What Young Writers Should Do When They Just Can’t Write

My fingers have been itching for a keyboard. 

But, as I write this, my eyes feel tired. 

My head droops.

 I’ve been waiting for this moment all day. A moment when I can “just write.” A moment where I can lay aside the stress of school, the pressure to balance my work with my family and the rest of my life, the crushing feeling that my priorities aren’t right. 

I sit here with my keyboard, my fingers itch, and I wait. I wait for inspiration. I wait for words to come. But, instead of words, I sit here staring like a zombie at a glaring computer screen. 

I don’t have the mental energy to write, the words blip across my mind, I just don’t have what it takes. Why am I sitting here anyway? I haven’t written anything for weeks. I’m a failure. I should just go to bed. 

You aren’t the only one feeling empty and wordless after a long, hard day: a day where you, quite frankly, just couldn’t write. 

The fact is, there are seasons where a writer can not write. Sometimes, other things must come first. 

Now, I’m not saying that writing shouldn’t be a habit;  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t prioritize it; I’m not saying that you shouldn’t figure out where and when you write best and then write during those times and at those places. I am not arguing against the idea that writers must write and even make sacrifices to write. 

For example, during the summers I work at a Christian camp from eight o’clock in the morning to after ten o’clock at night without access to technology (I usually write on a computer). While I am working, the only opportunity for writing is on the weekends or very late at night when I am ready to drop into bed from exhaustion. Don’t get me wrong, my work at this camp is good! It is a ministry that I should give myself to during the summer. 

But it is a ministry in which I can not really prioritize writing. 

I am sure that at some point in your life, you have felt this same conflict. In your heart, you really want to write. Your fingers itch for a pen or a keyboard. But life must come first. Time with God must come first. Family must come first. School must come first. So, my fellow itchy-fingered writers, that brings us to a very important question: what do you do when you just can’t write? 

1. Give Yourself Grace

A tendency I have found in me is to constantly beat myself up about my writing…especially when I’m not writing. 

You’re not writing, Karis, I tell myself How dare you not be writing? You are compromising all of your dreams. You are such a hypocrite. How dare you even call yourself a writer? You’ll never finish that book; you’ll never submit that article; you’ll never publish that blog post. The “you’ll nevers” are probably the worst part of this whole guilt complex because they are the most defeating. I will never be consistent. I will never be able to follow through…and so on.

The problem is that when we tell ourselves that we won’t do something, when we tear our own selves down, we do truly become what we tell ourselves we are. After all, if we can never be good enough, why try to write anything excellent? If we don’t call ourselves writers, why should we try to become ones? If are doomed to writing inconsistently forever, why not scratch the whole thing and quit trying to write at all?

Friend, stop defeating yourself with “I’ll nevers.” Instead, give yourself some grace. 

Nothing can cripple your writing more than feeling guilty because you aren’t writing. Take a deep breath, and thank God that you enjoy the power of words so much. Ask Him to use you to weave beautiful sentences, picturesque phrases, clear and truthful paragraphs. Then do the next right thing, whatever that is in the season of life you are in right now.

I understand that this sounds easy, but it is truly hard. It is difficult to just “quit guilt-tripping” yourself. It involves a change in your heart, a renewed mind. I’m just supposed to “give myself some grace”? You may be thinking, how does that even work? Well, I can’t give you step-by-step self-help instruction in “giving yourself grace.” But I do hope to give you some encouragement. 

   If God has words for you to write and has instilled in you a desire to write them, you should not let yourself obsess about the fact that you aren’t writing. There will be a time. There will be a place. There will be an opportunity. Keep searching. Keep working. Keep dreaming. Keep praying. 

2. Gather Ideas

Every day, we humans are constantly taking in information. In the last few weeks, I have gained a lot of knowledge. I read about the Great White Fleet that America sent out in 1907. I learned that nerve gas is not as necessary for dental surgery as deep breaths are. I know now (after visiting a college weight-lifting class) that I really need to work on my weight-lifting form. These are all seeds for great writing ideas. 

Perhaps I could write a poem showing different perspectives about the Great White Fleet from around the world. Maybe I could write a creative nonfiction piece on my dental woes or on my awkward weightlifting form. Even if I have no time or no energy to write, I can be constantly looking, constantly searching, constantly digging. Maybe what you read in your devotions this morning would make great Biblical fiction (or even fantasy)! Maybe you had a discussion about an ethical issue with a classmate and want to write an article about it. The possibilities are endless. Write them down! 

Usually (If I don’t forget them first), I write all my creative ideas down in a Google Document or on a piece of paper. Then, when I have time to write, I can come back to this source and find ideas and inspiration. In the meantime, even if I’m not writing, I’m inspiring myself to write. And that may be just as important.

3. Watch People 

As writers, we want realism in our books, articles, poems, and stories. And one of the keys to realism is discerning character motivations. What are your character’s strengths, weaknesses, and fears? What drives them and inspires them? You can find these questions in almost any character questionnaire. 

But, if we truly want an aspect of believability in our stories, we need to be watching and analyzing people. What is the motivation behind my friend’s smirk? Was that comment meant as an insult or a compliment, and what drove my cousin to make it? Why does the elderly woman refuse help to cross the street? 

Recently I was eating at a restaurant and I saw an older man and a young boy sitting at the table beside me. The older man had fair skin and snow white hair. The boy had dark skin and coal black hair. I wondered what brought the two together, and I stole glances at them as they sat there, quietly eating their pizza. Most interesting of all was the fact that one side of the older man’s face had dark patches on it: perhaps bruises, perhaps scars. What could have caused those strange markings? A fire? A fall? And (of course) my writer brain searched for connections, some of them quite silly and others more serious: Did the old man pull the boy out of a fire? Did the old man have a fall and the boy’s cries for help saved his life? Why would the man and the boy be in a restaurant together? Are they just a “man and boy in a restaurant” or could something deeper lie under the surface? 

As you can see, analyzing real life scenarios like this one and asking “what if” questions not only gives an itchy-fingered-writer like me ideas, but it also helps me to dig deeper into human character and motivation. It causes me not only to ask “what-if” questions, but also “why” questions. Even if you are not able to write, you can observe. You can think. You can analyze. Call it writer research. 

4. Write One Word 

I used to struggle to keep a journal because I expected myself to write every day, and also to write at least a page. My expectation to write so many words resulted in many unfinished journals. Maybe I should just be that writer who doesn’t keep a journal, I thought to myself, since it has never worked out very well for me. 

However, in The Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Children by Nancy Lamb, I gained a new perspective on journaling. She explained how just writing a sentence, doodling a picture, or making some bulleted points still counts as keeping a journal. I don’t need to write a whole page or even a whole sentence! I don’t need to take thirty minutes out of my day to journal about my experiences when I don’t even have ten. I decided to try this, and now my journal consists of entries that range from a couple of sentences to a couple of pages. And guess what? I’ve kept it up for over four months (a long time for me)! Now, I still can’t pretend that I journal every single day. But that’s okay. On days when I “can’t write,” I have been writing. 

If your fingers are itching for a keyboard but you just can’t write, try keeping a journal. Or just scribble down a few thoughts or ideas before you go to bed each night. Maybe you can write just one sentence of your story today, or maybe you can challenge yourself to come up with a six-word story every week. 

One word is much better than none. Two words are better than one. Three words are better than two. And so on. Writing is a domino effect. But if you never write the first word, that novel will never be finished. That poem of yours will never be read aloud. That article will never be published. 

So just write. Write something. I’m not asking you to write five hundred and fifty five words today. I’m not even suggesting that you must write twenty seven words. All I’m telling you to do is write one word. 

Don’t use “not writing” as an excuse for not writing!

Your Next Steps

The few times I have caught poison ivy, I want to itch it so bad. 

My fingers agitate, they tremble. I try to distract myself. 

My Grandma might say something like, “Don’t scratch it. It will only make it worse!” 

But over the course of the next couple hours my fingers creep down to that itchy spot, and they scratch, scratch, scratch…

How does this have anything to do with writing? Well I don’t know about you, but when I want to write and just can’t, I feel that same poison-ivy-itch in my fingertips. I feel an itching to touch those computer keys, to pick up a pen. Unlike poison ivy, however, I don’t want that itchy feeling to go away. In fact, it is one of my greatest nightmares that my writing itch will go away! 

What I truly want is to scratch that writing itch. I want to inspire it to itch more, so that my fingers will keep driving me to my keyboard. I want them to keep driving me to write words. 

 If you have itchy fingers like this but “just can’t write,” I am talking to you. 

First of all, you are still a writer, even if you are not currently writing.

Second, you can still “work” as a writer if you “research” your surroundings, gather ideas, and analyze people. Nothing can inform your writing more than real life!

 Third, you don’t need to write a lot, hit your daily word quota, or have your computer alive and charged to write. You could just write a sentence on an index card. 

Write a word. Pen a prayer. Jot down an idea.

Don’t let the practice of writing slip away from you, even when you can’t write. 

Inspire your fingers to keep “itching” for that keyboard.