Dealing with Writer’s Block: Why I Love Writing at 3:30am
Writing is a process whether we like it or not.
Image Credits: Joanthan ZaZa
Writing is a process whether we like it or not.
It is not always easy or fun.
Writing can be difficult.
Writing can be gruesome, depressive and exhausting.
Sometimes the words can come streaming onto the page with such ease and flow that parallels the steady stream of water flowing down a stream. Other times it can feel like a drought has occurred. When writer’s block sets in, we feel like fish out of water. We are gasping for life, trying to find someone to give us just a small taste of life to help us keep going.
This often becomes suffocating and frustrating when I walk through this myself. There is nothing worse for a human being than to place a barrier in front of that individual that he or she struggles to overcome.
But here’s the beauty of it all.
When I wake up at 3:30am — like I did today…
I feel like a conqueror.
I feel like Jackie Chan and Jet Lee doing twists and flips to kick the butt of writer’s block.
At 3:00am, I wake up in a stir of alertness. I wake with a fight or flight feeling that takes over my every move, from stretching my shoulders as I approach my computer, to the dynamite that has exploded thoughts and ideas in my head, to the chain reaction sparked by the dynamite that sets forward the rest of my morning’s writing plan.
After the dynamite explodes when I open my laptop, my writing isn’t held back by a dam, nor does it flow gently like water in creeks written within forests.
No.
At 3am, my writing breaks through like a water flow that’s been held back for far too long. Bursting forth from what seemed to be a solid rock, never to be overcome comes the water — the water that gives me back my life, my breath, my hope that I can actually make something out of all the epic STUCK-ness feeling that any regular writer is familiar with.
Some of us are more acquainted with this phase of life more than others. Let me just tell you that it happens to every writer, especially the best of the best. Some historical writers have written their greatest works after a long drawn out stint of writers block. But something happened, and their dynamite exploded — allowing their own waterfall of thoughts and emotions to be ever so freely shared upon their pages with ink and quill of ages past.
If you’re going through writer’s block — stay alive — stay alive — stay awake.. It will pass. I promise.
It always does.
Just as our wins are ephemeral, so are our hardships.
Whether you want to reference the ancient Persian adage, an African proverb, or biblical text from the Christian Bible that speaks of similar language, I think we can all agree that remembering that our difficulties are transient is something we all need to be reminded of from time to time.
Especially for writers who may be relying on their writing process day-to-day to provide for their income, their family, their home, the crippling pain and stress that comes with writer’s block can nearly make someone go insane from the pressure we allow ourselves to feel.
Yet, when writer’s block sets in, it is us who sets ourselves down an endless dark tunnel of emotional and mental turmoil as we strain our eyes and brain synapses as we try to grasp something tangible to write on.
The tunnel is of our own design — but so is the journey to burst from the tunnel at light speed — to be thrust upon a whole new world of ideas and emotions to be splattered upon a blank new page of canvas, creating something beautiful is also up to us.
How we react and interact with writer’s block is vitally important to our health and wellbeing.
How we engage with the struggle can directly influence our writing and creativity now and forever into the future. It can be debilitating, or can be embraced with laughter at the sheer absurdity of its presence.
Patience is difficult.
Let’s face it…
Patience is incredibly difficult.
Be persistent with the process.
You have the capacity to be able to persevere with patience as you pursue and possibly explore fresh avenues for your writing process.
Forget about the product and focus on the process.
Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by deadline you or your publisher set for your work.
Fall in love with the process.
Fall into the confidence held within all the works of art you have completed in the past.
Fall in love with the work of art you are currently crafting and sculpting with special expertise, as you are the artist of its design.
Do you see yourself as magi, as a majestic maker of masterpieces left for the masses to marvel over the years to come?
Do you realize that every word you write, every single syllable will exist forever — far longer than your own existence?
It will live Forever — and it will forever Live.
How humbling is that thought…
How much responsibility do we have with our words then…?
If our hardships are infinitesimal upon the world’s timeline, yet our crafted masterpieces may last forever, what should we write about? What should be our motivation?
Maybe the thing you need most is to remember why you started writing in the first place…?
Let me ask you, what inspires you?
What inspires your childish ambition and imagination?
Write on that to start out with, and see where you are taken…
You’ll never know where you end up if you keep your eyes off the end result or expectation and just focus on the process…
Fall in love with the masterpiece you have before you today, and the masterpiece you are yourself as a writer walking through the challenge of writer’s block.
But guess what, you’re a conqueror.
You may not feel like a conqueror when waking up at 3:00am like me, but there are definitely other ways you have experienced wins and felt like a champion in your life.
Those righteously prideful moments of pure bliss and joy…. Let yourself walk in that, let yourself walk in that joy — so you can enjoy that.
Who knows… maybe your current writer’s block is just a catalyst to your Magnum Opus.
For the Love of Writing,
Jonathan
At The Writing Cooperative, our mission is to help each other write better. We’ve teamed up with ProWritingAid to do just that. Try it for free!
