I’ve been sitting here at my computer for a while, feeling resistant to writing anything. So, I thought I’d write a blog post about feeling resistant to writing!
I’m sure you’ve experienced resistance to writing at some point, too. When you sit down to write, fully intending to make progress, only to find your brain would rather do anything else.
Personally, as I’ve been sitting here trying to get started, it seemed like the perfect time to open Google translate and see how much of my college French I’ve retained. (Answer: not a lot, but more than I expected!)
Why can it be so difficult to actually sit down and write?
You want to make progress. You want to finish your book. And yet, when the opportunity arises, you suddenly find countless tasks that need to take priority. You’re easily distracted, jumping up for a drink of water, a sweater, to adjust the lighting, and so on.
There are a couple things making it hard to write in this situation.
First, the task that you are undertaking is a creative one, and creative tasks take a lot of brain power.
Your brain is actually reluctant to take on activities that use large amounts of energy. It sees its primary job as keeping you alive, and expending energy on non-essential functions is not very efficient.
So your brain would much rather direct you to consuming something safe that someone else has created. Like online cat videos.
The second factor that makes beginning difficult, is that you’re fighting against inertia.
Think of a train at rest at a station. When it’s time to move it takes a lot of effort to get rolling. But once it is going, the momentum carries it forward.
The initial movement is difficult and takes a lot of energy, but things roll on smoothly afterward.
So, how do you push back against inertia and your brain trying to keep you safe, so that you can write your dang book?
Trick your brain
In order to circumvent your brain’s “helpful” impulse to protect you, challenge yourself to write as badly as possible.
Think about it: when you sit down to write, you’re usually trying to write well. You’re trying to do your best and translate your ideas onto the page in compelling, descriptive prose.
That pressure can make your brain freeze up.
Instead, remove that pressure, and tell yourself you are going to write terribly. Cheer yourself on as you go:
“Oh that’s awful!”
“So boring!”
“What drivel”
“You can do worse than that!”
If your brain is telling you that you can’t write well, then agree with it and write anyway!
The size of the goal matters
My go-to approach to tackle inertia is to set a very small writing goal: just 100 words.
When I’m feeling resistant to writing, I tell myself I just have to write 100 words, and then I can stop.
That’s about one long paragraph. It’s such a small goal that it’s hard to argue I can’t do it.
It’s as though I were staring down a huge weedy flower bed, but my job was only to pull one weed. It would be hard to say no to such a small request. But I would find it impossible to pull just one. (After all, I’ve put on my gardening gloves and have my trowel and bucket, I might as well dig a few…)
And once I’ve written 100 words, I’m usually ready to keep going. I got the train rolling, and I’ve picked up momentum.
Acknowledgement, not excuses
What these two approaches have in common is that they acknowledge how you’re feeling, and they reduce the expectation of productivity, but they don’t let you off the hook completely.
Because the writing does need to happen.
We can’t always wait until we’re burning with inspiration and momentum to write, or the book will never get written.
When I use the 100 word trick, I typically end up with about 800 words. That’s not a lot, but it’s a lot more than I would have had if I let resistance win. And you can absolutely write a first draft in 800 word increments!
It’s a fact: resistance is going to happen. It might show up occasionally, or every time you sit down to write. But you can’t let resistance run the show and still reach your writing goals.