Have you ever hit that wall? With your face? Running head first? You know, the wall where you don't know what to write.
Every English major's worst nightmare. Every article writer's familiar friend. Producing new, relevant content regularly that is not complete garbage is hard. Sometimes you are struck with inspiration, and sometimes you are stuck with your hands poised over the keyboard. What do you do when you need to write, you want to write, but you just can't. It's not that you can't, really. That you won't? Your body is physically incapable of typing out letters into words into sentences and forming them into ideas, concepts, a full image. I'd like to think we've all been there. I know I've been there. I'm there right now. This article was supposed to be submitted yesterday, but after an unfortunate dog-related incident (looking at you, Suri) and a fatal case of writer's block, it is now midnight the day after and I'm still sitting here unable to come up with anything. What is relevant? What are people talking about? Why don't I watch the news more? When is Saturday Night Live coming back on? These are all questions I asked myself last night while trying to write some original and interesting content. Then, I decided, why not write about what to write when you can't write about what you want to write because you don't want to write anything? Thus, here it is. This is how to write with writer's block:
Step 1: Stall with fluff.
No one will notice that you can't come up with anything if you talk in circles for about half a page! Check out my opening paragraph. I literally talked about how I do not know what to talk about for about 200 words. And it sounded original and creative. This is the future, people. No longer must you suffer and toil over your laptop to produce great content; you can just talk about your inability to create such content and you will be instantly earnest and relatable. It's a win-win. Basically, write as much as you can about as little as you can. Really drag it out. I'm doing it again.
Step 2: Synonyms.
You know what really furthers a piece? I mean bulks it up, or makes it longer, or takes up more space, or passes an ideas. Synonyms. I just wrote a ton of synonyms for the same general notion. Did anyone notice? Probably. I'm not a great writer. I'm mediocre, or average, or decent, or alright, or ordinary (was that better?). But really, if you need to take up space in a paper, article, story, just repeat the same idea over and over using different words. Not only will it sound like you have an excellent, or superb, or unparalleled vocabulary, it will make your piece appear longer and, thus, smarter.
Step 3: A quick joke.
Is your audience still not buying it? Are they seeing right through your thin facade of an original column? Steal them back with a quick quip. Nothing pleases a crowd more than comedy. Watch this:
Where does a general keep his armies?
His sleevies.
If that does not do it, then I don't know what will, honestly.
Writer's block is hard, guys. It can make the best writer feel like a drifting piece of beach trash. Like the kind that gets caught around penguin's necks from soda bottles in Happy Feet. The point of this ridiculous piece is that it is okay to have writer's block. It happens to the best of us. It happens again, and again, and again. The inability to produce content is not a totem to your lack of inventiveness. When you simply cannot write, then don't. The inspiration will come. Or you'll just die alone and uninspiring. We'll see!
