overcome writers block

Writers’ Self-Doubt: Part 2

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Self-doubt can be a sumo wrestler that sits on your chest and yells in your face. It tells you that you can’t write, who are you to be a writer, who would even what to read your work and what you create? It’s not work.

Self-doubt is the roommate that won’t move out, and will never seem to get off  your back about dishes or laundry and eats the good leftovers you asked them not to.

But there is a way for you to make it better, to make it move. And it will never not involve work, or belief in yourself or writing. There is no other way.

Write.

Rewrite.

Read.

Believe in every word.

Self-doubt can ever motivate or cripple your ability to create. This sumo wrestler will taunt you and tease you until you collapse on the floor. Once you are on the floor, it’ll sit on you to make sure every portion of your that is writer and creative is dead. It will make sure that you won’t do anything your mind has already seen.

                                           

Push off the sumo wrestler.

In becoming a writer, in writing, you must be able to contend with sumo wrestlers whom become inner demons hellbent on never letting your write another word–and the only way to shut them up is to write, and keep writing. Your talent and your own ability must sync together to form an army—there is no other way to shut the hoards that oppose you.

Today, at your reading of this, you have the power to shut up the wrestler sitting on your chest, pining you to the floor telling you not just that you cannot, but you will not.

That story on your desktop or in the drawer? Read it again.

That idea you have been rolling around, and scared to write down?  Write it down.

That person in your life, intimate partner or casual acquaintance, whom tells you being a writer is a pipe dream? You must decide what voice, what desire will carry more weight–your desire to write or the desire to please someone else whom does not value what is important to you.

Rage against the dying of the light–don’t let the sumo wrestlers and inner demons kill the words.

FIGHT.

WRITE.

Jennifer P. Harris

Founder, Shekinah Glory Writing Services

Real or Fake: What Is Writer’s Block?

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Writer’s block.

The clean, chic definition for this condition is this:

Writer’s block:  the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing.

This is a debated topic among those in the craft, and those who have their ideas about the craft. In a recent article, on the intelligence dropbox of Google, most people believe writer’s block is space in your psyche where you fear what you may or might say.

As one who has endured the traveling through the desert of writers’ block, I can assure you, writers’ block is real and two-fold.

Writer’s block is a real thing, that really happens to writers. Audre Lorde says for those that write, the times where we are not writing is painful, because writing it like breathing. There those of this ilk, of this guild who desire to write, and when we hit these impasses that stop the flow of words? It’s devastating! That devastation is real, tangible and heartbreaking.

The first step in confronting writer’s block is to acknowledge it. That is the scarier part–you must admit it exists, that this process indeed is happening to you. It is happening in the life of you work, may happen in the life of your writing career, and it can be overcome.

All is not will not be lost if you encounter it. Breaking through the walls of your own creativity is another matter. The walls to the writers’ block are real–even if only you can see them.

 

Jennifer P. Harris

Editor/Founder-Shekinah Glory Writing Services