Blinded by the White - Three Ways to Deal With Writers Block

by Jennifer Slattery

The white screen of death—it’s inevitable.

Even the most brilliant writers experience writer’s block on occasion, and often at the most inopportune times. This time period can be shortened, and perhaps even prevented, however, when a writer takes time to refuel, trusts God’s sovereignty, and maintains a posture of surrender.

Take time to refuel

I think it’s fair to say, most writers are idea people. We’re great at hatching—then chasing after—countless dreams. Until our schedule gets out of hand and we begin to feel depleted. Add to this all the other demands writers face each day, from marketing to editing to blogging, and it’s no wonder our brains check out from time to time.

When we’re fighting for words that refuse to come, often the best thing we can do is step away. Rest and take time to refuel—however is most effective for you. Regardless if you feel you have time to do so. In fact, it’s when we feel we’re most feeling squeezed that we need to step away. Even if that means leaving something undone.

I have a group of women I love hanging out with for the simple fact that they make me laugh. When I’m feeling drained or squeezed, I close my computer and give them a call. Laughter is healing and has the capacity to draw out the most stubborn muse. Plus, it relieves stress, and stress is a major creativity killer.

Trust God’s Sovereignty

Last week, staring at the bones of a new story and a calendar full of articles, keynotes, and guest blogs, I felt as if everything writerly in me had completely dried up. And I began to grow anxious, because really, a writer is only as good as their next idea, right? It stands to reason, when one’s creativity dies, their career dies with it.

Right?

Except, God is still in control even when our creativity stalls. Ephesians 2:10 tells me He has a plan for me. A plan He is working out, at this moment. A plan He is lovingly crafting and equipping me to fulfill. Knowing this allows me to rest in Him. As I do, something beautiful happens—I begin to die to myself, to my limited, anxious ways, and His Spirit is given free reign.

If we want to create lasting, intriguing, heart-stirring, beautiful work, we need to connect, deeply, with the Creator. With the God who formed galaxies out of nothing and who created the most colorful, diverse, and unexpected creatures. Because here’s the deal—our gift of creativity (and it is a gift) comes not from within ourselves but from God, the giver of every good and perfect gift. Our ability to create comes directly from Christ.

Creativity is Fed by Surrender

I know this. I know my greatest work, my greatest accomplishments, come from God’s Spirit working in and through me. I know only He can fulfill me, refuel me, and set my heart and mind on fire. And yet, so often, He is the very One I crowd out. I allow all my “have tos” to overshadow what I need most.

But when I pause and put God first, I find He has a way of working everything else out. Although that might result in a bit of redirecting, and yet, because God is a God of perfect wisdom and unfailing love, when He does nudge me right, left, or on a round-about, the result is always good. Better than good. Because He is good.

Writers block, unchecked, can literally lead to the death of a writer. But if God opened a door for us, be it through a contract or assignment, then we can rest assured He will enable us to walk through it. We can help on our end by taking time to refuel, trusting in His sovereignty, and maintaining a posture of surrender. By doing so, we place ourselves in the perfect position to be infused with and empowered by His unfathomably creative Holy Spirit.  

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Blinded by the White by Jennifer Slattery (Click to Tweet)

Three Ways to Deal With Writers Block by Jennifer Slattery  (Click to Tweet)

Take time to refuel~ Jennifer Slattery (Click to Tweet)

Novelist and speaker Jennifer Slattery has a passion for helping women discover, embrace, and live out who they are in Christ. As the founder of Wholly Loved Ministries, (http://whollyloved.com) she and her team put on events at partnering churches designed to help women rest in their true worth and live with maximum impact. She writes devotions for Internet Café Devotions, Christian living articles for Crosswalk.com, and edits for Firefy, a Southern fiction imprint with Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. When not writing, reading, or editing, Jennifer loves going on mall dates with her adult daughter and coffee dates with her hilariously fun husband.

Visit with Jennifer online at JenniferSlatteryLivesOutLoud.com and connect with her on Facebook

Restoring Love:

Mitch, a contractor and house-flipper, is restoring a beautiful old house in an idyllic Midwestern neighborhood. Angela, a woman filled with regrets and recently transplanted to his area, is anything but idyllic. She's almost his worst nightmare, and she s also working on restoring something herself. As he struggles to keep his business afloat and she works to overcome mistakes of her past, these two unlikely friends soon discover they have something unexpected in common, a young mom who is fighting to give her children a better life after her husband's incarceration. While both Mitch and Angela are drawn to help this young mother survive, they also find themselves drawn to each other. Will a lifetime of regrets hold them back or unite them and bring redemption along with true love?

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Breaking Through The Writing Wall

by Lynette Eason @LynetteEason

Recently, I had something happen that I’ve never experienced before. I hit a wall. A writing wall. I had the story in my head, I had part of it on paper and yet, I couldn’t seem to sit down and just finish the thing. Which was really bad because I had a deadline looming.

I have to admit that after almost 40 books, this experience was rather unnerving. I mean I would open the manuscript and just stare at the words I’d written. However, I wasn’t quite ready to panic yet. I was actually rather intrigued. I’d heard about writers’ block, of course, and while sometimes I’ve had to sit and think before putting my hands on the keyboard, I’d never actually been “stuck” to the point where I just couldn’t figure out which words to type. So what’s a writer to do when that happens?

Here are a few things I’ve done to get the words flowing again.

1. Pray about it. Here’s kind of how my prayer went. God, I love you. I know you love me. To be honest, I’m not really feeling it because while you gave me this story to write, the words aren’t coming. So…could you please give them to me? Sometimes He does, sometimes not.

2. Go do something else. If God doesn’t lay the words out for you right away, it could be that you just need to do something else. Yes, even on a deadline, stop the story and go to something else. Like work on the next story you have in the line-up. Or go watch a movie. Or read a book!

3. Set a tiny goal. Come back to the story that’s due and tell yourself you’re going to write just fifty words on it. And even if those fifty words are awful, at least you can fix awful. You can’t fix blank.

4. Stream of consciousness writing. Just write about what could happen. Do you need to introduce a new character? Does a character need to die? What is something that could happen that your reader would never expect—mostly because you didn’t expect it either. I mean, seriously, you could just be writing words and more words hoping that something will make sense. And then your heroine’s best friend ends up dead in the bathtub! WHAT??? But that’s another story altogether…(yes, that happened to me in Don’t Look Back.)

5. Exercise. WAIT! Don’t hit me…but yeah. It works. It gets the blood pumping and sometimes that blood seems to carry an idea or two to the brain. Try it. And besides, it’s good for you. And if you do that, you don’t have to feel guilty eating chocolate later.

6. Write first thing in the morning. Like early. I don’t know why that’s my best writing time, but it is. When I get up, if I’ll jump right on the story, I’ll get some of my best words of the day in. And if I wake up at 3:30AM (like I did two mornings ago) I don’t lie there and toss and turn, I simply get up and start writing. Even if I couldn’t think of a thing to write two hours before I went to bed. For some reason, the words decided to come at 3:30. I wrote over a thousand words before I started getting sleepy again. I went back to sleep around 5:30 and slept until 8:00 so lack of sleep didn’t ruin my whole day and I already had most of my word count done.

So, there you have it. Six ideas to knock through that writing wall. Don’t get discouraged, don’t get frustrated, just keep writing. What about you? What do you do when you feel like you’ve got writer’s block? Any great tips for getting past it?

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Breaking Through The Writing Wall by Lynette Eason (Click to Tweet)

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Lynette Eason is the award-winning, bestselling author of almost forty books. She writes for Revell and Harlequin’s Love Inspired Suspense line. Her books have finaled or won awards in contests such as The Maggies, Inspirational Readers Choice Award, The Carol, ECPA Book of the Year, and The Selah. She is also the 2016 Daphne du Maurier Award winner in the Inspirational Romantic Mystery/Suspense category and Overall Daphne Winner this year. Her most recent achievement is placing in the top 10 out of thousands of entries in the James Patterson co-writing competition. Lynette and her husband Jack live in upstate South Carolina with their two teenagers. Lynette can often be found online at www.facebook.com/lynette.eason , @lynetteeason (Twitter) , and www.lynetteeason.com.

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