To All the Struggling Writers:

Writing is hard.

From 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, I have been fixated on my computer screen like a mindless drone. A menacing Word document glares at me, taunts me, more empty than ever. If you’re a writer, you know. You’ve hit a dry spell. You tense up when you hear other writers talking about the fulfillment and joy of writing creatively, how inspiration strikes like a dove descending. You and I know this is bullshit. For chumps like you and me, inspiration strikes in the form of an albatross. It weighs around your neck like a noose. It is a burden. It is hard. It’s like squeezing the last of a lemon, trying to get just one more word on the page. It’s a series of reading and rereading the same five lines (if you’re lucky) over and over again. So what do you do?

Nothing. 

It’s time to give up on writing altogether. You had a good run. It’s over now. Over. 

Do you see how I started that sentence long and dwindled it down? If you look through a rose-colored magnifying glass it comes off as a rich sentence that embodies a fourth place runner crossing the already broken finish line, but if you remove the tint, you know it’s just a simple sentence coming to a halt, sort of like your writing career. I’ve resorted to hat tricks and playing around with the format because I have absolutely nothing left to write about, but I have to reach a minimum of 350 words, so let’s come up with something, shall we?

Something. 

You think you’re clever, huh? Very funny, but it’s time to put the jokes away and actually come up with something—perhaps a writing process for the process-less. So here are some steps, in no particular order, because I’m making them up as I go:

1. Just ramble.

You’ll get somewhere eventually. We’ve made it this far haven’t we? If you fill your excerpt with colorful descriptions, action verbs, pretty abstractions, and relatable scenarios you may just fool your audience into thinking that you’re onto something, but more importantly you’ll fool yourself. Just trust me on this one. You don’t have much to lose when you’ve got an hour before a deadline. 

2. Get inspiration from external sources. 

Ask Reddit, ask your friends, grab the books in your library and look at the first sentence in every one, read the dedications in your favorite vinyls, switch up your environment. Out of desperation, I did all of the above. I jumped around from bedroom to coffee shop to brewery. I ran into an old professor and talked about photography and political campaigns. I met up with friends and discussed the topic of distorted memories and how coping mechanisms differ from individual to individual. I learned that first sentences can say everything or nothing about a book. Vinyl dedications always address and thank the target audience, so hello reader, thank you for sticking it out this far. Ultimately, you’re bound to find something to write about. I could write a whole article about any one of these. Take something completely ordinary from your day to day life and spice it up. 

3. Carry a journal around.

Constantly jot down your ideas. Some will be good, some will be terrible, but just write them down. Stephen King talks about why he doesn’t keep a journal. He claims that a good idea is one that “sticks around, and sticks around, and sticks around.” While this may be true for some, I disagree on behalf of the forgetful. He may have the mind of a king, but some of us are still plebeians who have to write down our bad ideas to use them as a step ladder towards better ones. Many are naturally talented in this regard, you and I are not, so write, and write, and write.

4. Be curious. Always. 

Listen intently when people speak, how they speak, what matters to them. Talk to strangers. Ask questions. Research a random topic and learn everything about it. Listen to podcasts on your commute. If you don’t have time to read a book, read a short story or work of creative nonfiction. Try to understand the structure, literary devices, what these pieces have going for them (e.g. I just used asyndeton, why did I do that?). Overall, the more you know, the more you can write about.

5. And lastly, have a good cry. 

You’re going to have several, because writing is hard. You can try all the tips in the world, but ultimately, it’s going to be a process every single time. Take a break. Go to your fridge, eat a mango, and then get back to staring blankly at that cursed screen. Somehow, things always seem to come together when they have to. It’s a pain, but once you finish that sweet minimum requirement and create something entirely original, it feels so good. No one has your mind, nor can they conceptualize ideas the way you can. So while you’re crying over how badly your prompt turned out, take joy that no person in the world could make it bad the way you made it bad.

Cheers,

A fellow struggling writer