Writing blocks

The first day of the new year seems like an appropriate time to talk about writer's block. Especially considering that, coming in to the new year, I am experiencing it. I find myself facing writer's block very often, which is part of the reason I want to do this whole thing. I'm hoping to find ways to continue writing even when faced with writer's block, if not start to make it go away simply through repetitive writing.

I think this is something that every writer goes through at one point or another. I've heard people try to deny that writer's block is a real thing, and I personally think that those people are conceited liars. I have seen so many people say that writer's block is just people being lazy, or lacking creativity. Some of them are even skilled writers. But I refuse to believe that they have never had a single day where they sat down to write and nothing came out. They probably pushed themselves to write something, and it probably came out terrible, and somehow they've convinced themselves that they still did something so they didn't experience writer's block. But they did. That's just how it goes.

People have off days. The thing about writer's block is that writing is a much more personal activity than a lot of other things are. There's no formula that you can just follow and make it work. You can analyze stories and find formulas, sure, but just writing off of one makes a story sound cliche and boring. I can't speak for other creative activities. I don't have any experience in them, and I don't want to imply that they are somehow easier or lesser than writing is. But writing has to come directly from you. It can't be taken over by someone else, and by writing you are putting your own self on the line.

One of the only solutions I have ever heard to dealing with writer's block is to keep writing. But the thing is, writing when you don't know what to write is, at least to me, one of the hardest things in the world. Some days, I'd rather be in a fist fight with someone twice my size than try to write with writer's block. On a good writing day, I can easily get off 100 words a minute, sometimes for hours at a time. On a bad day, that slows to a crawl of 100 words in an hour if I'm lucky. As someone who wants to be a writer, that is unbelievably painful.

I don't know if these kinds of things even apply to other creative endeavors. I've never really heard of an artist's block or a musician's block. I'm sure they exist, however. I've just personally never heard of them. I have to wonder how they get through those things. Do artists just force themselves to draw? Do musicians just force themselves to make music? It seems to me like these really aren't the best options. It seems more like they're the stories that people spread about things because they heard them somewhere once, but they have no basis in the real world. I don't have a better answer off the top of my head, but I would have to think that somehow, somewhere, someone has a better solution. If only they would share it with the rest of us.