Every few months, I get “writer’s block”.
It hits me like clockwork around Jiu-Jitsu competitions.
During the lead-up to a match, I’m extremely dialed in.
I wake up every morning at the same time, like clockwork, and do my writing. I go to training at the same time every day. I lift weights every day at the same time. I eat the same foods. I am extremely consistent with my reading, study, and everything else that I need to do.
I am, as the kids say, “locked in”.
But after the competition, something funny happens.
I crash.
Writing becomes nearly impossible. For some reason, I can’t muster reading more than a few pages. I don’t know what to write about because I'm not sure what to think about.
We got back from San Diego yesterday, and I slept from 3-5 pm and then again from 9 pm to 7:30 am.
When I finally sat down to write this morning, I had nothing to say.
There was no fire.
Instead of fighting that, I tried to think about why I had nothing to say.
And that is what today’s article is about.
The more interesting you try to be, the less interesting you are.
Think about tortured artists.
When you think of someone who falls into that category, you probably think of self-loathing, anxiety, depression, self-sabotage, and a bunch of other stuff, but you don’t think of them as “interesting”.
When you’ve met one tortured artist, you’ve honestly met most of them.
Being a tortured artist is not the path to becoming a competent artist.
When I lean into the things that could make me a tortured artist (as I often do post competition), my writing gets worse, I struggle to be consistent, and my mental health slowly falls apart.
The objective as a writer struggling with “writer’s block” is not to write something deeper or more interesting or to try to be this Hemingway imitation that you might get inspired to be by reading one of his novels.
No.
The goal if you’re struggling to write is to take a step back. Breathe.
The words are always there, just sometimes you’re moving too fast to listen.
The power of consistent writing is that it slows your mind and your anxiety down. You worry less and listen more. You listen less to the voice in your head and listen more to your mind and the ideas that the world is constantly feeding you.
What causes writer’s block?
Most writer’s block is caused by you not writing enough.
Think about it like the gym or any other workout.
Your best workout is rarely the first workout you’ve done in a while. You don’t just show up to the gym for the first time in weeks and hit a PR.
A little while back, I began doing some running to help me work on my cardio for my upcoming Jiu-Jitsu tournament.
I ran a mile and a half on a track; it was my first run in a long time.
It kind of sucked. I was sore for days after the run.
I ran again a few days later, and I was still sore from the first run, and the second run sucked a lot, too.
Then, I ran again, and it was the best one yet. I was faster. I was less sore. I was excited to keep going.
Running is and never has been easy, but it becomes more manageable.
I think in many ways, running, lifting, and writing are all very similar.
While you’re doing them, you feel like you’re drowning. You feel completely stretched. You feel confused and lost and maybe even annoyed that you’ve chosen to do something so utterly stupid.
And yet, when you’re done — no matter how good or bad the performance was — you feel better. You get a hit of dopamine. A feeling that you have made some progress toward a big goal.
Effort compounds, and eventually, hard work feels easy.
Closing Thoughts
I sat down to write this morning, and I didn’t have anything to say.
I definitely didn’t have any interesting or profound ideas percolating in my head.
But throughout the exercise of writing this article, a few realizations have hit me:
The relationship between competition (or other forced breaks from routine) and how it affects my workflow
The fact that the more interesting you try to be, the less interesting your work is
The similarities between running, lifting, and writing. Writing is training for the mind
And all of these things together give us the final lesson for today’s little article:
You don’t have interesting ideas, and then you write. Instead, you write, think, and eventually, you’ll start to have ideas. It’s a process. It’s work.
It’s training.
Writing is training for the mind.
“Writer’s block” is simply the absence of momentum.
The more emotional you get about this, the worse it becomes.
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Grow their newsletter.
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Turn writing into income
Writing has completely changed my life — both personally and professionally — and I want to help you do the same.
Hit this link to apply, and I’ll be in touch.
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