We all know that to be a writer, you have to write. But what if you sit down at your keyboard or pull out your notebook, and the words don’t come? Or, what if you’re not even finding the motivation to get out your writing tools? Our experts agree: sometimes doing a simple, contemplative activity is all you need to get out of your head and onto the page. We’ve pulled together some of our favorite ways to start writing and overcome writer's block.
1. Take a Walk
Whether you step into a bustling city street, a residential neighborhood, or a forest, walking will generate new words and ideas. As poet and Write the World blogger Lisa Hiton notes, “Great writers have long been on to something: that walking increases one’s capacity for creativity.
A study out of Stanford has found that walking improves creativity and conducting ‘walking meetings’ has also been found to increase productivity in the workplace.”
2. Make Your Own Musical Muse
Music provides us with rhythm for writing sentences and mood for setting the scene.
For US Youth Poet Laureate and former Poetry and Spoken Word Competition guest judge Amanda Gorman, music is so crucial to her writing process that she has “different songs and different playlists depending on where I am and what I’m writing. If I’m brainstorming, I’ll listen to more dramatic, instrumental music that has a kind of climax. If I’m trying to string the right words together during the editing process, I’ll change what I’m listening to.”
3. Fan the Flames
Why not try reaching out to writers you admire?
Rolling Stone founding editor and Write the World blogger Michael Lydon says, “I write fan letters to contemporary writers better known than I am, and any day that a cheerful response comes in my email is a red-letter day that gives me weeks of encouragement.”
4. Play with the Pen
Lisa Hiton notes how the act of doodling mirrors writing in that you’re putting something new to paper: “We can all cultivate new hobbies and change our routine—especially as it relates to technology—as a means of increasing our engagement with our inner life and the ideas found there, which in turn, might just move from that effervescent air of the mind to embody words on a page… . if you’re a doodler, let yourself doodle. There needn’t be any structure or goal to having a pen in your hand than to let the elegant cross motor skills of your hands interact with the page.”
So next time your ideas feel trapped in your head, why not take a walk, put on some music, pen a fan letter, doodle—or find another contemplative activity that seems unrelated to writing? Who knows, maybe vacuuming or brushing your dog or doing the laundry will be just the catalyst you need to start writing (and if not, at least your family will be grateful)!
