Oh writer's block. You've left thousands of books unfinished, countless songs half sung and caused every teacher on the planet to have to read dull essays enveloped in eraser marks. Ideally, "writer's block" would be a street in which J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis live across the hall from each other and are constantly borrowing each other's things while writing sarcastic, passive aggressive comments about each other into short stories. Instead, it's just head-shaped dents in walls and desks from repetitive banging. Not the head banging you do when you rock out, but the head banging you do when you want to be knocked out. If you're like me and often find yourself facing writer's block, here are some suggestions to try that I absolutely did not make up on the spot due to deadlines.
1. Read/Watch/Listen to other writers' work.
This really helps. Don't sit at a laptop with a glazed expression on your face because you can't figure out how to finish your research paper on how Beethoven's music changed the course of the following century. Look up other papers. You may find some good ideas and be able to incorporate them. Alternately, you may stumble across a terrible paper and be able to write about how wrong it is in yours.
2. Free-write
Often times, your subconscious is a lot smarter than your consciousness. Let it out for a test drive. Set a timer for five minutes, put on some classical music, zone out, and on a separate document, just write like there's no tomorrow. Don't worry about grammar, or form or anything that makes a paper actually good. Quality is a lie, and you're not going to give it a chance to show it's face. Once that timer goes off, gather up your senses, remind yourself of the date, your name, things of that nature and start looking through the mess you've created. There's a strong chance you may find a gem or two. If not, at least your brain got to take a breather.
3. Consult Shia Lebeouf
Do I really need to spell this one out? If you're deep enough in the internet to be reading this article, I'm just going to assume you know what I'm talking about. In all seriousness though, a lot of times writer's block is only existing because the writer wants to give up out of tiredness, fear of rejection, or boredom. In which case, while it may be difficult... *sigh*... just DO IT.
4. Stahp
To completely turnaround and contradict myself, sometimes you need a break. The human brain isn't meant to be productive all the time. If so, everyone would be a creator, war would cease and the 2016 election wouldn't make people cry. If you've been sitting at a piece of paper for two hours, and have not come up with anything, you're kidding yourself to expect the next hour to go better. Number three on this list is applicable for starting things, but if you've reached a wall, stop pushing against it. Take a walk, sing a song, bake some cookies, other Disney princess things, whatever, but stop beating a dead horse and expecting a new result.
5. Write about writer's block
Not really sure what to tell you about this one. I mean it worked for me just now.
Well there you have it. I hope this at least served as a means of procrastination to those suffering from writer's block who appreciate the irony of this situation. To those who did actually seek this article as a mean's to save them from the world of writer's block, keep in mind, this tips are not universal towards everyone person and don't all apply to the same form of writer's block. I imagine that would have been discovered looking between number three and four, but just to clarify. Good luck fellow authors, composers, artists, and above all, procrastinators.
