Writer’s block isn’t real. Let’s just start there. Not in the way people like to talk about it, as if some invisible life-force has clamped down on your brain, refusing to let words out. Bakers don’t get baker’s block. Bricklayers don’t wake up and say, “Guess I just can’t lay bricks today.” If your plumber told you they couldn’t fix your sink because they weren’t feeling inspired, you’d get a new plumber.
But some days, writing feels impossible. The words feel like words, not worlds. Not because you can’t do it—you could, if someone held a deadline over your head—but because everything you put down is clunky and lifeless, like a bad cover band playing your own greatest hits. Or like you are some ancient Xerox machine making a copy of a copy of a sentence you wrote ten minutes or ten years ago. It’s not fun. It makes you question everything. It might even send you spiraling into the classic writer’s crisis: What if I’ve lost it? What if I never had it to begin with?
You haven’t. You did. Imposter Syndrome is a born liar. But some days just aren’t the day.
The trick is knowing the difference between “I need to push through this” and “I need to step away before I set my laptop on fire.” Some days, grinding through a slow start gets you where you need to go. And of course you can (and will) always fix it later. Other days, you’re just beating your head against the keyboard, filling yourself with self-doubt or self-loathing or self-importance. And when it’s the latter, the best thing you can do is get up and do something else.
Not doomscrolling. Not sulking. Something that forces you out of your own head. Go for a walk, get in a workout, get your feet in the grass. Out of your head and into your body. Something about moving through space, about breathing air that isn’t just recycled desk air, makes a difference. Two main hobbies have occupied my time for the last fifteen years—standing in the middle of rivers fishing for trout, or flying hang gliders off of mountains. What they have in common is that both require all of your immediate attention in the right-now, entertaining no distractions, so that you don't slip and drown or crash and die. There’s no time to self-edit when you are doing either of these things.
You need to find something that puts you in that same headspace.
But whatever it is, let it be that, and then come back to writing tomorrow. Because it’s not writer’s block. It’s just a bad writing day. And those, thankfully, don’t last.
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