By Kristin Backert 

I have no idea what to write. Um…maybe…uh…nope, that’s probably just going to sound weird. So maybe instead I…um…I don’t know!!! I don’t know what I want to write! So tell me what you want, what you really, really want. I wanna, I wanna,  I wanna, I wanna,  I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig ah. 

Writer’s block. Ugh. Am I right? How many times have you sat down, ready to work on that essay or report or short story, and drawn a blank? Even with the pressing crush of a deadline looming, your brain decides to just play some Spice Girls song over and over. Entertaining, yes, but not exactly helpful in this situation. 

I went to college and grad school for English, so you’d think that writing would come easily to someone who chose a life that is literally all about writing. Wrong!! No matter the profession, writing can be hard. And sometimes, no matter what we do, no matter how many threats (Start writing now or I’ll decapitate this plushie!!!) or rewards (Write for 5 minutes and then I can eat some ice cream!) we offer ourselves, we’re just…stuck. So what can we do in this scenario?

Beyond the obvious answer of lying down and waiting for the world to end (because then your writing is probably no longer required), I’ve found one method that works for me: writing by hand. Yes, here in our digital age of 2025, I forsake the computer and choose to go analog! 

This precious Pokémon notebook is my current writing book. It’s full of creative writing, and the handwriting is atrocious because my hand can only write so quickly as my brain swirls with ideas. But that’s the thing – my brain is swirling with ideas. That writer’s block has dissipated, and I can write. Even if it’s only a paragraph, it’s still more than I had. When I was in school, I actually used to handwrite things too. I’d start jotting down ideas, maybe some quotes I wanted to explore, and a bunch of questions that I ran into. For every question I ran into (why does this lion keep showing up in this medieval story and not mauling this one knight? Why does Ned Stark keep using this specific type of language during this specific battle?), I’d write down a bunch of potential answers and figure out which, if any, had value. It felt like a mystery to solve, and I’d have lines and circles all over my page as I puzzled things out. 

Writing by hand gives me permission to be messy (as evidenced by my handwriting). It feels more like a draft because I know I can’t turn in this hideous piece of paper. I’ve got permission to make this draft as imperfect as I want it to be, and that knocks the writer’s block down a notch or two. When I’m staring at the screen, there’s this sense that anything I type needs to be perfect. After all, if I make it perfect now, then I don’t need to come back to it later and revise. But I’ve found that if you get stuck in that mindset, you’ll never be able to start writing because you’re afraid. Fear is the mind killer, and you’ve got to find a way to neutralize that fear. Writing by hand, for me, is my most effective tool when it comes to overcoming that fear. 

Of course, writing by hand isn’t for everyone. Your fear-killing tool might involve dictating ideas, doing a brain dump, or who knows! The important thing is to try out a bunch of methods to see which spices up your life (yes, we are 100% ending with another Spice Girls reference!).