Unravelling the Mystery of Writers' Block
If you have nothing to write about, this one’s for you.
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I’ve sat here many times before — late into the evening, alone in my office, waiting for inspiration to strike. Sometimes for hours, other times for days, longing for the moment that a groundbreaking idea comes and lands in my lap, eager for me to transform it into an article.
And often, it never does.
So I turn to other writers on Medium whose work I admire, or to the books in my library, or to YouTube. I sift through other peoples’ content, analyzing their every sentence and thinking, hmm, how can I make something as good as this?
When times get really tough, I might even resort to tying together many different articles, assimilating my own patchwork version of their contents — a combination of a thousand ideas, none of which are really mine.
Sometimes, inspiration is hard to come by, and it’s all too easy to regurgitate information from another source and brand it with your name.
I’m here to tell you that that’s never a good idea.
If your ideas don’t flow, if they aren’t pouring out of you faster than you can put pen to paper, I have news for you.
It’s time to stop writing.
Inspiration is Everywhere
Earlier this month, I quit my job and decided to travel to Thailand to train Muay Thai every day. The intense training in boiling-hot weather has taught me a thing or two about controlling my mental state.
So I wrote about it.
A few days later, I received a question about which key practices and principles have enabled me to become a successful writer. So I wrote about that, too.
And then, recognising that many of the self-proclaimed personal development gurus online are full of shit, claiming to live perfect lives that are actually wholly imperfect, I decided to produce an article on that subject as well.
I don’t usually write that much on here, but recently I’ve been on fire, producing multiple articles this week.
And then today…nothing.
