Overcoming writer’s block proves to be a difficult task

February 6, 2019

As many of you know, every week, each of the editors for The Gannon Knight is required to write a column, or “editorial column,” as I lovingly like to call it even though it annoys our editor-in-chief to no end.
We have to do this every week, and every week I struggle to come up with something to write about.
If you give me a prompt, I can definitely write about it. If I watch a movie, surely I’ll have something to say about it. But if you just tell me to write, I have the hardest time finding my starting place.
I am seemingly in a constant state of perpetual writer’s block.
My friends like to point out how I almost exclusively talk in movie quotes, something I picked up from my family at home, but also my friends from high school.
Because of this, I always say that I haven’t had an original thought in years. While that is most definitely an exaggeration, it really feels true sometimes when I am trying to think what I can write about for 500 words each week.
For the most part, I follow a pretty consistent schedule. I go to class, come home, eat, watch Netflix and go to bed.
Maybe I hang out with friends somewhere in the middle, but for the most part, I don’t really diverge from that norm.
I tend to prefer going about my week like this as it makes everything a lot easier to sort out in my head, but when it comes to writing about something that I think that people will find even remotely interesting, my steady regimen leaves me with very few topics to discuss at length.
To anyone else who is suffering from this issue, I have found a kind of solution that works a good majority of the time. Whenever I am feeling really frustrated about not having anything to write about, I just shut my laptop and take a nap.
While it isn’t the most elegant method, and requires a good chunk of time to be taken out of your day, I always feel completely refreshed after a nap, and it really helps get my creative juices flowing.
I really have no idea what it is, but it just works.
Another thing that is a little bit more specialized to me that works is just to watch a good action movie.
While I may not find inspiration for my column in the movie, just shutting off my brain for a couple hours and enjoying some mayhem on screen helps reset my mind and get me back to good.
While any movie could really work, I think that anything you have to concentrate too much on kind of defeats the purpose I am trying to achieve.
But this is just me and I’m sure that there are a hundred different things that you can do to defeat the dreaded writer’s block.
I do think that across the board, just walking away and taking a break really helps in not only this situation, but most situations in life.
All I can really say for certain is that now that I have written about my writer’s block, I need to think of a new topic for next week’s column.