{There are two main reasons why you’re sitting in front of your computer and can’t type right now. You’re either physically or psychologically exhausted.
1. Physical Exhaustion. You needn’t run a marathon to be too tired to write. You could have been up all night with the baby or that darn hour gained from Daylight Saving Time ending surprisingly zapped your energy. Sometimes returning from a trip tires me out also. (Something that I often forget when intending on working right away after vacation.) Whatever the case, being tired and low energy makes it extremely hard to get the words down on paper.
When I try to fight the exhaustion, my work fails miserably. So I’ve learned my lesson. When I’m tired, I take a break. One of the reasons why I love being a freelance writer is that I have the flexibility to take time off. If I’m not doing so, I’m really not taking advantage of the free in freelance. And that’s a boo hoo to me. It’s not so good for my writing or my career. If you’re feeling tired too, take a break and relax. Your writing will be better for it.
2. Psychological Exhaustion. I have to be honest about something. I know lots of writers and teachers recommend constantly querying. It makes perfect sense really. The more queries you get out there, the higher your chances of getting a positive response. But after a year of doing this, I realized that quality queries were more beneficial than “half-ass gotta get this out every day ones.” There are lots of tricks I learned about cutting and pasting the facts of a pitch to get them out faster and I’ve tried them. But maybe this is a personal thing. I’ve found that when I feel a rush of energy, I submit as many queries and cover letters possible. When I’m exhausted with promoting myself, I work on something else (an essay, a novel, e.g.).
It is psychologically exhausting and unnecessary to continuously pitch for the sake of pitching. Unless that is the only stream of income you have or unless it works well for you (power to you!). For me, I find the time spent querying and getting back rejections, a hard swaddle on my ego. And I can only take so much.
The same goes for writing. Sometimes you have writer’s block because you’ve got too much rejection and not enough positive reinforcement. To change things up, work on something less psychologically draining for a bit. A fun essay, for example, a poem or write up the occasional creative leads you see online or in a magazine. Once I tried completing one of those fill in the blank short stories, just for fun. Just to see if I could do it. The fact that I did was confidence building and I was back querying in no time.
These are noncommittal ways to ease your brain, let up on some of the pressure that may be holding you down and remind you not to take your writing so seriously.
These are a few ways I battle the occasional writer’s block.
What about you? What do you do when writer’s block gets in your way of good writing?
