How to write when you don't know what to write or "don't have time"

Writing advice for myself and for you

I get the impression that sometimes people think about me, “You’re a professional writer, that must mean you never get writer’s block.” Well, I’m here to disabuse you of that notion. I get writer’s block almost every time I write, save for when an idea bursts out of me and is so insistent and nagging and convincing that I stop whatever else I’m doing and start writing before I can second-guess myself.

There’s usually a VERY short window of time for that to happen, because I’m a genius at second-guessing myself. My self-deprecating mind will always find a way to worm in a thought I can’t shake about how I’m not good enough, or what if it’s not perfect (always a favorite), or shouldn’t you be doing something else that’s “more important.” It’s easy to find excuses not to write; it’s much harder to simply sit down and write and grapple with our human imperfections and the fact that writing isn’t math. There’s no perfect way to get from 2 + 2 equaling four with the written word.

I could have expressed the sentiments in the above two paragraphs in an infinite number of ways, with an endless combination of permutations of words. I probably will write about this again at some point because I’m someone who often wants to write, longs to write, feels incomplete without writing, but doesn’t actually do it. While you may see a prolific writer with bylines in dozens of publications, when I don’t write even though I have time to, all I see are my failures, the also dozens of pieces I could’ve written but didn’t allow myself the grace and opportunity to see how they turned out. I let fear win, and those regrets haunt me. So if you take away anything from this post, it’s that, in my experience, you will never regret having written.