Dealing With Writer's Block

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No matter how confident you think you are at thinking that you'll never suffer a writer's burnout, it's going to happen eventually. It happens with every hard-working content writer who puts everything into their work. Think of it like catching a cold in a way.

Being a content writer is competitive and tiring, you are expected to gradually improve as time goes on which is true but it takes a lot of work and dedication to get there and improve. Writing can be relaxing and fun when you have the ideas and are motivated to write but writing every day for consecutive days in a row is borderline mentally exhausting.

For those who don't know, a writer's burnout is when you know you can write and you have the ideas, but you just don't want to.

Writing every day and producing new content consistently is pretty much like having another job if you think about it, so it makes sense that a writer's burnout can happen occasionally. These last couple of days the writer's burnout has been hitting me hard, it's my first time having one from Medium but I know it'll pass and I'll write more again. It's natural.

I'm currently in the middle of a 30 Day writing challenge where I pledge on posting 40 articles in 30 days. The first 20 days I was fine but I've been slacking hard lately because of this writer's block I've been going through. I knew it was bound to happen but I know I have to fight through it because the longer I don't write, the lazier I get.

Signs of a Burnout

We all have lives outside of writing. Relationships, friendships, family, and a possible full-time job is way more important than writing and it's almost impossible to prioritize writing.

There's a lot more when it comes to writing and that's part of the burnout. Writing is the most important part but we also have to worry about coming up with the right headline, brainstorming the topic, optimizing our profile and articles for it to even have a chance to be seen, and obsessing over our stats.

Signs:

-Laziness

-Anxiety

-Lack of motivation

-Frusturation

-Stress

-Difficulty focusing

How To Deal With it

If you're going through burnout, it's important that you are aware of it and know that it's just a short phase and will eventually pass. In the meantime, take a couple of hours to yourself and treat yourself.

I was in the middle of writing and I stopped because I was just so uninspired by what I was typing on my keyboard. I watched a movie and relaxed for a couple of hours and when the movie ended, I felt like writing again. Everyone has their different ways of coping with writer's block and getting that motivation back, mine is watching movies.

Writer's know how bad it is to deal with writer's block. Sometimes it might not even be from writing, it could be from researching the topic you're talking about and losing interest because of that research. It makes it feel like a school project instead of a fun blog. When I write a blog and get bored of the topic, I don't quit writing the story entirely, I take a break from it and go back to it. Sometimes, fresh air and half an hour of time in the outdoors will refresh your brain. I like to go on runs on occasion to get my heart rate pumping and giving me that energy to write more when I eventually return to the article

Type, type, and type some more. Put words on that paper and write through the block, for most writers that's the best way of coping with burnout. Finish an article and don't even think about writing for the rest of the day.

"You can't think yourself out of a writing block; you have to write yourself out of a thinking block."

-John Rogers

Conclusion

Don't let writer's block take control of your mind any longer.

You want to be a successful writer, it's going to start off slow but the harder you work the faster you'll see the results. The most important part of growing organically on platforms like Medium is to write constantly and publish as many articles as you can. No one said it was going to be easy, it's up to you to decide if you want to put the work in. Obviously, we want to make money on Medium and that's my motivation. Don't forget there's still a chance for you on getting the final Medium bonus at the end of this month. $500 is a pretty good way of motivating me that's for sure.

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