How to Break Your Writer’s Block

… or Getting Ideas Out of Your Head And Onto The Page

This post by Bristol PGR Pam Lock, who’s been running Writers’ Retreats at Bristol since 2014, was originally shared on the Bristol Clear Blog.

A man slumped in front of a laptop

Some days writing is hard. Whether you have writer’s block or just can’t translate your ideas into writing, here are some practical ways to get your ideas out of your head and onto the page.

Free Writing

What is Free Writing? Free Writing is a brain dump, a way to write down your thoughts and ideas without constricting them by constantly editing yourself. It can be particularly useful for people who are afraid to ‘dirty the page’ with words that aren’t quite perfect or who lose track of ideas because they are constantly editing as they write.

Free writing is not about creating beautiful prose. That is the next stage, or even the stage after that. As Terry Pratchett once said, ‘The first draft is just you telling yourself the story’. Once you understand what story you want to tell, you can shape and translate it for others to read and understand. Free writing gives you a different way to access and explore your ideas.

How do I do it? For five minutes, write non-stop: don’t lift your fingers from the keyboard or your pen from the page. Just keep writing. Don’t stop to ponder or make corrections or look up a word’s meaning in the dictionary. Just keep writing.

If you find yourself stuck for something to say, write, ‘I don’t know what to write next’ or repeat the last word you wrote again and again until a fresh thought emerges. It won’t take long.
Be strict, finish your sentence at 5 minutes and stop writing.

When can I use free writing? There are lots of uses for free writing. I recommend it:

  • As a warm up. If you want to get started at the beginning of a writing day, five minutes of creative free writing is a great way to get yourself into the groove before you start tackling your academic writing. It can also open up creative pathways in your brain allowing you to write more smoothly. Write on anything: the view from your window, your journey to work, a painting or photo.
  • As a method to move forward when you are stuck. We all get stuck. Sometimes we just can’t quite work out what we think about something. Sometimes a walk around the block can be good to clear your head. Or five minutes of free writing to help you access deeper thoughts or accept ideas you may have been blocking for some reason.
  • As a way to develop or close an idea. It is easy to get into an inescapable circular pattern of writing. You get obsessed with one idea and end up writing it in slightly different phrasing again, and again, and again until you have thousands of words repeating one thing. Sometimes you just need to close the idea. Free writing can be a great way to do this so that you can move onto the next thing.

Want to know more? For more information about free writing, take a look at:

Peter Elbow, ‘Freewriting Exercises’, Writing without Teachers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 3-11.

Richard Nordquist, ‘What Is Freewriting? How Writing Without Rules Can Help You Overcome Writer’s Block

Six-word summaries

If you find free writing too unstructured, you could try creating a six-word summary of your article or chapter, or even of a single paragraph that isn’t working.

  • Take a few minutes to think about what the piece you want to summarise is about.
  • You may find it useful to write down a few key words to get you started.
  • Spend five minutes sculpting a six-word summary of the piece
  • Not only can this help you work out the essence of your writing piece, the summary you produce can be helpful in the editing process too.
    • Ask yourself: Does every paragraph or sentence help me to communicate the essential ideas of this piece to my reader?
    • Use it to ensure you don’t include anything redundant or miss anything essential from your writing.

Talk to someone else

For some people, writing can be a lonely process. I advocate finding someone you like to write with and meeting up with them regularly for company and motivation. Writing doesn’t have to be a solitary.

Writing buddies can take many forms. Finding someone you trust to be quiet and productive during your writing time but who will be good distracting company during those very important breaks is a great way to improve your writing.

They can also help you break through writer’s block. Talk for 5 minutes at the beginning of a writing day about what you want to each. Challenge each other. Can you help improve or clarify each other’s writing projects? If you are stuck on something, talk it through with your writing buddy. Even if they are not familiar with your subject, they may just ask the right question to make you look at your ideas in a new way.


Want to get involved in WriteFest 2018, the celebration of academic writing held during November? Find out how the Bristol Doctoral College is marking the month in our round-up blogpost.

The art of writing

tessa profile v3Tessa Coombes is a first year postgraduate researcher in the School for Policy Studies. Her research will explore housing policy and agenda setting during the Bristol Mayoral election next year. The research stems form a desire to develop a better understanding of the role local elections and new models of local governance have on framing policy agendas.

I’ve always enjoyed writing, even if I don’t always do it well. I find it a creative process, that brings to life all those thoughts and ideas, commentary and debate that whirl around in my head, but frequently have no real outlet. Writing has been a part of every job I’ve had, in different ways and for very different audiences. I’ve had to adapt and develop my own style to respond to the demands of others, and to work to other people’s deadlines that often serve to stifle my own creative process. But, nonetheless, I enjoy writing. I write for fun and have my own blog. I also write contributions to local news websites and magazines, such as Bristol 24-7 and The Bristol Cable, and for the professional press like the Planner Magazine. All of these provide an opportunity to write about things of interest to me, sometimes related to my research but often not, where I can freely express my opinion. That’s part of the fun of writing.

Over the last couple of years I have had to get used to a different kind of writing, one that is more controlled and evidenced, that fits with particular conventions. Last year, when doing an MSc, back in the academic world for the first time in over 20 years, I had to complete formal assignments and a dissertation. This involved a form of writing that was entirely different to anything I have done in a long time.  Then this year, embarking on my PhD, I have once more had to develop my style further into academia, a style change I find both challenging and rewarding. Challenging because my inclination is to keep things simple, use simple language and keep away from jargon. Rewarding because when it works and I can combine simplicity with complexity there is a real feeling of achievement.

My approach to writing is to see it as a creative output, something that occurs naturally for me in response to learning. After all, what’s the point of all that learning if you can’t share it with other people? A blank page, for me, is an opportunity to articulate and share, rather than something to be scared of. Writing is like creating a painting, there are different layers that are needed to build the picture, which on their own make little sense, but together they can evolve into something worthwhile, a masterpiece that others will enjoy. I view writing my PhD in a similar way. There are layers that I will write at different times, continuously throughout the process, that need to come together into a coherent story at the end. There’s a complexity to this writing process, in terms of debate and argument, analysis and detail. But there’s also a simplicity about it, where carefully crafted pure and simple arguments can be brought together into quite a simple story. A story that will grab the readers attention, and will slowly but surely take them through the complexity in a way that makes sense. In a way that brings them to your conclusions with a sense of understanding and agreement.

There’s lots of advice to students about how to write, much of which suggests you set yourself a daily writing target, which you then stick to no matter what. I can see why the discipline of this is important and why it must work for many people, but I’ve tried this approach and for me the writing that comes from it is stifled, boring and constrained. If I’m not in the mood to write, then forcing myself to write just doesn’t work. I’ve written assignments like that and when I go back to read them I can tell that it was forced rather than creative thoughts that made up the report or essay. The work is dull and it’s lacking in energy, even if the points made are the right ones, the style is very different. I prefer an approach that feels more creative, one that has routine, but is based on my preferences, rather than someone else’s (there’s a good discussion here on creating routine when writing, drawing on the work of Ronald Kellog).

When I first begin the process of writing something new I try to avoid the clutter and distraction of notes generated from my reading. I start with a blank page. I then try to form my thoughts on what I have read into a short discussion of key arguments, issues and themes. I do this without the clutter of referencing and acknowledging who said what and how. I do it from memory, from thoughts that occur to me from reading my notes and I do it when I am feeling creative and able to write fluidly. For me this works, most of the time! Of course, sometimes the creativity is just not there, it’s beyond my grasp, I can’t think where to start or how to structure my thoughts. I’ve come to recognise those times and instead I do something else with my time, like more reading, organising files, and literature searching. All the time continually mulling over the story I want to tell and trying to work out how I can construct it. I may also use this thinking and reflecting time to write something else, something less constrained, where I can write freely without the confines of academic convention – something like a blog maybe! Eventually, often after much reflection, I am ready to write and can go back to the writing that needs to be done.

The challenge of writing is an integral part of any PhD. The only advice I have on writing is to do what works for you, try different approaches and look back on what’s worked when you’ve written things before. But above all, enjoy it, it’s a precious opportunity to express yourself, articulate your thoughts and tell the story of your PhD for others to enjoy.