Where To Get Started With Your Writing

Overcoming writer's block, resistance, and perfectionism

At our Q&A last week, a couple of people mentioned having their own Substack which got us curious—so we’re sharing a quick poll before we jump into today’s newsletter!

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Where To Get Started With Your Writing

One of the hardest things in writing, is getting started.

It’s not only true of writing, but really any sort of creative endeavor. You can call it writer’s block, resistance, or maybe just that monkey in your brain that keeps redirecting your attention. Always to something super interesting! But never something very important.

And at the end of the day, that cursed blank page remains as blank as ever—perhaps even more so.

What’s Getting In The Way

The first step to overcoming your stuckness is to try and figure out if there’s a specific reason you’re getting stuck. You’ve got to know your opponent before you can figure out how to beat them.

Procrastination

Anyone with ADHD is all-too-familiar with procrastination. We often put off those important tasks to do whatever feels more interesting, novel, or urgent.

This procrastination can come from a number of things, whether it is a struggle with motivation because you don’t know how to start, or maybe you’re haunted by perfectionism. Speaking of…

Perfectionism

Perhaps you’re stuck because of perfectionism, a common problem for people with ADHD. You may have experienced doing the wrong thing as a child and getting shamed and blamed for it, so now you’re afraid to do things unless they are perfect—anything to avoid the possibility of doing something wrong.

With writing, you may find that you’re continually editing everything you write, making it difficult to get much done because every sentence needs to feel perfect before you can move on to the next.

Pending Decision

Maybe you have a decision you have to make that you’re avoiding.

If I sit down and ask myself “what decision am I avoiding?” to my surprise, something often jumps immediately to mind.

Perhaps you’re having difficult starting on a project because you haven’t yet decided which of two opposing concepts you should write about. Or maybe you haven’t decided whether you’re going to share that personal detail in your writing.

Once you identify that unresolved decision, you can make a call and move forward without that mental block holding you back from fully committing.

Strategies for Getting Started

Here are some strategies to help you get your writing started.

Crappy First Draft

One way to overcome the fear of crappy writing is to intentionally write a crappy first draft. Once you’ve done that, you can edit to your heart’s content and perfect the writing as much as needed—often much easier to do once that crappy first draft exists!

Despite the name, the goal here isn’t actually to write poorly—it’s more about the intention of writing without editing or trying to fix or trying to perfect or optimize or whatever during the process.

The goal is to start messy and get everything out on the page.

We write and we don’t judge.

Write a Fake Email

This is one of my favorite writing tricks that I use all the time.

Rather than simply starting a new draft - I act as if I’m just going to explain my idea in an email to a friend, even putting “Dear Sam,” at the top. If you really want to commit, you can even do this in your email app and compose in a new email.

You could even adapt this to use a text message - send a flurry of text messages to yourself, then take all of those and dump them into your favorite word processor and suddenly—you’ve got your first draft!

Validating Your Idea

We covered this in a previous issue, but sometimes it may help if you spend the time to validate your idea first—then once you know that a writing idea is worth pursuing, that can provide the extra oomph to get it going.

Is Your Writing Idea Worth Pursuing? Here’s How to Know

Brain Sweep

Set a timer for 30 minutes or so (particularly with a visual timer like the Time Timer so you can see time moving), then just write down all of ideas in your head about the topic you want to write about. You can even do it as free writing where you just start moving the pen writing whatever comes to mind, but reminding yourself to come back to the topic.

While this likely won’t get you a draft to start with, it can help you identify some of the things you want to say about a topic and maybe even give you some sentences and phrases you can lift and use.

Index Card Arrangement

One strategy I used when I was writing my book was to write down each individual idea, quote, or concept I had about a topic onto an index card until I had 30 or more index cards. Then I put them all out in front of me on the floor, and started grouping them when there was some alignment between cards. What I usually ended up with was about 5 or 6 different piles (some with 2-3 cards, others might have 8) that were like sections for a chapter. Then I took those piles and re-arranged them in a sequential order that made sense from left to right.

This index card arrangement strategy helped me take a lot of loose ideas around a topic and organize them into a loose outline structure. It was a bit more chaotic than a normal outline might be (like my brain), but it worked for the way my brain saw disparate topics and how they connected.

Taking a Walk

Similar to the brain sweep, sometimes it can be helpful if you give yourself a question or topic to mull over, and then go for a 20 minute walk with no headphones or anything to distract. Maybe a pocket notebook to write down anything brilliant that comes to mind but otherwise you just want to walk and let your mind play with the question or idea.

I’ve had some of my favorite breakthrough ideas during a walk like this, by not giving my brain something else to do like listen to a podcast, it’s forced to be more creative and often links up ideas in a way I had never thought of before, or helps me arrange my thoughts in a new way.

Notes from Meredith

One thing I’ve learned after working with hundreds of ADHD clients over the years is that task avoidance is rarely ever about “not wanting to do the thing”. Usually, we really do want to get started but there are several obstacles in the way that we haven’t learned to identify or understand. We can’t remove a barrier if we can’t see it. If we truly want to make progress with our writing, we must first prioritize awareness of our own unique blocks.

The next time you find yourself avoiding facing a blank page, encourage yourself to shift into curiosity. Ask yourself some questions about why you are feeling stuck and use those answers to help you select the strategy that best addresses your block. The answer might not always be clear or simple, but the more insight we have, the easier it becomes to know what we need to do to start putting our thoughts onto the page.

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Have you struggled to get started? What has worked for you in the past?

Share with us in the comments.