My Secret to Overcoming Writer's Block
- Maisha Mustanzir
- Jul 12, 2018
- 4 min read
As someone who writes all the time, I often face writer's block. This obstacle can be like the Eye of Sauron, just following you at the gates of Mordor, stopping you from progressing any further. It can be deadly, but just like Frodo made it past the eye; you, my fellow writers can too make it past writer's block (well, only if this method works for you as well as it does for me).
This is a method I use because my head is filled with unorganised thoughts which becomes very hard to organise. Where I usually face writer's block is when I no longer can connect my thoughts and/or expand on my thoughts to create an idea. It took me many trial and attempts at trying different methods but the one method which I found worked for my problem the best, was actually stopping to write whatever I was writing about. Putting a pause on my writing restricts my thoughts from becoming fragmented. I find, the more I think about a particular thing, the more details I like to gauge out. Eventually, I am left with too many details and not enough connecting evidence to create ideas, hence all i have are fragments. After I stop writing, I distract myself with things such as talking to friends, spending some time of social media, watching videos or best of all, starting to write about something completely different.
One way I find most effective is to detach myself from what I am writing about and to write something completely different. I use a particular trick which I call my "nonsense journal." This journal really seems like it took a deep dive into Alice In Wonderland. It is filled with scattered thoughts, most of which make so sense or writing which is incredibly mundane. I can treat this as a normal journal or I can treat it as something of a writing prompt journal where I pick an idea and I write a piece on it. The following is an example of of a prompt where I possess the body of a peacock and build a personality and characterisation from a first person narrative. An activity like this, will help to focus my detail oriented thoughts on another writing prompt, therefore, taking the pressure away from the writing I was originally focusing on. Such a prompt will help to expand the imagination and most of all, will remind me how much fun writing can be. If you are anything like me and write research papers and critical writing all the time, doing something solely creative can be very refreshing. Take a look at the following prompt which I titled, Peacock For A Day.
I am majestic.
It is not a question nor is it a statement. I just am, and that is the fact. Who wouldn’t be fascinated by me? You see, I am the definition of beautiful. When I walk through the streets, people, animals, even air stops to stare. When I show my feathers it is like an arrow to the heart. You see, I am rare and I like it that way. It means less competition, it means more eyes. Being rare in itself gives a certain aura of beauty. If you have ever noticed, things that are rare are always treasured, they are special and I’ve got no complaints about that.
My colours are like a kaleidoscope. They are so enchanting, you might just become hypnotised. Sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror, I stop and stare and admire. I admire how my colours look at night. How the blues bleed into the night and the greens look like little pine trees. And during the day the sun truly executes my hues. I just love how the sun shines making every feather stand out to the active eyes. But as beautiful as I am, I am still not the most beautiful for when the even more beautiful and even rarer, the white one appears, all the eyes go to him. He is only made of one colour and yet he is so much more beautiful than I am. My feathers look like fine tip paintbrushes dipped in blues and greens and his look like thinnest shards of ice and his wings could be replaced by the first snow fall. He is like an ice sculpture, perfectly sculpted with no flaws. While I wear and blue cloak, he wears a white cloak. Every day I wake up to wonder which cloak everyone finds more beautiful. Every day I wake up to the knowledge that I am not the most beautiful and every day I live with this fact.
Regardless, I carry myself like a queen with the royal blue crown on my head. I put one feet in front of the other and swing my voluminous hips from side to side. Once my wings are spread, you cannot see my face from the back. It is as if my face is covered like a Geisha’s is with her beautifully decorated air fan. However, you can see my beak, small, delicate and white. The lips are built from the colour of purity. Men wish they could steal that purity but I do not let myself belong to just anyone.
When I spread my wings, it is as if a blue sun has emerged beside the yellow sun in the sky. I can outshine the sun, you bet I can, in fact, I already have. I spend every day being beautiful, more beautiful and less beautiful. Nothing more, nothing less. After all, you cannot expect any less beauty from the peacock, the definition of beauty.
After you have written your prompt or your choice of writing, you can go back to the original piece you tried to work on. I find that going back, I no longer perceive my thoughts as tangled, I can look at the bigger picture and I start to piece together the fragmented thoughts to create coherent ideas. Always keep all your ideas in a document, you never know when it might become of use. It is much more efficient to have the thoughts in front of you while trying to connect the dots than to rely on your memory. This really helps when trying to create a thesis, which I always find to be very challenging (Maybe, I will write another piece on this later). You can find writing prompts online or you can message me here and I would be more than happy to give some interesting prompts.
Happy Writing!
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