Kick Academic Writer’s Block in the Ass

Academic writing is hard on a good day and not all days are good. Sometimes you know you need to work on a paper, but you draw a blank every time you sit down to work on it. You spend hours struggling to pull words from your mind and get them on the page. Welcome to writer’s block in academia. It’s frustrating, stressful, and steals time. So, here are three quick tips to help you get past academic writer’s block. Whether you’re starting a new manuscript or stuck in the middle of an ongoing project, these three tips can help you overcome academic writer’s block.

1. Beating The Blank Page

One common cause of academic writer’s block is the “blank page problem.” That’s when you are first starting a new paper, chapter, or section and are stuck staring at a blank word-processing page, wondering where to begin. Sometimes, you start and stop, rewriting that first sentence over and over; unsatisfied and unable to move on. A blank page is filled with endless, overwhelming possibilities. It can feel intimidating and unstructured, leading to academic writer’s block.

There’s an easy solution to this. Take care of the blank page problem by doing a ‘brain dump’. Ask yourself: what are the major sections your paper needs to have, what points do you want to make, and what other relevant thoughts do you want to include? Then, write them on the page as quickly as possible, without editing yourself.

For example, for this blog post, I wrote:

• need an intro paragraph, 3 tips, and a sign-off
• tentative title: 3 ways to overcome writer’s block – is this title interesting enough?
• Opening paragraph: it is a common issue for students (and even professional writers) – I wonder if I can find some estimates of how common this is
• First: Often related to the intimidation factor of an empty page and not knowing where to start – blank page problem – brain dump solution
• Second: Write out of order. Why do we always make things harder than they need to be?
• Third: Stop trying to write pretty the first time, just write the shitty first draft
• Sign off: a reminder to join the community and get cool goodies – does cool make me sound dated?

Notice how this is nearly stream-of-consciousness? That’s because it’s important to keep it light and avoid overthinking, self-censoring, or editing at this stage. The point is to get the information out of your head and onto the page to give you somewhere to start.

2. Drop the Rigidity and Go With The Flow

A major cause of academic writer’s block is how most of us learned to write. You start at the first topic sentence and end with a conclusion. Each sentence must logically tie into the prior sentence and you should never skip around. If you need a figure, then stop and create it; if you need a statistic, then stop and look it up before you continue writing. This rigidity in the process often gets in the way of good, quick writing. As I noted in Tip 1, the key to overcoming writer’s block in academia is to jot your thoughts down on paper and return to edit later. So skip around. Start with the easiest part first and get some momentum behind you. The trickier parts often go more easily when you have already worked out the simpler sections.

3. Write the Shitty First Draft

My final tip today is to permit yourself to write the shitty first draft of your manuscript. Like the intimidation of possibility inherent in a blank page and the rigidity of writing in order, a huge cause of writer’s block is putting too much pressure on yourself to be a “good writer.” But, good writing doesn’t come from the first try. Good writing comes from good editing! Why spend a lot of time trying to get the first draft of your sentence perfect when you will edit it multiple times later? You can’t know what structure, content, and word choice will be perfect for that sentence until you can see the entirety of the section you are writing and can edit it in context, so why stress over it at the beginning?

If you’re stuck and want to beat academic writer’s block, allow yourself to be less than perfect, to focus on basic content, and worry about style later. If you’re stuck in this habit (like many graduate students), speech-to-text can help you here. Try dictating what you want to communicate in your writing and then edit it later. It’s amazing how much faster the entire process is when you aren’t agonizing over each sentence.

Now Get Out There and Kick Writer’s Block in Its Academic Ass!