Getting the shock of writer’s block in lockdown

I’d been staring at the screen for about 20 minutes before I gave up and went back to writing a blog for a client. It was excruciating. I’d got all my research notes in front of me, and the copy was part of a series. It was going to pretty much write itself.

All I needed to do was add some words in the right order and blam! I could get on with my day.

But every line I put on the page was utter shite. I’d deleted about ten versions already and several more first lines that went nowhere. In the end, I made a cup of tea and got on with some client work.

Even the words for work didn’t flow as naturally as they usually do. They sent it back with some notes about it ‘not being my best work’. So I cracked on with making it better.

I was suffering writer’s block for the first time in my life, and it sucks.

Writer’s block

There’s something romanticised about getting writer’s block. Sitting and staring at a blank page or screen, waiting for the inspiration to hit you after several whiskies and then doing an all-nighter.

Firstly, this is a total fallacy. Writer’s block doesn’t look like this, and the version we get is that having ‘The Block’ makes you a proper writer. It doesn’t.

I’ve been writing for a living for more than a few years now, and I’ve never experienced what I did in lockdown. I blame it on my journalism training.

You don’t get the luxury of having writer’s block when there’s a publication deadline to meet. You have to get those words out of your head and onto the page. There’s no time for your butt to hit the seat, let alone stare wistfully out of the window waiting for the words to magically appear.

Writer’s block for me was knowing the words were in there but not being able to get my brain into gear enough to get them out. And what did come out, I’d convince myself was utter garbage and not worth showing the world.

Block-down

Except the blockage was only on the writing I wanted to do for myself. The projects I write because I’m curious about them or have something to say. I write blogs and website copy every single day. Apart from that one poor client who got my bad day, I usually have no problems seeing what words need to make up which sentences to do the job right.

Even more curious is that I can quite happily navel-gaze into my journal each morning as my writing warm-up. I have no problem telling the page that nope, nothing’s happening here. We’re still in lockdown. Still homeschooling.

But sit on the laptop and write something for my website, or a story for Medium and, nope. Nothing’s happening.

And it’s blooming frustrating. I spent a truckload of time sorting out my website and getting it doing what it was supposed to be doing for my business. But three months of neglect and I’m back to square one. I’ve got a list as long as my arm, and it’s turning into a disgraced student doing the walk of shame at 8 am on a Sunday morning. It needs a good clean up and a lot of TLC.

It seems I’m not on my own either.

James McMahon writes in his online publication, Spoook, this week about how he’s struggled with the lockdown. And fellow copywriter, Clare McCabe, shares her silence on the personal blog front over here.

“None of my experiences are any different to anyone else’s. I’ve benefited from reading how others feel because it’s reassuring to not be the only one. But I haven’t felt like anything I have to say would be useful to anyone. It would be more of a self-indulgent “AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!” to the universe. And that can just stay put in my notebook!”

Just do the writing

I reckon it’s the pressure cooker of lockdown. At the start, there was so much unknown (because we’re all just so knowing now, right?) that I threw myself into work. Must work. Earn money. Pay bills. All will be fine.

The adrenaline kept me going with the late night and early mornings. Throw in the homeschooling and somewhere along the line, I lost the plot slightly.

Then you want to add some ‘now is the best time to market your business’ talks. I went to one because I’d convinced myself that everything I have is built on a house of cards and the slightest knock will send it all tumbling.

Not that we can call coronavirus a ‘slight knock’.

But in this event, we were told that you could keep going with the thing that you do and be ahead of the curve when we all come out of this situation. Or you can wait until the storm calms and all those people who didn’t quit, well they’ll have a good few months on you.

And then we were sharing all our great lockdown achievements. I’m really pleased for the folks who managed to launch their business or save all the dying flowers during this time. I truly am. I wish I’d been able to do that.

Or the emails I was getting from my creative writing membership about how this was the BEST TIME to send your manuscript into editors and agents because they have all the time in the world right now to do the reading.

Shit.

I’m just missing out on everything and desperately trying to keep my feet on the ground in a cycle of work, homeschool, panic, and clapping. I mean in normal months I get in a flap around invoicing in case I miss my financial targets, let alone in lockdown.

No wonder I couldn’t get my head around writing an SEO piece for my website. Hell, I’m amazed I carried on being able to write at all.

Normal times no longer exist and telling myself to get on and do the writing, put the pen to paper, that no longer works. My brain couldn’t cope with being anything other than being present for my family and getting through it together.

Behind the curve

In the end, I thought, sod it. I’ll get done what I can, and the rest can wait. This meant stripping back to the bare minimum, writing for work and my morning journal when I had time.

Then I read a book, and it gave me a proper kick up the arse. Skint Estate by Cash Carraway, if you’re interested. A heartbreakingly honest and brilliantly funny book. I laughed out loud at the tribes of North London mums and their hypocrisies (and my own). But then I got to the end and found out that she’d written this book around her daughter. Throughout everything that happened, she still got up and wrote. Well, if she can make the time to write through that, so can I.

And this is when I stopped to think that maybe I didn’t do so bad at maintaining writing through lockdown. I’ve kept that journal running for the whole time. Over two years in total I’ve been writing down my most dull thoughts and feelings for no one but myself. But I still get up and write, even if it’s not what I want to write.

At the start of it all, I said to a friend that I could recognise this as a kind of trauma we were all going through. I’ve had PTSD before, and this touched on some of the same feelings. Drinking more and my brain feeling like it was going into shut down was the big giveaways.

It was too much to expect me to come up with a great novel or regular blogging to get through. I might well be four months of marketing behind my competitor, but so be it. Because my brain needed that hibernation and the consequences of pushing through are not worth it.

Sometimes the answer isn’t to ‘write it because no one is going to write it for you.’ Occasionally, the answer is to do what you can. Prioritise the stuff that pays because we’re heading into a recession and accept that you might have to go a bit slower.

Shock of writer’s block

As I said at that start, having writer’s block was a shock to me. I’d never had it before. I’ve always pushed through and got it done. But it wasn’t that I couldn’t get the words out; it was that I wasn’t getting the right words out.

And my answer is this:

• Stop trying
• Come back to it later.
• Or give up and trash it.
• Then start something new.

I got a lovely new notebook in lockdown. I didn’t need one, but I needed that fresh page start. I archived the novel I was writing and did some writing exercises in my own time. And now I feel ready to open up and start again.