A Tool to Crush Writer's Block

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? It has to be one of the most debated topics in the writing world. Some writers believe there’s no such thing and others can attest to how debilitating it can be. I fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, but I have to say, I don’t like the word “block.” Stuck or having a less than productive day, sure, but having a block just sounds so awful to me! 

Quite some time ago, the lovely Mari McCarthy from Create Write Now gifted me her journaling course Overcome Page Fright. I first met Mari two years ago when I interviewed her about her book Heal Yourself with Journaling Power. If you’re not familiar with Mari, she famously says, “Release the issues in your tissues,” and she is living proof that journaling will change your life.

In 1998, Mari lost feeling and function on the right side of her body due to Multiple Sclerosis. After feeling fed up with conventional medicine, Mari took her health in her own hands and began writing to heal. As Mari continued writing, her MS symptoms improved and she was able to cancel her expensive medical insurance. Best of all, she “recovered her True Self and even tapped into talents she never knew she had.” 

The Self-Paced Journaling Course Overcome Page Fright is a 15-page PDF intended to be completed in seven days, but because it is self-paced, you can take as long as you need. I stuck to the recommended seven-day schedule and found it very manageable.

The course includes exercises like free-writing to gain mental clarity, journaling to get ideas, and writing about fear and perfectionism and how they affect your writing. At the end of the course, you will be well on your way to establishing a daily journaling habit.

Each day, you will find journaling exercises involving three or four steps as well as a tip of the day. For example on Day 1, you set a timer for ten minutes, noting how you feel before and then again when the timer goes off after ten minutes. Then you take five minutes reflecting on what you wrote and circling things that jump out at you.

As I worked through the pages in this PDF, I found myself looking at the act of writing in a new way. Perfectionism is something I’ve known to stop me from writing in the past. I don’t like putting things out there if I don’t think they’re ready for people to read. The problem with being a perfectionist is that if I hang on to this way of thinking, I will never publish anything because I will just keep telling myself it’s not ready. 

The exercises in Mari’s course helped me see this.

A fun twist that works well with this journaling course is applying it directly to your work in progress. I tried this and it helped me come up with some new ideas to make my story more interesting. I will also revisit the PDF the next time I’m feeling stuck. The exercises really helped me look at my writing in a different way. 

One of Mari’s tips of the day included with the course is keeping a running list. Reserve some journal pages for notes about topics that catch your interest and start a list, so when you’re experiencing one of those days where you don’t know what to write, you can check your list. 

I do this with bits of dialogue. Often a character will say something, but I have no idea where it fits in my story yet, so I write it down for later even though I’m not completely sure what to do with it. 

If picking up a copy of Mari’s course isn’t in the cards for you right now, try free writing in your journal the next time you feel writer’s block coming on. Even just writing about how you hate feeling stuck on your latest project can be a huge help.

Read some of Mari’s top journaling tips and watch our interview in this blog post.