You may be thinking, “Ok, so all this guidance is good, but sometimes I just get stuck! What I normally do just isn’t working!” That’s a familiar feeling for all writers. Sometimes the writing flows as if by magic, and sometimes it just stops. Cold. It’s like your brain has run out of things to say. If you just wait for the magic to come back, you might wait a long time. The thing is, writing is a practice—it takes consistent effort. Not everything you write will end up in the final draft. Sometimes we have to write what Anne Lamott calls a “shitty rough draft.”

So how do writers get going when they feel stuck or uninspired? They develop a set of habits and have more than one way to write to get the words flowing again.

Writing Anxiety

Let’s take a moment, before we get into habits and tools to talk about anxiety. Do you worry excessively about writing assignments? Do they make you feel uneasy or agitated? Do you have negative feelings about certain types of writing? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might experience writing anxiety. Writing anxiety simply means that a writer is experiencing negative feelings about a given writing task. The last of the questions above points out something important: writing anxiety is often more about the audience and/or purpose for a given writing task than it is about the act of writing itself.

Let’s consider this situational nature of writing anxiety for a moment. Imagine you just bought a new pair of headphones. You brought them home, removed all the packaging, listened to your favourite album, and they’re amazing! So you decide to visit the company website, and you write a stellar review of the product, giving it a five-star rating and including descriptive details about the headphones’ comfortable fit, excellent sound quality, ability to cancel outside noise, and reasonable price.

Now, let’s say that the next day in biology class your instructor covers the topic of biomes, and you learn about animal habitats and biodiversity and the interrelation and interdependence of species within biomes. You find it fascinating and can’t wait to learn more. But then something terrible happens. Your instructor assigns a term project on the subject. As your instructor begins to describe the length and other specifications for the report, complete with formatting guidelines, citation requirements, and references at the end, your palms start to sweat, your stomach feels uneasy, and you have trouble focusing on anything else your instructor has to say. You’re experiencing writing anxiety.

Writing anxiety is the experience of feeling uneasy about writing. Writer’s block is what you experience when you can’t manage to put words on the page. But your anxiety isn’t necessarily about the act of writing. Just yesterday you wrote a great review for those cool new headphones. So why do you suddenly feel paralyzed by the thought of writing the biology essay? Let’s consider some possible causes.

What Causes Writing Anxiety?

The causes of writing anxiety are many. Here are just a few:

• Inexperience with the type of writing task
• Previous negative experiences with writing (maybe someone, perhaps a teacher, has given you negative feedback or said negative things about your writing)
• Negative feelings about writing (I’m not a good writer. I hate writing.)
• Immediate deadline
• Distant deadline
• Lack of interest in the topic
• Personal problems or life events

Level of experience may explain why you felt comfortable writing the headphone review while you break out in a sweat at the thought of the biology paper. If you’ve never written anything similar to a specific assignment, maybe you’re unsure about whether or not you can meet the assignment requirements or the teacher’s expectations. Or maybe the last time you turned in a written report for school you received negative feedback or a bad grade from the teacher. Maybe you procrastinated most of the term and now the paper is due next week and you feel overwhelmed. Or maybe it’s the second week of the term and the finals week deadline seems so far away that you’re not motivated to write.

Knowing the cause of your writing anxiety can help you move beyond it and get writing, even if you can’t completely eliminate the problem. If the assigned topic doesn’t interest you or if you’re having problems at home, those probably aren’t issues that will just disappear. But, I invite you to try some of the following strategies to help you move forward with even the most anxiety-inducing writing assignments.

Strategies for Overcoming or Managing Writing Anxiety

There are a number of strategies to help you move past the feeling of being lost or stuck. Here are a few you can try to help you to get writing again.

Just Start Writing

It might sound like it’s oversimplifying, but it’s true. Half the battle is to just start writing. Try some strategies like freewriting or dialectic note-taking (for more on this, check out Chapter 9: Strategies for Getting Started. But to get started, sometimes we need to let go of perfectionism and embrace messy, not great writing. Bruce Ballenger, a well-known writer and English professor, explains why writing badly is an important part of the writing process:

Giving myself permission to write badly makes it much more likely that I will write what I don’t expect to write, and from those surprises will come some of my best writing. Writing badly is also a convenient alternative to staring off into space and waiting for inspiration (Bellenger, 2001, p. 86).

Sometimes the biggest problem writers have with getting started is that they feel like the writing needs to be good, or well organized, or they feel like they need to start at the beginning. None of that is true. All you need to do is start.

Have you ever seen a potter make a clay pot? Before a potter can start shaping or throwing a pot, they have to bring the big wet blob of clay and slap it down on the table. It’s heavy and wet and messy, but it’s the essential raw material. No clay? No pot. “Bad writing” is a lot like that. You have to dump all the words and ideas onto the table. Just get them out. Only then do you have the raw material you need to start shaping the words into something beautiful and lasting. You can wait until the revision stages to worry about shaping your writing to be its best. For now, just get the ideas on the table.

Create Smaller Tasks and Short-Term Goals

One of the biggest barriers to writing can be that the task just seems too big, and perhaps the due date is weeks away. These can both contribute to feelings of being overwhelmed or to the tendency to procrastinate. But the remedy is simple and will help you keep writing something each week toward your deadline and toward the finished product: divide larger writing tasks into smaller, more manageable tasks and set intermediate deadlines.

Imagine that you have a research paper that’s assigned during Week 6 of a 12-week term, and it’s due in the last week of classes. Make a list of all the tasks you can think of that need to be completed, from beginning to end, to finish the assignment. List the tasks and assign yourself due dates for each task. Consider taking it a step further and create a task table that allows you to include a column for additional notes. Here’s an example:

Collaborate

Get support and talk to a friend, family member, or classmate. Sometimes talking about your ideas is the best way to develop them and get more ideas flowing. Write down notes during or just after your conversation. Classmates are a great resource because they’re studying the same subjects as you, and they’re working on the same assignments. Talk to them often, and form study groups. Ask people to look at your ideas or writing and give you feedback. Set goals and hold each other accountable for meeting deadlines.

Embrace Reality

Don’t imagine the situation of your writing assignment to be any better or worse than it really is. There are some important truths for you to recognize:

• Focus on what you do best rather than worrying about your perceived weaknesses
• Acknowledge that writing can be difficult, but you can do hard things
• Recognize what might be new or unfamiliar about the type of writing that you’re doing
• Understand that confusion and frustration are a natural part of experiencing new things, and it’s okay—it’s part of the learning process
• Remember that you’re a student and that it’s only by experiencing things that are new and unfamiliar (new formats, new audiences, new subject matter, new processes, new approaches, etc.) that you grow

Seek Out Experts

If you can, find more experienced writers (especially related to the type of writing that you’re doing) and ask them questions. Sometimes, this might just mean a friend or family member who’s already taken a couple years of college courses. Maybe it’s a fellow student who has already taken the class you’re taking now. Remember that the tutors in your writing center can be a big help at any stage in the writing process. Make an appointment. And don’t forget to reach out to your instructor and/or TA. Ask them for suggestions, for clarification, for feedback. That’s what they’re there for!

Another way to learn from others is to look at examples of other pieces of writing in the genre you’re working on. How is this piece organized? Does it make use of source material? What sort of tone does it use? If you don’t know where to find examples, ask your instructor.

Adaptations

This section has been adapted from Overcoming Writing Anxiety and Writer’s Block in The Word on College Reading and Writing by Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

References

Bellenger, B. (2001). The Importance of Writing Badly. Heinemann. https://bruceballenger.com/uploads/3/4/3/6/34369735/importance_of_writing_badly_long.pdf