A Cold Case of Writers Block…
When your job is putting words on a screen at scale, writers block is a problem.
Writing isn’t like swinging a hammer, managing spreadsheets or showing up for a sales call even though you A don’t feel like it and B are hung over and would rather watch reruns of the Office or Schitts Creek...
Now I already hear you purists and fucking nerds standing up and yelling at me(inside of course cz you are fuckin pansies and I’d kick your ass in real life)..
“Luke haven’t you heard the famous quote from Jacqueline Pretty:
‘So what’s the secret to writing well and quickly? Structure.’
End quote… (Never was great at grammar or following the rules, no wonder I was a D English student…)
I get it, I get it… Have a structure, have a routine and the words will come right?
Turn off your phone, lock the door and ignore your friends/family and Twitter feed and viola!!
Inspo arrives.
Well I think anyone who isn’t a fucking liar will admit that sometimes that just doesn’t work.
This past 6 months I’ve battled more writers block than any other period during my 7+ years making income off of writing on social media.
Prior to this period I was writing 200+ posts in a weekend for clients and myself.
That’s across Linkedin and Twitter mostly with a few IG posts thrown in there.
Yes indeed you could say I was a bloody machine and it wasn’t hard for me.
Was it Whisky Fueled?
At first I thought my writers block was fueled by my no drinking challenge. I quit for about 5 months starting last August and lasted until February of this year.
I won’t get into that again in this post BUT I’ve realized since hitting the bottle a bit in February that whisky was not the reason I was able to write.
Why?
Well quite simply being back on the sauce did nothing to cure my writers block and general lack of creativity during the current season of my life.
The good news is that means I don’t have to get hammered in the hopes of completing my work for my clients.
BUT THE BAD NEWS IS IM STILL NOT WRITING 200 POSTS A WEEKEND!
So How have I, a professional Ghostwriter Battled Writers Block?
I’ve tried everything I can think of:
- Cannabis
- Whisky
- Working out early
- Working out late
- Sleeping in
- Not Sleeping
- Yelling at myself
I’ve been forced to look deeper than work.
I’ve been forced to look at my dead soul and wonder, shoot should I disturb you?
Thanks to some work with a pretty cool Professional Unblocker of Stuck People (or some title I don’t know what to call her but you should totally go follow Danielle Aime) I’ve started to face some of the emptiness within and the darkness I’ve always avoided.
Posts for another day but I’ve come to realize my writers block has little to do with my ability and everything to do with life.
It wont last forever.
But in the meantime I’ve had to stop fighting.
I’ve had to slow down and write less posts.
I currently write about 10 posts a weekend and thats all I can handle.
Feels pathetic for a guy who used to write 200 posts a weekend.
But this is just where I am at right now.
So is this a post about travel?
Naw not really in the traditional sense of the word…
But I think this Medium blog is about more than just my upcoming travels around the world…
It’s about the travels of a human soul, trying to figure shit out.
Peace peeps.
