If you ever felt stuck in your story and you just didn’t know how to proceed any further… you might have been experiencing writer’s block.
That’s the mental condition where a very real (yet very intangible) concrete cube falls onto your creative capabilities. Often without warning.
The good news is that it’s typically not a fatal condition. But it can take months and months and months to move it. Maybe even, tragically, years.
The causes of writer’s block are varied, making it difficult to completely avoid. On the one hand, it could be a mere matter of how well you take care of yourself.
Are you giving yourself enough physical, emotional, psychological, and/or spiritual stimulation to properly motivate your mind? Are you giving yourself too much to take in, crowding up your schedule until all your brain can do is scream for sleep?
Those causes can be taken care of, at least to some degree, by switching up your schedule.
Other times, however, it’s not so simple. Sometimes, I suppose, there’s just some switch that goes off for some reason. And it’ll go back on when it goes back on – just as inexplicably.
Or maybe you can prompt it with this very interesting solution…
Getting past writer’s block is a topic I’ve covered before – and in detail too, listing off various ways to deal with it, including but not limited to:
Taking a break for a day or two to let your creative mind recharge
Forcing yourself to write anyway for five minutes, even if what you write is complete and total trash
Eating chocolate, or whatever your favorite food is
Going for a walk out in the sunshine
Talking it over with a friend, even one who’s not familiar with your story
Reaching out to a writing coach.
But for all the times I’ve written about getting past writer’s block… and for all the times I’ve talked about getting past writer’s block… I never once thought about this next solution until now.
Have you ever heard of The Drudge Report?
If you have, you might think of it as a conservative news site. And, to be sure, the owner and operator is a political conservative as far as I know.
But that genuinely doesn’t matter.
No, seriously, it doesn’t. Not just because all it really is a news aggregation page that pulls from actual news sites either. Though, to be sure, it is that too.
Don’t take my word for it though. Check it our for yourself at www.DrudgeReport.com. What you find there might truly cure your writer’s block – and without annoying your political sensibilities.
As I’m compiling this post at 6:00 on Tuesday evening, the main clickable headlines – which will take you, no doubt, to sites such as CNN, Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, BBC, etc. – are all about the Iowa “Caucus Confusion.”
By the time you’re reading this, that confusion might still be confounding everyone. But for us writers’ purposes, who cares considering the crazy story teasers we can find below that drama. For instance:
Virus hoax forces flight back to airport
Chinese residents forcibly taken away after refusing quarantine
iPhone shortages predicted
I’m not saying you could work those exact situations into your narrative. But maybe your character could get stuck on the flight from hell… or be reading about a hypothetical pandemic and add that to her already long list of worries… or find the price of the tech gadget he wanted to get went up way more than he can afford.
Should he buy it anyway? Isn’t that what credit cards are for?
Or how about these attention-grabbers:
Why vegans inspire hatred (which links to a BBC article. I checked it out)
Cops: Woman, 68, repeatedly tased husband, 73, after he asked for separation
11 earthquakes rattle Tennessee in month
MACY’s to close 125 stores
Baboon grooms little lion cub in South Africa’s Kruger park
How Bezos earned $8 billion – in minutes!
I’m not saying the site is a cure-all. But considering the exceptionally diverse amount of news snapshots it displays, it could very well do the trick.
So if you’re looking to get past writer’s block, the Drudge Report might just do the trick. I genuinely think it’s worth a try.
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