How To Write During Times of Anxiety and Writers Block
This article offers 6 tips on writing during times of anxiety and writers block.
In the face of crisis, many of us suspend our writing or knitting or painting or meditating or wool gathering. We tell ourselves that we’re busy. We tell ourselves to be “a realist,” or a “pragmatist.” We even take a grim, utilitarian pride in this — all the while knowing that we are abandoning the very things or practices that, during past crises, have helped us.
These days, when some of our neurons snap and sizzle with fear and fury, I only know what I know.
Here’s what I know: Since I was 14 years old, writing and reading have calmed and sustained me. Years later, when I was a long, long way from my 14th birthday, I would discover that over 300 clinical research studies (on the physical and psychological benefits of expressive writing) would endorse what, for years, I had been experiencing.
Here’s what I also know: When faced with our own denial or despair, we need to document the hard evidence, to remind ourselves that we have faced and survived past challenges. Back then, even while our hearts were thudding in our chests, we put one foot past the other to take that next step, to keep on keeping on.
6 Tips for Writing During Anxious Times
1. Redefine “Writing” Forget the notion of “good” or “successful” or “publishable” writing. Instead, let yourself write what makes sense for you. Let yourself write what will bring you comfort. Let yourself write or do or create whatever it is that will make you feel better—and be a better person to those who need you.
2. Use a Miniature Notebook Or Tiny Screen
Once, following a family bereavement, I put a tiny, 3" x 2" spiral notebook by my computer monitor. I filled one of those tiny pages every day. That’s all I could manage. But each tiny page brought a few moments of joy and a sense of control over the losses and events that had just happened.
3. Switch Up the Medium
If you usually hand-write your first drafts, remember that there are many online journals out there. Write short, small pieces on your phone. Or get yourself a pen and some post-it notes or white cocktail napkins. Or record yourself telling a story.
4. Edit
Now might be the time to find and edit those old drafts sitting in your computer. Or go through your online photo albums to pick out some accompanying photos for those pieces. Writing? Who said anything about writing? You’re just sprucing things up, dotting a few i’s and crossing a few t’s.
5. Don’t Write, Walk.
There are few things that a walk outside cannot make better. Wordsworth did it. So did Thoreau. And Mary Oliver. I love this interview with Oliver where she speaks about being out in nature and “listening to the world.”
6. Resurrect and Read Your “Blankie” Poems (or Stories or Essays or Songs)
In this published essay from 2016, I list a few of the poems that, for years and years, have been my emotional “blankies.” Find yours. Read them again. Learn them by heart.
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Some days, the most courageous thing we can do is take a moment to look away from the crisis playing out on our TV and phone screens. Use the salvaged time for a few minutes of comfort, joy and writing.
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