Writer's block and the curse of white paper

It's been thirty minutes since you created a new Word document. The screen is white as a blizzard in Österlen. The cursor flashes invitingly in the left-hand corner. Not a single letter has been typed yet, and inside, frustration begins to grow. Should it really be so hard to get started?

Anyone who has ever tried to express themselves in text will recognize the situation. The curse of the white paper, also known as writer's block. It's when you have an assignment to complete, a text to write, but you simply can't get started. It's stuck. And the more time passes, the worse the blockage gets. What can you do?

Thirty years of writer's block

First of all, I want to say - don't worry, you are not alone. You're not the one who's useless, anyone can get writer's block. And you can take comfort in the fact that you've only been sitting for thirty minutes - not thirty years. This record is held by journalist Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker magazine. For many years, he was appreciated for his well-written reports on ordinary people in the big city. Mitchell was a perfectionist and put an enormous amount of time and effort into researching and writing his articles. As his fame grew, he was given more and more freedom and no deadlines to meet. This proved fatal.

In 1964, writer's block struck. Every day, Joseph Mitchell came to his office at the newspaper, closed the door behind him and sat staring at his typewriter. When he finally died in 1996, he had not published a single article for thirty years.

The important start

One of the explanations for Mitchell's writer's block is certainly the high demands he placed on himself. Performance anxiety can be devastating for a creative person. It doesn't help to fill your head with thoughts of how brilliant the end result must be, you need to start at the other end. With the first letter. As you know, even a thousand-mile journey begins with a single step.

Think of the gardener. He doesn't stand by his plot and wonder why there are no tomatoes growing. He starts by sowing a seed. You should do the same. Write your first word, no matter what it is. Write your first sentence, and don't worry about it being crap. It's all right. Because you know what, once you put text on paper, you can always go back and edit. It's the editing that makes the text really good, not the first draft.

Don't wait for inspiration

So it's important to get started, not sit and think about the end result. Or even worse, waiting for inspiration. The well-known suspense writer Stephen King says in his writing manual Writing that "amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us get up and go to work". And so it is. While writing is a creative endeavor that requires time and thought, it is also a craft. You have to pick up the hammer and drive the first nail to build a house.

6 tips to stop writer's block

But... if you're still stuck. If it's a total stop. Then you need a clog remover. Something that clears your system so you can get a fresh start. Here are some completely unscientific tips that I can recommend:

Put your phone away

Your mobile phone is a source of distraction, with all the exciting things that need your attention. Turn it off, put it in another room, and you can focus more easily on your task. Writing.

Take a break

Get a cup of coffee. Go for a short walk. When you get up and do something else, you can come back to the document a while later with a clear mind.

Use AI

Ask Chat GPT, or any other AI service of your choice, to write the introduction to your text. The AI text doesn't even have to be very good, but it can be the start you need.

Write something else

Formulate that email you have to write today anyway. Just by changing your writing focus, the writer's block can disappear.

Read more

The basis of writing is reading, as every writer knows. Read a chapter in a book, or read an interesting article, and you will fill your head with the words of others.

Write regularly

This may not solve the writer's block for now, but writing regularly is the best long-term way to ensure you get flow in the writing process.