Overcoming Writer’s Block in the Modern Era
Over the past month, I’ve found myself bereft of writing ideas. The dog days of summer have a tendency to make people lazy, wanting to relax and do, well, not much of anything. With the summer vacation season drawing to a close, I decided I need to get back into the swing of things and get back to writing. Although, what about? There are plenty of things to get fired up about in the news lately. However, as Matt Taibbi points out in his new book Hate Inc., “the typical news watcher over the past few years has become more addicted to the experience of being outraged, while retaining less about specific reasons for outrage.” Lately, I’ve found myself guilty of this addiction. Taibbi seems to have snapped me out of the daze I’ve been in over the summer.
The Serenity to Accept the Things You Cannot Change
I’ve been fired up about a variety of topics this summer, but none of them more than on the surface, no deeper than an inch. In order to write about something, one needs to be interested in a topic at a deeper level. I believe that in order to get into something at a deeper level, we have to focus. These days, our focus is being pulled in a million different directions: work, school, family, politics, social media, the news, etc. There comes a point where it’s just too much and it becomes difficult to deal with it. Well, you don’t have to.
Earlier this summer, I began to think about how my focus was being pulled in many different directions, specifically when it came to current events. I had gotten rid of cable years ago and now my mother was attempting to do the same, citing her disgust in how the media essentially lacked any real news. The quality of content on TV degraded to such a low level that it became unwatchable for her. I’ve agreed with this for quite some time. So, I decided to turn the clock back a decade or two and subscribe to a newspaper. That’s right! A real, actual newspaper, made of paper not silicon chips and wire.
After reading through it each day, I let my mother read it. We’ve both noticed how much better we feel having done this. I am happy to see that after a month of reading the paper, in this case the Wall Street Journal, I feel that my focus isn’t being pulled in a million different directions. Every morning when I read the paper, I find myself reading the stories that interest me and perhaps I research them a bit further. Choosing which stories to even bother reading is where the key to focus lies. Instead of consuming content mindlessly delivered through an app, I became a bit more deliberate with my choices. Reading the physical newspaper was a real, tangible action as opposed to consuming social media content.
The Courage to Change the Things You Can
Becoming deliberate with my news consumption made me realize that I was subconsciously instilling some discipline into my life. By choosing to forego certain things, my focus increased dramatically. Avoiding things that divide and conquer my focus, such as social media, drastically improved my ability to come up with writing ideas. The key example is me: I avoided most media for a few weeks, being careful and deliberate on what I chose to consume and how I consumed it, and here I am back to writing!
Tech companies have become exceedingly efficient at conquering our collective attention spans. They have whole divisions of quantitative teams that have codified human psychology. As I’ve mentioned many times to people, you simply cannot win against mathematics. Social media apps have been coded in such a way to keep your eyeballs on them for as long as possible. If we choose to forego browsing Instagram or waiting for those likes on Facebook, we become free to focus on the things that truly enrich our lives.
The Wisdom to Know the Difference
In being more deliberate with what media I consumed and how I consumed it, I’ve learned to see what is worth my time and what is not. It was a positive feedback loop. The more critical I became of what I read or watched, the better the content that I subsequently consumed. The algorithm worked! The machine was learning at a geometric rate!
Now that I knew what content is worth my time and which isn’t, I felt better able to gain the mental fortitude and desire to begin to write again. Granted, this specific piece on my overcoming writer’s block didn’t have much to do with any specific piece of media I consumed, it did make feel better that I have overcome my writer’s block and I felt I needed to share what worked for me.
By following these steps:
1. Turning off and tuning out most media
2. Choosing to be deliberate about what to consume and how to consume it
3. Discover your own particular likes, not those of others
you can choose topics which interest you enough about which to write. Once you are interested enough in a particular area, the ideas will begin to flow out of your brain and all you can hope is that your fingers can type fast enough to get them down on paper.
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