This is a guest article by Edwin Henry. If you want to submit a guest article of your own be sure to read the guest article guidelines.
A lot of people want a magic bullet to either motivate them to start writing for the first time, or a method to get around a mental block. Writers’ Treasure has talked about this before, with Idrees relating his solutions for shaking off stagnation and mixing things up.
There is a romantic idea that inspiration is something that strikes you, and after that light goes off, you’ll dive into your magnum opus and come out the other side with a complete work. The reality is, writing takes work, and if you’re blocked, it feels like that work is impossible to follow through with.
That paralysis can really jam up your creative track and make you struggle to get even a couple of words out onto a page. Especially if you have an inkling of what you want to talk about, but feel kind of stuck on how to achieve it.
Here are the things that have and continue to help me. Some of them are based on when I first started writing, when blocks are powerful things because self-doubt is hard to counter because you may be lacking evidence to dissolve it.