Ask your heart what's going on when you can't pump out the words.
You may encounter procrastination and writing blocks if your heart’s just not into what you’re writing. If something essential is wrong or missing in terms of your personal relationship with your project, your body and mind can go out on strike. How do you know when you should make a radical shift, or abandon writing altogether and move on the something new?
It is important to determine whether your resistances are self-sabotaging mechanisms that prevent you from achieving writing goals that are meaningful to you, or if they are honest messages from within yourself informing you that you are on the wrong track. In some cases, the truth may be that you don’t want to write at all – not because it’s too hard, but because other things are more important to you.
Such a revelation might be a personal crisis, especially if you have a history of identifying yourself as a writer, and you no longer feel the drive, interest or gratification that writing used to provide.
Now, it could be that you’re burned out and just need a break. Take a writing vacation and see how you feel in a couple of weeks. Does the desire to write return? If it does, you’re not done. Maybe you need to develop and grow by breaking out of old patterns and doing something completely new with your writing.
Or perhaps the writing chapter of your life is winding down to make way for different interests and modes of expression. Not all writers stay at it throughout their entire life. That’s not a crime.
As one woman said after a class I taught on writer’s block, “This class really helped me realize I really don’t want to be a writer. Thanks!”
