with all the mental wind knocked out of you. After something like that, it’s hard to feel like ever writing again.
I’ve hit walls in my own writing plenty of times. Sometimes, it was while struggling to complete/excrete a term paper in college (“excrete” is what it feels like to try to compose a 10-page paper from scratch 2 nights before it’s due). Other times, it’s been in my own creative writing or personal writings–some days, it just doesn’t pay to open Microsoft Word, because all I do is sit there, type a bit, Backspace it all, type some more, highlight and hit Backspace again, etc. It’s not fun to feel like you just flat can’t write.
But, as with all obstacles, there are ways around this feeling. Here are the ways I’ve developed over the years to getting back on the writing horse and trying again:
If You’ve Produced Something Terrible, Don’t Erase It
The worst thing you can do, when you start thinking how much your writing resembles something in a communal toilet, is to flush it away. Cut and paste it into another file and save it for later, maybe, but don’t just Backspace a whole page (or delete a whole file) of your hard work.
Even if you don’t feel like dealing with it right then, saving it as a separate file for later will help you remember to go back to it when you have more mental energy, when you have more time, etc. If you delete it completely, you’re likely to completely forget about it, possibly losing a great diamond in the rough sands of your life.
This is what I do when I’ve come up with a blog post that I suddenly REALLY don’t want to post anymore. I don’t completely delete it, but I save it in a new file and start writing on a different post. (I’ve got one file saved as “rant rant rant,” where I went kinda batpoo crazy on a topic and decided it wasn’t right for that particular article. I don’t know what I’m going to use “rant rant rant” for, but at least it’s there, lying like a fabric remnant in a dressmaker’s closet, ready to be used whenever I’m ready to go back to it.
If Your Writing Is Just “Off” Today, Stop for Today
Some days, even if you love writing like I do, you just aren’t feeling the “writing bug.” When you start to type the same sentence 5 times and end up Backspacing it, or you just stare at a blank page or screen and feel like SOMETHING wants to come out, but you’re not sure what, you need to stop for the day. I’m not saying stop for a lifetime–no, no, never stop trying to write permanently–but just take a break from it for the rest of the day, whether that’s a few hours or almost a full day.
This would happen a lot to me during college, when I would struggle to write papers–I just wasn’t feeling up to being the super-critical English major that day and the subject matter just felt too difficult to tackle. So I’d save what I had been working on and would go read instead, or get out of my dorm room and walk around some, or call a good friend and talk about it. Taking time away from the heavy task I was working with helped me get more relaxed and feel like I could write anything again, instead of feeling like there was some gremlin sitting on my shoulder who was critiquing everything I wrote as I wrote it.
Talking to others, reading, doing a little Internet searching or surfing, etc., can also give you new ideas on how to put together your written thoughts. It may be that the random comment your friend made about the book you’re giving a report on jogs your thinking: “Yeah, that IS a weird detail that the author put in…wonder what it means?” Then, suddenly, you may have a totally new direction for your paper.
If You Don’t Know Much about Your Topic, Learn About It
Yes, I know, seems kind of elementary. But you wouldn’t believe the number of times I had to coax my middle school students into writing about something they didn’t know about. They kept whining, “But I don’t KNOW anything about this!” My answer was always, “Then find something out about it. We’re in the library for a purpose, after all.” 😛
No matter what you’re writing about, whether it be search engine optimization or the Post-Colonial period, fractal geometry or painters in Florence during the Renaissance, if you know little or nothing about the topic, then research is your best friend in the world. I’ve written about research as a great tool for bloggers who want to write new and interesting content, but it also works for college papers, creative writing, letters to the editor, workplace presentations–everything. There’s nothing worse for your career, for instance, than looking plain ignorant in front of your boss and coworkers because you didn’t do your research.
Now, your research does not have to be done on those irritating formatted index cards. (God, I HATED handwriting all my research on index cards in school! So annoying and time-consuming–it made research feel like a special place in hell reserved just for me.) Remember, your research is likely going to be more internet-based, so just doing a thorough search of Google (i.e., not just the first page) could help you. Check out every link that seems like it relates to your topic, make sure the site is reputable (not just a blog-ish site created by a content robot), and then copy-paste the URL into a file to refer back to later as you write. Scanning through the content can also provide you a bit of preliminary information as well.
You can always go to the library or talk to a knowledgeable friend or family member about your topic, as well. Taking time to learn more about your topic is not just for school projects, but for anything you encounter while trying to write about a particular subject that you don’t fully understand.
For instance, I don’t know very much about the Tea Party political movement in modern America, except to know that if I saw a Tea Party parade coming down the street, I would likely soil myself and run in the other direction. However, I can learn more about the movement by research, and thus be much more informed when I hear about “Tea Party candidates” in the news, etc. Then, I can write more informed blog posts, and the Internet always benefits from more informed writers rather than more passionate writers.
If You Hate Writing, Write How You Talk
Maybe just a sentence or two, about something you have a strong opinion of. Maybe a paragraph on your Facebook status, indicating exactly what you’re going through physically and emotionally while waiting for a medical test result to come back. If you hate written communication, start by writing how you talk–write out what you would normally talk about, and focus on subject matter that you really care about.
At this point, if you’re very uncomfortable with the writing process, don’t let fears of bad grammar, spelling, or sentence structure weigh you down. Just WRITE what is in your head, in your heart. And if there’s nothing more in your head or heart after a few sentences, you’re finished, and you can move on to the next topic you want to talk–pardon me, write–about. Write for the feel of the pen moving across paper, communicating your thoughts, or the feel of the keys yielding under your striking fingers. Write for the sheer pleasure of telling your world what you think about something you really care about.
Now, if you’re still just horribly stuck and feel like you just CAN’T write, I have a story for you:
I had a young student in one of my classes who was what we would call a “screw-off,” a class-clown type who was more interested in disrupting the class and ticking off other people. But by the way he spoke in class (when he wasn’t smarting off to me, and even when he was sometimes), I knew he was a smart kid. He just didn’t respect school, didn’t care about it, and writing for class was about #90003 on his list of things to achieve in life.
One day, we read a short story in class, and I asked the kids to write at least five sentences (a full paragraph) about what they had read. I told them to answer five questions, one in each sentence:
- Who is the character you like the most?
- Why do you like this character?
- Does the character act in an understandable way throughout the story?
- How does the story show this character’s motivation?
- Do you think the author likes this character?
With each question, I was asking the kids to dive below the surface story and come up with some deeper answers about the story’s construction, the author’s possible purpose, etc. I wanted them to connect with the story as critical readers rather than passive readers. But the young man in question was more interested in tearing up blank notebook paper into itty-bitty pieces to craft into spitballs.
“Why are you not doing your work?” I asked–I glanced at his paper and saw that he had written “I Don’t Know” as the answer to each of the questions.
“‘Cause I’m done,” he replied, with an attitude.
“Nope, you’re not done,” I said. “‘I don’t know’ is not an answer, because you read the story–you DO know something. You’re a smart kid, you know?” He huffed and brushed his half-made spitball aside.
“You heard the story,” I said, trying a different tack. “Which character did you like?”
“Didn’t like any of ’em,” he said, laying his head down on his arms and muffling his voice.
“You sure? There wasn’t one that you understood the most–you could relate to what they were going through?”
“Pssh,” he replied. “Not any of the good guys, anyway.”
That left one character. “You liked the bad guy?” I asked, keeping any judgmental emotion out of my voice so he would feel free to express his opinion.
“Yeah, he was all right,” the young boy said. “The good guys treated him like crap and he was just gettin’ back at ’em.”
Gently, I pushed the paper of questions under his elbow. “Sounds like you have answers to questions 1, 2, and 3,” I suggested.
“Huh?” He raised his head slightly, looking at me for the first time. “Naw, that’s just opinions. I ain’t got answers.”
“In literature class, opinions are answers, if you can show me how you formed your opinion,” I nudged. “Write down what you just told me, in complete sentences. You remember how we do complete sentences?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he replied, waving away the rest of my advice. I watched the pencil tip and then the eraser dance in mid-air as he erased furiously and then wrote down actual sentences. “There, is them answers?” he asked, showing me the paper.
“Yes,” I said, nodding–indeed, questions 1, 2, and 3 had answers. “Remember, question 1’s answer needs to be a complete sentence, though. Rephrase the question as a statement: ‘I liked [villain’s name]’ instead of just the character’s name by itself.”
“Oh, okay.” For being such a reluctant student, he knew enough about what to do–he took the paper back from me, erased, and wrote again.
“Good,” I said. For question 3, I was impressed by the depth and empathy of his response: “[villain’s name] was just trying to live his life, and the good guys busted in and acted like he was living wrong. They made him feel bad, so he got back at ’em. I woulda done the same thing if I was poor like him.”
“Now, how did you know that [villain’s name] was poor?” I asked him. Now that he had answered 3 of 5 questions, he seemed to have perked up a little, though he was still toying with a tiny ball of paper in his left hand.
“Well, it had all that stuff in it about his raggedy clothes and stuff,” he replied, as if it was obvious. It was obvious, but I wanted him to see that he had more answers than he thought.
“And who told you about the raggedy clothes?” I asked.
He thought, and then looked embarrassed. “Oh, yeah, the author put it in there.”
“You’re right, the author describes how torn and dirty his clothes are,” I affirmed. “Doesn’t that sound like an answer to question 4?”
He glanced back at the paper. “Motivation? I don’t even know what that means.”
I reminded myself to break down definitions of words more carefully in the future. “Motivation means ‘why you do something.’ If you do something like steal, like this boy did in the story, you have to have a reason why you did it–a motivation to do it. Why did he steal?”
“Because he was poor.”
“You’re right,” I said, nodding. “Being poor was his motivation to steal, because…why?”
“Because he ain’t had nothin’.”
“Good, you got right to it; he didn’t have anything and needed things to live on,” I said, subtly correcting his sentence as I went. “And the author shows us that through describing his clothes, not just coming right out and saying ‘this bad guy is poor.’ Write down what you just told me,” I said again, giving him back the paper.
This time, he did this with a bit more energy and a complete sentence just like the first three answers; it seemed he was getting the hang of it. “Want to try question 5 by yourself?” I asked–it, like question 3, required depth and empathy to respond. He nodded, and the pencil eraser danced again, a merry fox-trot pattern in pink rubber.
I looked at his response: “No, I don’t think he likes him much. Maybe he feels sorry for him, but he don’t like him. He’s still the bad guy in the story.”
The young boy had struck right to the heart of the issue: the author tells a story about good guys and bad guys, but the good guys have the flaw of being too prideful and scornful, and the bad guy is worthy of pity and compassion. I disagreed with the young boy–I thought the author actually liked the bad guy best of all–but I understood where he had gotten his answer. After all, the author still classified the villain as a villain, even if he meant him to be a pitiable character rather than a character worthy of hate.
“You’ve done very well,” I praised quietly. “Look at this–you wrote even more than 5 sentences! Good job!” I grinned at him. “And you said ‘you didn’t know.'”
“Well, I didn’t think I knew,” the boy replied, finally laughing, and I got up from my position at his desk and returned to managing the classroom as a whole, with his completed assignment finally in tow.
Now, while that story was pretty long, it shows how you have to sometimes draw the answers and the subject matter out of yourself, especially if you hate writing or feel uncomfortable with it. Sometimes, you have to play the teacher as well as the student, asking yourself the questions and generating your own responses.
Some good questions to ask yourself when you’re beginning to write:
- Who else is an important part of this story?
- What are the facts that someone else would need to know?
- Where can I put in details about my experience (sensory details, emotional details)?
- Why should I write about this?
Knowing your characters, facts, details, and purpose for writing is key to communicating through writing, as well as speaking. These four parts are the heart of writing. Remembering this can keep you from feeling like you have nothing to write, because you most certainly do!
If You Keep Failing, Keep Trying
I do my best to write something, ANYTHING, creative every day. These blog posts count, because I’m having to create the content usually from scratch. My novel counts, because it’s definitely fiction. Random bits of poetry I come up with while driving counts (but I don’t write it while driving, for obvious reasons). Even the stories I write just for my own enjoyment, my own LOLs, count. Anything I can do to keep the writing juices going, I do. Generating writing, whatever it is, no matter what quality it is, is key.
If you don’t write a lot, it can feel like everything you produce is junk for a while. And sometimes you may have a “junk day” or a “junk week.” Heck, last month was “junk month” for my novel–couldn’t seem to write anything for weeks that didn’t just bore me to death. But I did not give up on it completely; I did put the novel aside, once I realized that I was hitting a brick wall, and then I engaged in some research, some question-and-answer scenarios, as well as putting aside some scraps of writing that I came up with while having fits and starts.
Once I was over the period of time where it seemed nothing was forthcoming, I went back and revamped one of the scraps with some new details, and suddenly, I could write again! Now it was interesting again, and the story began to move once more. But I had to keep trying.
And all the while I was struggling to write my novel, I was cranking out blog posts six days a week–that likely helped keep everything oiled up and running, instead of locking all the machinery down just because one machine was broken temporarily. Even if one of your writing projects doesn’t take off, if the subject matter just doesn’t work for you or it’s too hard, don’t abandon your other projects. If you juggle several, like I do and have done all my life, then you’ve always got something to take your mind off the failure of one project, and if you succeed at another one, you might be just inspired enough to come back and kick your older, failed project into a better gear.
Summary
Whether you love or hate writing, whether it’s natural or totally alien to you, these tips should help you, as they have helped me through countless bumps in the process of my own writing. The big ideas here are to keep everything you write, knock off for the day if it’s just too much, do research if you find yourself in unfamiliar territory, ask yourself questions and generate answers if the going gets really tough, and never, EVER give up on writing completely. Once you focus on the act of writing as being a pleasant thing, you’ll find that it comes more easily.
