To overcome writer's block, find out why you're stuck before you try to fix it. The common causes are a plot decision you haven't made, a wrong turn earlier in the draft, perfectionism, fear of who will read it, exhaustion, and a project that has gone cold. Each one has its own fix: plan the next scene as a list, go back to where the draft went wrong, lower the bar, write for no one, rest on a schedule, or find what pulled you in. Generic advice like taking a walk or changing cafés works only when it happens to fit the cause.
What writer's block is, and isn't
Writer's block is wanting to write and being unable to produce new work for longer than one bad day. The psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler is usually credited with coining the term in the late 1940s, and he blamed it on unconscious conflicts rooted in infancy.
Later research found more ordinary causes. In a 1980 study of ten capable UCLA student writers, Mike Rose found that the five who were blocked followed rigid rules, such as the belief that an essay's first paragraph must grab the reader, while fluent writers dropped rules that got in the way. A 2022 survey of 146 writers by Sarah Ahmed and Dominik Güss, in the Creativity Research Journal, found stress, anxiety, illness, fear of criticism and lost enjoyment the most common causes. The four solutions the writers found most useful were taking a break, working on a different project, forcing themselves to keep writing, and talking ideas through with someone.
A slow day in a project that is otherwise moving isn't writer's block, and neither is a draft you've put in a drawer on purpose to revise with fresh eyes. The rest of this page is for the stall that lasts.
Find the cause of your block
Read down the "What you notice" column and find the line that sounds like you.
| What you notice | Likely cause | Try first |
|---|---|---|
| What you noticeYou sit down and can't say what the scene is for | Likely causeAn unmade plot decision | Try firstList ten options for what happens next |
| What you noticeThe draft ran well until one chapter, then went stiff | Likely causeA wrong turn earlier | Try firstReread from the last scene that felt alive |
| What you noticeYou write a sentence, delete it, write it again | Likely causePerfectionism | Try firstA ten-minute freewrite with no deleting |
| What you noticeIt started when someone asked to read it | Likely causeFear of the reader | Try firstWrite it for no one and decide later |
| What you noticeEvery kind of writing feels hard, not just this one | Likely causeExhaustion | Try firstA break with an end date and a tiny daily minimum |
| What you noticeYou can plan scenes but don't want to write them | Likely causeThe project has gone cold | Try firstDraft the scene you're excited about, out of order |
If two fit, start with the one higher up. A plot problem often looks like perfectionism from the inside. You keep rewriting the sentence because the scene behind it has no purpose yet, and no sentence can fix that.
Fixing each cause of writer's block
You don't know what happens next
This block is common in long projects and the easiest to fix, because what's missing is a decision, and prose is a slow way to make decisions. Write the problem as a question at the top of a blank page, then ten answers as fast as you can. Keep going past the obvious first few. The answer you use is often one you would have dismissed if you had stopped to judge it.
The problem: Nora has to tell her brother Dan that she sold their late mother's house. How does the scene go?
- She tells him at the door, and he already knows.
- She loses her nerve and lies about why she came.
- The buyer calls in the middle of dinner.
- Dan announces he's moving into the house.
- She tells his wife instead and lets her pass it on.
- He finds the contract in her bag.
- She leaves him a letter and drives off before he reads it.
- They spend the afternoon packing the house, and she still hasn't said it.
- He's relieved. She realizes she wanted him to fight her.
- The sale falls through: the deed is in his name.
Number 9 is the keeper. The scene turns on a feeling Nora didn't expect, and it hands the next chapter a problem.
Then sketch the scene in three lines before you draft it: what the viewpoint character wants, what stands in the way, and what has changed by the end. If you like a form for this, use the scene outline template. If the whole book is foggy, you need a light plan, and how to outline a novel shows how much is enough. Pantsers need this too, one scene ahead rather than thirty.
The story took a wrong turn
Sometimes the block is the draft telling you something. The writing went well until chapter 11, and every scene since has felt forced. The trouble is usually a few scenes back: a character did something only because the plot needed it, the stakes quietly dropped, or you skipped a hard confrontation and wrote around it.
Reread from the last scene that felt alive and mark where your interest drops. Ask what would have happened if the character had chosen differently there, and draft that version in a copy of the chapter, so a bold change doesn't bet the whole draft.
Perfectionism stops every sentence
You know what happens but can't get it down well enough: forty minutes, three sentences, each rewritten twice. This is the pattern Rose found in his blocked students. The fix is to separate drafting from revising, so the editor in your head works a later shift.
- Freewrite first. Peter Elbow's exercise in Writing Without Teachers (1973): ten minutes without stopping, crossing out or rereading. If nothing comes, write that nothing comes. Turn toward the scene before the timer ends.
- Leave gaps. Put a bracket where a fact, a name or the right word belongs, and keep going. Journalists type TK (short for "to come") for the same reason. The letter pair is rare enough in English that one search finds every gap.
- Reread only the last page. Rereading from chapter one is an invitation to polish chapter one.
- Set a quota by the clock, not by quality. Fifteen minutes or 300 words counts, whatever they look like.
Nora parked outside their mother's house and left the engine running. [Song on the radio, something Mom liked.] The papers were signed on TK, and she had promised herself she would tell him before the weekend. Through the front window she could see Dan on a ladder, taking down the [curtains? the light fixture?]. He waved as if she'd come to help.
You're writing for a judge
Some blocks start on a date: the day an agent asked for the full manuscript, the contract for a second book, the moment you realized your mother will read the memoir. The work hasn't changed, but an imagined reader has moved into the room.
Separate writing from publishing. A first draft is private, and who reads it is a decision for later. In memoir, write everything first and decide what to cut once you can see the whole. If you need a reader to keep going, pick one person who is on the draft's side, such as a critique partner or a friend, and write the next chapter for them alone. Wider feedback can wait until the draft is done (see our guide to beta readers).
You're running on empty
If the block covers everything you write and arrived with a new job, a new baby, an illness or a hard year, you are short on capacity, and no technique adds more.
Two things help. First, a break with an end date: two weeks off, back on the 15th. A break with no end date is easy to keep extending. Second, a minimum small enough to manage on your worst day, such as one sentence or five minutes, so the book stays warm. If you can, move writing to the hour when you have the most energy, even if that's twenty minutes before work.
The project has gone cold
You can still plan scenes but have no appetite for writing them. Maybe a new idea is louder, or the book has drifted away from whatever made you start it.
Write a page to yourself about why you began: the image, the character or the question that pulled you in. Then skip ahead to a scene you've been looking forward to and draft it out of order. If interest still doesn't return, switch projects for a fixed period, with a return date so the switch doesn't turn into a quiet goodbye to your WIP.
A 20-minute session to get unstuck
When you're stuck today and want to write today, run this. It suits every cause above except exhaustion, where the better move is rest.
- Name the problem in one sentence
Write it at the top of a blank page: "I don't know why Dan is relieved, or what Nora does about it." The sentence usually points at the cause.
- Match it to one fix
Use the table above and pick a single fix.
- Lower the bar and set a timer
Ten minutes. Aim for words on the page, not good words.
- Write one small piece
One exchange of dialogue, one paragraph of setting, the first beat of the scene. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird (1994) calls these short assignments: only as much as you could see through a one-inch picture frame.
- Stop with a note for tomorrow
In a 1935 piece for Esquire, Hemingway advised stopping while the writing is going well and you know what happens next. Write that next step down before you close the file.
Next: Dan finds the real estate agent's card in the kitchen drawer and doesn't mention it. Open on him making coffee for two in Mom's chipped cups. Nora notices, and says nothing either.
Don't touch chapter 3 yet.
Habits that keep you writing
The habit with the most direct evidence behind it is also the least romantic: write on a schedule, whether or not you feel like it. In a 1983 study, the psychologist Robert Boice split 27 college faculty who struggled to finish their writing into three groups of nine. Those who had sessions booked but wrote only when they felt like it averaged under a page a day. Those who had to write at every session, with a penalty for skipping one, averaged more than three pages and recorded new ideas more often. The groups were small, but on that evidence, ideas come from writing more often than they lead to it.
Anthony Trollope, who for years wrote before breakfast while holding a full-time job at the Post Office, reached the same view without the study:
"It had at this time become my custom … to write with my watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour. I have found that the 250 words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went."
Two small habits make a schedule easier to keep. Warm up by rereading yesterday's work, as Trollope did for half an hour each morning, or with Julia Cameron's morning pages, three private longhand pages first thing in the day. And keep a parking-lot document for ideas that belong later in the book, so they don't pull you away from the scene in front of you.
What makes writer's block worse
Most of the habits in the second list feel like progress while you're in them, which is why they last.
Usually helps
- A timer and a low bar.
- Brackets for anything you'd have to look up.
- Writing the scene you can see, out of order.
- Talking the problem through with one person.
Usually makes it worse
- Waiting until you feel inspired.
- Rewriting chapter one instead of writing chapter twelve.
- Researching a detail you could have bracketed.
- Switching apps and hoping the block stays behind.
- Reading more advice about writer's block, this page included.
Where Strokes fits
No editor cures a block, but Strokes does help with two of the causes.
For a wrong turn, version history saves versions of each document automatically and whenever you ask. Cut the chapter or redraft it from a different choice, preview the earlier version with the changes marked, and restore it in one click if the new direction fails.
For a decision you haven't made, the AI Assistant opens beside the document. Add the previous chapter to the chat as context and ask for ten things that could happen next, or ask where the chapter first loses momentum. Treat the answers like your own what-if list: options to choose from, not prose to paste.
Frequently asked questions
Is writer's block real?
It isn't a medical diagnosis, but it is common and well documented. In a 2022 survey of 146 writers, professionals and semiprofessionals reported the same kinds of blocks, lasting about as long.
How long does writer's block last?
Writers in the 2022 survey reported blocks lasting anywhere from a few days to more than a year. A block caused by an unmade plot decision can lift the afternoon you make it, and one caused by exhaustion lasts until you rest. If it has gone on for months, look at the wrong-turn and cold-project causes, which waiting won't fix.
Should I take a break from writing?
Yes, if it has a return date. Taking a break was among the strategies writers in the 2022 survey rated most useful. Pick the date before you stop, and keep a small daily minimum if you can, such as one sentence, so the draft stays familiar.
Can AI help with writer's block?
It helps most with planning: listing options for the next scene or pointing to where a chapter loses momentum. It helps least when it writes the stuck passage, because then you have to edit someone else's sentences into your own voice.
