Writing is Weird and Writer’s Block Sucks

Writing is glorious. And fickle. Rewarding but often frustrating. And sometimes, when I’m writing, I’m on two very different ends of a spectrum.

“I’m Michael Jordan!”

Have you ever sat down for a writing session and were just unstoppable? Sometimes you just FEEL it. The words are flowing like a smooth scotch. You’re in the groove. You’re Michael Jordan’s gorgeous, effortless fade-away jumper.

And then there are those days.

You know the ones. The days were the words are flowing like chunky salsa out of a jar. Lumpy. Awkward.

You’re Charles Barkley’s janky, bewildering golf swing.

I keep watching his swing and it’s surreal. The Round Mound does everything wrong.

I mean…every. thing.

Chuck doesn’t just have a hitch in his swing, he has a whole-ass coffee break at the top. His form is all over the place – that shoulder dip, the knees going in two different directions, the lack of balance. Nothing from the beginning to the end of that train wreck of a swing makes any goddamn sense.

The thing is…that hitch? I’ve FELT the desire to do it when playing golf. Something in my mind wants me to stop, re-align, and just get everything right. But the act of stopping completely fucks it all up. And no amount of logic is going to stop your mind from yelling “WAIT!” at the top of your swing if it wants.

Suddenly, your mind has decided in order to make everything perfect it has to fuck everything up. You can back off the ball, re-address it, and start your swing motion again, but your mind is now at war with your body and you get the yips. And you’re off in the rough trying to find your ball. Or…in the next fairway over.

Writing can sometimes be clunky as shit.

You have your steaming cup of tea, your writing aids, a playlist of unobtrusive music playing in the background — and the words coming out of you may as well be lumps of concrete sputtering out of a cement mixer. They plop onto the screen with all the elegance of, well, Charles Barkley’s golf swing.

For some reason, your brain is fighting…your brain. You WANT to write, you NEED to write, but the words…they’re not cooperating. So your mind doubles down. Now it’s trying REALLY HARD, you guys, no seriously your mind has GOT THIS. WATCH OUT, here come the words.

Oh boy, and do they come. And they don’t feel right, sound right, look right. Your mind is short-circuiting and you’ve now got the writing yips. This funk can last days or weeks.

I don’t have any magick fixes for the writing yips. Moving from a janky golf swing back to an elegant fadeaway jumper is something I think time fixes, but I do believe you can do your best to avoid unproductive writing sessions. NOT writing isn’t the fix to the yips.

What to do?

Here’s what I do when the yips settle in:

I write anyway. Whatever I’m working on, I just plow through it. It can be fixed later.
I write a different scene/chapter in my WIP — this doesn’t work if you’re not comfortable jumping around, but sometimes a change of scene can jumpstart a little creativity, even cure you of the yips altogether.
I work on characters, themes, conflicts, goals. I refine my notes about my book. I work on problem-solving some sticky wickets that I haven’t resolved yet.
Work on this site.
Read a book about the writing craft.
Write a little, take a break to play a video game. Usually Magic: Arena or Slay the Spire. Then I go back and see if my brain has re-calibrated at all.

Here’s some advice from a couple experts:

Reedsy – How to Overcome Writer’s Block: 20 Helpful Tips
Penguin Random House – 10 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block

It’s number 1 on my list and in both of these lists – write through it.

I know it can feel unproductive to write poorly, especially when whatever goes down on the page is going to need heavy rewriting and editing. Maybe the “show, don’t tell” isn’t coming out right, or the dialog is wonky, or the scene descriptions are “the brown desk and the brown chair were brown.”

But the rough ideas are there. The character beats make it on the page for future refinement. The action is sketched out and needs to be given more life later, but you’re doing work.

One of the most important things a mentor once told me in my career as a marketing professional — which involves a fuck ton of highly refined and specific writing — is: