So, you're sitting at your computer, fingers on your keyboard and nothing, absolutely nothing, is coming to your mind.
Besides the fact that if you don't get started soon, you'll never start. Which means of course you'll fail the assignment, then the class, then college, then life and before you know it you'll be dead.
Woah. First of all, breathe. No, like really.
Now you may already be rolling your eyes, thinking, yeah right, like you know anything about writer's block. But, before you write me off completely (pun fully intended), understand that I had immense writer's block two seconds prior to having the idea to write about this very subject.
After you've started getting oxygen back into your brain, you have to erase this idea that if you don't know what to write about at this very moment, you never will. I like to think of writing like I think of trying to remember something. If you force yourself, it's never going to come to you. But, if you take a chill pill (figuratively, of course), and slow your roll speed racer, then I assure you, that idea will hit you like a ton of bricks.
But what if that first idea seems terrible? Well, use it anyways. It had to have come from somewhere! Think of it like the roots of a tree. If you write on that idea for long enough, a better one may emerge from it. Then you can start branching off and off until you have a whole tree of beautiful ideas.
After you've jotted down your tree of beautiful writing ideas, remember that you don't have to pick the most sophisticated seeming one. Often, the eloquent ideas aren't easily expandable and wasting your time on something you can't write about is just as bad as writer's block. Plus, peers, professors and writing center employees can help you make your piece sound professional after it's written. The most important thing is that you write something.
The last and possibly most important part to kicking writer's block out of your life is to believe in yourself. That sounds cheesier than a fresh out of the oven mozzarella stick, I know. But if you keep telling yourself that there's a neon sign over your head that says 'failure' with an arrow pointing to you, how can you expect your next masterpiece to get written? If you're having a hard time with the task at hand, don't tell yourself that it's because you're stupid, or that you can't write. Don't even start to send yourself spiraling into the madness that is 'what if' questions.
Instead, just breathe, trust yourself and write on!
