Journalists are no strangers to the horrors of a blank page — staring at it, wanting to tear it apart and hoping words could magically appear. Writer’s block, though on occasion dismissed as laziness or procrastination, is an acknowledged condition, albeit non-medical, that writers, students and journalists may struggle with.
Former UCLA professor Mike Rose, who passed away in 2021, authored a research paper on the topic after interviewing and working with 10 students — all skilled writers, but five of whom struggled with writer’s block. He found that the issue wasn’t a result of lack of skills but instead rooted in the approach taken during the writing process. “The five students who experienced the writing block were all operating either with writing rules or with planning strategies that impeded rather than enhanced the composing process,” reads the report.
After multiple interviews with the students, he reached two conclusions: writing, or composing, is a highly complex problem-solving process, and second, writer's block can be understood as a disruption to the mental processes involved in writing.
Understanding why you may be ‘blocking’
At the heart of Rose’s research is this: people who experience writer’s block tend to follow rigid rules and inflexible plans that choke up the writing process. Rules like “you must start with a perfect, attention-grabbing introduction” or "always make three or more points in an essay” trap writers in endless cycles of overthinking and self-criticism.
On the flip side, those who don’t hit a wall approach writing with flexibility. “Students that offer the least precise rules and plans have the least trouble composing,” wrote Rose. They experiment, make mistakes and figure things out as they go. “I’ll write what I can,” said one student of their approach. Said another: “If my original idea doesn't work then I need to proceed differently.”
Working through writer’s block
Princeton University professor and longtime writer at the New Yorker, John McPhee, wrote about writer’s block in a chapter of his book, Draft No.4. He recalled conversations he had about the phenomenon with former students and his daughters, who are themselves writers. Extracting from those conversations, here are some tips to get the writing flowing again:
(1) Write a letter instead
“You are blocked, frustrated, in despair. You are nowhere, and that’s where you’ve been getting. What do you do? You write, ‘Dear Mother,’” wrote McPhee.
Explain to your mother (or any other confidant), he advised, about the problem you’re facing. Your inability to form sentences, the doubts you have about your skills as a writer, and then tell her about the subject you are struggling with. Describe the characters and talk about your reporting process, in a frustrated tone, if you must.
“And then you go back and delete the ‘Dear Mother’ and all the whimpering and whining,” he wrote. Keep the content about the subject, and that is your first draft.
(2) Write an unimpressive first draft
Rose had identified in his study that rules like “a good essay always grabs a reader's attention immediately” prevented writers from getting started. The remedy is to understand that any piece of writing is done several times over — never just once.
The first draft of any writing project McPhee pursues follows a four-to-one ratio in writing time, he explained. That is, the first draft takes four times as much time to write compared to the other three.
The goal of the first draft is simply to “blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything,” he wrote. The first draft, as unimpressive as it may be, is a “nucleus.” You can then put this nucleus aside and concentrate on other tasks, while your mind will work on refining what you’ve written. “Until it exists, writing has not really begun,” he added.
The first draft is only for your eyes, not for anyone else’s. The stricter writing rules about structure, composition and a charming first paragraph are best applied to the later drafts, and put to the side for the first. “There are psychological differences from phase to phase, and the first is the phase of the pit and the pendulum,” he wrote, referring to a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. “After that, it seems as if a different person is taking over. Dread largely disappears. Problems become less threatening, more interesting.”
(3) Imitate writers you admire and try reverse-engineering
If you’re feeling under-confident about your skills as a writer and in the process are struggling to find your voice, you’re not alone. McPhee acknowledged having felt the same way often, and so did his daughters. “When I hear a younger writer express that sort of doubt, it serves as a check-point; if they don’t say something like it they are quite possibly, well, kidding themselves,” wrote McPhee.
It is important for young writers to be inspired by the work of those they admire, said McPhee, especially when they themselves are feeling self-conscious. “The developing writer reacts to excellence as it is discovered — wherever and whenever — and of course does some imitating (unavoidably) in the process of drawing from the admired fabric things to make one’s own,” he wrote.
Based on what he highlights, here is an exercise you can try for yourself. Select the work of a writer you admire, identify their writing style, highlight phrases you particularly like and rewrite them somewhere. Pay attention to how they structure sentences, build arguments, and create vivid imagery. Then, try to replicate their tone or rhythm and apply it to the subject you’re struggling to write about.
By deconstructing the style of a writer you respect, you’re essentially reverse-engineering their process. This exercise can help you break out of your rut, spark new ideas, and even reveal aspects of your own voice. “Rapidly, the components of imitation fade. What remains is a new element in your own, which is not in any way an imitation,” wrote McPhee.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.
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