Reason one for being stuck: overbooking of ideas and thoughts in your mind. Better said, overthinking. Do this and you will loose control, increasing your sense of being stuck. You are turning around “a something”. If you can not define it, it’ s time to stop. If not, you are rejecting the first rule of writing and of your entire life: be focused on what you are, on what your professional passion is and on what you think you are made for and of.
This process of ups and downs can be outlined with a graphic representation. There is a curve going up to the top and then down to the bottom. If you feel stuck, even if you are doing what you like doing the most, this mean you are missing something: a balance.(e.g. you are good at planning your writing, but along ast weeks, for instance, nobody clapped you; you received not any comments at all. No editor picks your never-ending sent multi-pitches post…). What you need? What to do? The scariest thing ever: hugging and accepting yourself. But…you are stuck. Still.
Reason two for being stuck: you are tired. Physical. Your diet is not so good, you don’t like vegetables, you are not veggie or vegan, you have not 100% healthy habits. You do not sleep well, your night-stand is full will devices and before going to bed, you need to feed yourself with TV and its magnetic waves. You are waiting for your period, you are not having sex from a long time, your child is putting on a teething, your skin is covered with an unknown origin eczema. Well these are red flags warning you are stuck. Because you completely — a part form teething, period and sex — plunged in your comfort zone. I mean you are in a repeating and reassuring routine. You need it. You are stuck.
Reason three for being stuck: you are turning around and around and around, you have your perfect setting, you are using the perfect colours, the perfect perfumes. Everything is perfect. Too perfect. You followed every coaching tips, writing inspiration quotes, freelance write rules, but you are stuck because you miss an idea. You simply do not know what to write on.
Reason four for being stuck: you surf on the internet and start making comparison with others lives forgetting that this is the age in which everything can be gold, depending on how you are cleaver with Photoshop. But you are stuck and this all sucks.
All the reasons in one word: too much of everything. One has got his own way, his own tools, and you just have to be brave and label them, identify them.
For instance, before writing this lines I was stuck. I started writing and this is my personal contribution to get away with it.
Before writing this article, I fell like..hmm , yes there is something I can write on, to fill this time before going to school and bring back my daughter, but what? I am stuck, stuck stuck, stuck…ant the refrain goes on my mind like a broken clock: tick-tock, tick-tock.
I started writing. And this is it.
First: consider that there will be just one Murakami or King or Marquez or Marcus Aurelius. You grab their advices, you have to learn from these biggest ones. Their writing techniques, their writing discipline and rhythm, the way they use adjective, adverbs. In doing that, please do not forget your writing is yours. You are not King or Aurelius, or Gabo. You are just you and your writing is a mirror that is reflecting who you are in that moment. And know what? This is a kind of magic because you are able to write and to write well. You are gifted. Because you know how to write, for you it is natural..
I was stuck, now I’m writing.
What makes you stuck then? It is not the lack of an idea, as apparently it seemed; no, what males you stuck is the necessity to conform with to a set of rules. To do this and to do that. Because, specially when you are stuck you need someone telling you how to fix this. People love to know how and love how to get an immediate gratification.
But your soul, at a certain point, needs to rebel to heal. An advice is still an advice. But you keep going collecting info on how writing the best query, which are the most powerful words ever….so looking outside, they are trying to help giving you a shape, a model, a mechanism. You are a writer you are not a sort of “labelled” person.
All right, you can read and follow the writing smartest writers ever, but in the end it will be your choice.
So stay focused on who you are. You need a change because you are stuck? Stand up and go out, because you are becoming the prison of yourself.
Do not blame on anything.
Just breath and take fresh air.
Are you tired? Ok.
Are you not good at your writing? Ok
Are you stuck? Ok
You have to wait.
Sometimes it is not necessary doing anything.
Really.
Just open a door and go out