Unblock Your Writer’s Block

Oh, the horror. Your paper is due tomorrow, and for the jillionth time you have sat down at the keyboard in hopes of jumpstarting that tree sloth of a brain. But no. Your brain just hangs there, chewing on a leaf. 

Personally, I think “writer’s block” is a misnomer. While it may feel like a block, technically it’s more of a swamp. A mire. A slough of despond. Your temporary inability to write may stem from a whole variety of causes—performance anxiety, imposter’s syndrome, distraction, a sudden awareness that you have no clue what you’re talking about—along with a whole host of brilliant excuses having to do with software or Netflix or your alarming love life. 

Here are a few techniques you can use to get that sloth brain out of the mud and climbing to beautiful heights. I believe they work whether you’re a student or a professional writer.

1. Remember, your block is temporary.  

Whatever you do, avoid looking up “famous writers with writer’s block.” You will find extreme examples of literary giants (Haroldå Brodkey, Harper Lee, Henry Roth, Ralph Ellison, George R.R. fricking Martin) doing bupkis for years, even decades. But come on. Most of us aren’t writing the next Song of Ice and Fire or To Kill a Mockingbird. There is not quite as much at stake. You’ll get past this.

2. When you have trouble writing, stop writing.

Writing is not a bowel movement. You don’t sit down and get instant results. And writer’s block is nothing like constipation. Writing is thinking, and you need sufficient time to think. If you have the time (and aren’t, say, doing a timed AP exam), go over the assignment or your initial idea again and again. Let the project settle happily into your brain. Most of the writers I admire, including Neil Gaiman, Hilary Mantel, and Ernest Hemingway, have given their ideas time to percolate. We’re taught in school to come up with rapid-fire answers to questions—a neat skill, certainly. But this is a terrible way to think over the long run. Why? Because creative thinking needs the long run. Let your unconscious brain carry its weight for once.  

3. Visit the Owl of Minerva. 

 The goddess of wisdom “flies at dusk,” wrote the philosopher Hegel. He meant that your best thinking does not happen during the day, when you’re barraged with distractions. These days, though, the Owl of Minerva tends to hide far into the night, when social media and texting fill the air with white noise. 

Try this instead: go to bed ridiculously early. Devices entirely off. Earplugs in if necessary. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb after eight o’clock. Then I listen to audiobooks—the more boring the better—until I’m sleepy. Set an alarm for 4:30 a.m. Yes, you are throwing your biological clock out the window. But the secret of some of the best writers is their ability to sit still, and some of us can only sit still when we’re practically catatonic. I get up at 4:30 seven days a week and start writing after my first cup of coffee. (I began writing this at 4:40 a.m.) Besides preventing distractions—who in her right mind is up at this hour?—you can tap into your unconscious brain more readily when you’re, you know, unconscious. 

4. Try the Comet Method.

 That’s what I call the outlining technique I use for much of my writing. If you think outlining is for weenies, think again. You should outline even shorter pieces, even in a timed exam. An outline is a plan, and everything needs a plan. 

My Comet outline starts with a “lede,” a beginning. This is where you make your main points, or introduce the action, or set the scene. Don’t try to write the entire paper or essay or story. Just work on the lede. One or two paragraphs. Rewrite it two, three, ten times until it seems pretty good. Now you’re ready to write the end, just one paragraph or even one sentence. Skip the middle entirely. Once you get the beginning and end right, you’re ready to outline the middle. Not write the middle. Outline. I use Microsoft Word’s outline view. It drives me crazy but it works. 

Why do I call this method the Comet? Because it has a bright head that tails off into a glittering outline. Once you have a Comet, you can fill in the outline with your first draft. You’re not writing so much as following your own instructions.

5. Then there’s the Pith, or Chase the Ball, Method.

 I use this occasionally for shorter pieces, especially when I’m making an argument. This time, don’t try to write at all. Just take notes. Jot down exactly the point you want to make. Write the pith, the hard seed that will form the core of your peach of a paper. Limit yourself to 40 words, about what would require one human breath to read aloud. (The ancient Greeks, who believed that our brain follows the patterns of the rest of the body, called this a “period.” The length of a breath equals the length of a thought.) Once you have your pith, your nugget of an argument, chase it. Write down your proofs, tell a story if you have one; do everything that defends your pith.

If this method seems clumsy, fine. Just work on a pith, then ignore it and write your paper. You will find that your unconscious has already lifted your brain out of the mud.

6. Write badly.

 The biggest mistake a beginning writer can make is to try to write well in the mistaken belief that the first draft has to be perfect. Good writing is rewriting. The best writers are really good editors. My books, which average 80,000 to 100,000 words, go through at least a dozen drafts. The first drafts tend to be horrible. The good news is, nobody but me (and sometimes my long-suffering wife) see them. 

If you possibly can, take a day or two between your first and second drafts. If you don’t have that kind of time, try this: write a horrible first draft, then delete it entirely and start over. The second draft will almost certainly be better than if you simply edited the original document. Back in the dawn of word processing, I wrote a 3,000 word story for a magazine, polished it up, and then poof! It disappeared into the ether. Completely gone. I frantically rewrote the thing to make the deadline. And it was better than the one I had lost. Why? Probably because the more forgettable sentences were simply forgotten, replaced by better thoughts served up by my unconscious.

In sum…

Writing is thinking. Some of your best thinking gets done by your unconscious. Take whatever time you can. Think as soon as you get the assignment or an idea. Procrastinate for a bit. Work on the idea, not the words. Let yourself write badly. Then rewrite and rewrite until it’s perfect or, more likely, you have run out of time. Congratulations. You have become an unblocked, if sleep deprived, writer.

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Jay Heinrichs is the New York Times bestselling author of Thank You for Arguing, Word Hero, and How to Argue with a Cat. He served as the editor or editorial director of more than a dozen magazines, and has published hundreds of pieces under deadline. You can find him at jayheinrichs.com and ArgueLab.com. He has declared his own time zone, which he calls Jaylight Savings. It has ruined his social life.

Elizabeth Warren Used to Be a Republican. Talking About It Could Save Her Candidacy.

Tool: Reluctant Conclusion, the strategy of showing how facts, changing circumstances, or an emotional scene forced a change of mind.

Senator Warren, terror of bankers and Fortune 500 execs, used to be a Republican. She didn’t become a Democrat until 1996, according to the Politico.She downplays the fact, understandably. 

But let me offer a suggestion, Senator: Your Republican past is actually an asset, if you talk about it properly. 

Face it, Senator, you’re way behind your name recognition in polls and fundraising. Ditch the dog photo ops and talk about what forced you to change your party. Then you can talk wealth tax and single payer all you want—as a lifelong card-carrying capitalist.

Here’s the story: As an economist, you were all about theory until you began to study personal bankruptcy. You expected to find cheaters; instead you found people suffering from a rigged system. You had no choice but to look for ways to fix that system. The capitalist system. 

I call this technique the Reluctant Conclusion. It establishes a trustworthy ethosby showing disinterest—being unbeholden to any special interest. Your opinion isn’t biased, it’s dictated by reality. 

Anyone who wants to try this with a spouse or friend or crazy uncle can start with the line, “Yeah, I used to think that, but then…” That’s when you bring up a fact or trend or experience that changed your mind for you. It can win you an argument. Or, just possibly, the White House.

Students need a reason to read. Here's one of the biggest.

Like you, I grew up reading books. I raided the library every week. My mother had to kick me out of the house every day so I’d get some exercise, and of course I’d smuggle reading material. But while I fell in love with The Wind in the Willows and the Narnia books, Huckleberry Finn, At the Back of the North Wind…something bothered me all along. It was like an itch. I thought, words don’t just sit around looking pretty, do they? Words have power. They bring people together, they spark revolutions, they make us laugh and cry, sell junk we don’t need, even get people elected president, for better and worse. 

Words have power. But what kind of power? And how do you use them to change the world—to, for instance, bring about social justice?

This question stuck with me for many years, until one day, while wandering through the stacks in the Dartmouth College library, I made a life-changing discovery. I was working at Dartmouth back then, some 20 years ago, and continued my childhood habit of spending ridiculous amounts of time in the library. This one time, I found myself in a part of the stacks I hadn’t visited before. In fact it looked like no one had visited for many years. Half the fluorescent bulbs had burned out, cobwebs all over the place. Clearly, these books hadn’t been checked out in decades. 

Out of all those dark and dusty books, one book, bound in red leather, caught my eye. I pulled it down and opened it, and found it had been signed by John Quincy Adams. The book was by Adams himself, a series of lectures he had delivered to first-year students at Harvard in 1805, when Adams was a United States Senator. I stood there and read the first lecture. He told the studentsto “catch from the relics of ancient oratory, those unresisted powers, which mold the minds of men to the will of the speaker, and yield the guidance of the nation to the dominion of the voice.”

Unresisted powers. Can you imagine being one of those adolescent boys at Harvard. “I got to get me some of those powers!” I later researched what happened to each of the students in that class; they included leaders of industry, top diplomats, great authors, and a future president of the United States, besides John Quincy Adams himself.

This was what I’d been looking for ever since I was a kid. Adams was introducing me to rhetoric the art of persuasion, the use of the power of words. 

 So here I am, a heterosexual white male, talking about unresisted powers. What can go wrong?

 But I think those powers are often misunderstood. In the wrong hands, the tools of rhetoric have done terrible things. But in the right hands—your hands—I believe they can do wonders for students…and for you.

 Rhetoric teaches a studenthow to listen strategically, how to read the beliefs, expectations, and values of others, how to understand their emotions, and to use this knowledge to bring people together, to make common decisions. These are powerful things. They’re powers.

Adams’ lectures included a list of books, most of which were right there in that dusty section of the stacks. I spent the next 20 years studying them, interviewing rhetoricians. I learned that every one of the nation’s founders studied rhetoric, and used the art’s principles in writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Shakespeare studied rhetoric at the Stratford Grammar School. The King James Bible is steeped in rhetoric. Martin Luther King was a keen student of rhetoric. 

Why should you care?

Because we live at a time when the very act of reading is under challenge.

I don’t have to tell you that. It’s not just the distractions—the smartphones and videogames. Reading itself is questioned as a discipline. And yet we know how reading develops the kind of mind that correlates with the ideal citizen. In this day and age, how do we turn students into readers? No, I mean…

How do we inspire students to become passionate about reading, and curious about reading the works of people not like themselves? 

I have a suggestion. It shouldn’t surprise you that it comes from my study of rhetoric. It has to do with teaching students to harness the power of words in a collaborative way—to see the power in front of them, as a force for good. Rhetoric lets students work together to share ideas, and take their own ideas to a higher level.

So let’s see how. We’ll explore how rhetoric deals with the act of creation. And then we’ll see if we can try a few games that have been proven to work in the classroom. Ultimately, we hope to spark in students the notion that books are more than something that’s good for them. Books contain words, words have power, and that power can be harnessed as the single greatest element that can change the world. I’d to offer a couple suggestions, and then maybe we can play a game.

Suggestion number one:  

Creativity is a matter of combination.

Creativity is a matter of combination. Think about it. Most of the world’s great inventions and concepts combined two or more unlike things to make one greater thing. 

 Take the iPhone. Steve Jobs and his people invented the iPhone by combining a music player with a video player and a telephone and a computer. Other companies were already making smartphones, but he made one that combined the best ideas and made them better.

Was that creative? Was that original? Does it matter? I got an iPhone!

The ancient Greeks and Romans wouldn’t have known what to do with an iPhone any more than my Dad would, but they would have understood the creative process Apple went through. The Romans called it inventio. It’s where we get the word invention. But unlike us moderns, they saw invention as two things:

• Creativeness

• Discovery 

In any act of collaboration, the ancients treated ideas as if they were treasures laid onto a landscape. You didn’t dream things up. You found them. And then you brought those treasures together to make something new and wonderful.

How? Through conversation. Discussion. And, dare I say, argument—the persuasive sharing of different perspectives, different opinions.

Invention comes from the discovery of new things by bringing ideas together. By collaborating.

Suggestion number two: 

Teach choices through the tenses.

 To see what I’m talking about, let’s go to our Aristotle. He wrote the definitive book on rhetoric, and he defined some ways to have conversations and to collaborate that have relevance for you and me today.

Aristotle defined three kinds of rhetoric. One kind is especially helpful for collaboration. And here’s the important part: Each kind gets assigned to a tense—past, present, or future. It’s critical for students to learn this, I think, as soon as they learn the tenses themselves.

The first kind of rhetoric, forensic, has to do with the past. It’s about forensics, the language of crime and punishment: whodunit, and what kind of detention we’re going to give the kid. Forensic rhetoric is about the past, and it tends to be spoken in the past tense. 

Aristotle’s second rhetoric, demonstrative, is about values—what’s good and bad, right and wrong. And it’s about who shares those values—who’s good, who’s bad. And this is where I sometimes have a bit of trouble with empathy. Because empathy , being empathetic, is a value. A great value, sure, but what do we do with people who aren’t empathetic. Try inviting a Democrat to dinner with an ardent Trump supporter, one who thinks it’s fine to separate undocumented children from their parents. That Democrat will empathize with the kids, right? How much will she try to parse the emotions of the Trump supporter? Values are good, values are important; but our need to share those values with others—and to judge those who don’t share them—leads to tribalism. Not just in politics, but in the classroom. And in the home.

Then there’s Aristotle’s favorite rhetoric, deliberative. This is the language of choices. It has to do with the future, because that’s what choices have to do with. They affect the future.

Can I tell you a quick story? I write about this in my book. Years ago, when my son Georgewas 15, I found myself first thing in the morning standing in the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel, and trying to brush my teeth. When I went to squeeze some toothpaste, I found the tube was entirely dry. Being the father of a 15-year-old boy, I knew who the likely culprit was. So I shouted through the closed door, “George! Who used up all the toothpaste!”

And I hear a sarcastic voice on the other side saying, “That’s not the point, is it, Dad? The point is, how are we going to keep this from happening again?

Look at the tenses of this argument. I had used the past tense. Forensic rhetoric. Who used up all the toothpaste?

Now I could have used the present tense, demonstrative rhetoric, giving him a fatherly sermon about values. George, a good son wouldn’t use up the toothpaste without replacing it! How do you think George would have reacted? How does anyone react when they’re told they’re bad? 

But what did George do? He switched the tense! I used past-tense rhetoric. He used the future tense—which, by the way, is a great thing to do whenever you’re in trouble. Okay, we can talk about my screwup, but maybe we should talk about how to fix it.

What does all this have to do with collaboration, with common creativity? Ah, here’s the beautiful part. Collaboration is done by talking. By the use of rhetoric, either consciously or ignorantly. What does collaboration lead to? Creation! And what does creation tend to do? Solve problems.

You know about design thinking, right? It essentially comes down to these things:

1. Listen for the problem.

2. Share solutions.

3. Create a prototype, a first draft if you will.

4. Accept criticism.

5. Reiterate. Edit. Improve.

All along, your students are talking. If they all agree on everything everybody says, then you’re probably not seeing a true sharing of perspectives. There should be different approaches. People should disagree…respectfully. All with the faith that they’re going to produce something amazing.

Now, let’s look at some exercises you might do with your students—and maybe even among ourselves. The purpose of these exercises is to get students thinking rhetorically—listening for other people’s opinions, values, and beliefs. And learning how to keep a conversation going without fear or anger.

“YES, AND”

First person makes an assertion. The next person says, “Yes, but…,” and so on. Instead of literally saying “Yes, but…,” try to appear to agree with the previous person while going on to argue the opposite.”

Even Better Game

Take a particular object or book and hold it in your hand. Argue how it could be “even better.” Try to sound as if you love your object even while you suggest a complete change. It’s great practice in the art of ingratiation.

Example: “Isn’t this water glass amazing? It’s so…clear. And it holds water! It would be even better if it didn’t sweat all over my desk. An unsweaty glass: the Platonic ideal of water containers!”

• Paper clip

• Pencil

• Pillow

• Light switch

• Toothbrush

• Remote control

• iPhone

• Laptop

• The human mouth

• Your ears

Dice game

Sell an object to a particular audience. Roll a pair of dice to pick an object and an audience. Customize your pitch to suit your audience’s values, needs, and identity. (You’ll find the details here.)

Example: Roll a 2 and a 5, and you have to sell a ball of yarn to your boss. Lots of luck!

Don’t Show & Tell (enargeia)

Pretend you’re supposed to present one or more of the following objects in front of an audience. The problem is, you forgot to bring them. Project the object like a hologram, using only enargeia, the skill of vivid description that makes a scene appear before your audience’s very eyes.

• Superball

• Lizard

• Moon rock

• Stolen copy of the Magna Carta

• Slinky

• Dick Tracy video watch

• Fairy

• Alka-Seltzer

• Your favorite childhood pet

Time Warp (Prosopopoeia)

Put a character from history or the media in a novel situation—say, Eleanor Roosevelt arguing for universal health care (but wait; maybe she did), or haggling with a sales clerk, or demanding a refund at a restaurant, or getting his nephews to do their homework.

So I hope you can see how some basic principles of rhetoric can help the collaborate process in the classroom. But I hope you also see something else: These tools? They’re persuasive. They make others want to take your ideas seriously. And if any profession in our society needs to be taken seriously right now, it’s the teaching profession.

I can’t tell you how much I honor what you do. There is no more important profession in our nation. And our national failure to recognize education’s role in fostering a creative, kind, productive citizenry, in launching arts and ideas and inventions and discoveries—our failure to recognize your indispensable role is more than a shame. It’s a threat to our future. 

Some of you are already familiar with the tools of rhetoric. Those of you who aren’t, let me help. Here’s my contact information. Read up on rhetoric—there are some copies of my book here for you. I want to hear your voice on a national stage.

How to Write a Winning College Essay

Write a Winning College Essay

'Tis the season of essay-writing misery! I posted this some years ago, and it continues to be among the most popular pieces I've ever written. 

As someone who writes a lot about persuasion, I’m frequently asked by high school juniors and their parents  how to write a successful college essay. My own son, George, sought my advice, and he was glad he did. His essay about a headache (yes, a headache), helped get him into his highly selective first-choice school, Middlebury College. His work was among 10 (out of a class of 850) read in front of the campus at Convocation. “The one they read before mine was by a Palestinian who wrote about shielding his little brother as an Israeli bomb hit their house,” George told me later. “‘Oh, great,’ I thought. ‘Now they’re going to read about my headache.’”

It did the job, though. George wrote the essay himself, but he followed my advice. Here’s what I told him, and what I tell everyone who asks me.

1. What’s your hook?

While the top schools look for good writing, they’re more interested in character. Your Board scores will tell them how smart you are, and your grades let them know you study hard. Admissions officers also look for a student who will add something to the campus. Ask them about the most recent crop of first-year students, and you’ll see what I mean: “Our class includes a published novelist, an Olympic luger, and an artist who made a monumental sculpture out of Gummi Bears.” That’s what I mean by “hook.”

Don’t stress out if you don’t really have one. (Remember George’s headache?) But it helps. My friend Alex, who’s about to enter her senior year in high school, has a second-degree black belt in judo. She was thinking about doing an essay on her beloved “Calvin & Hobbes.” Can you guess what my advice was? If you have a hook, write about the hook.

2. Don’t express yourself.

A college essay is an act of persuasion. Your job is to talk the admissions office into accepting you. “I got really sick of reading about dead grandmothers,” one former officer told me.  So the essay isn’t your opportunity to get feelings off your chest, or amuse yourself, or imitate your favorite writer. Your teachers have spent far too much time telling you to express yourself. To persuade someone, you should express your reader’s thoughts and desires, and show how you embody them. Think: If you were an admissions officer, what would you be looking for in, say, you? Oh, and another thing:

3. Relieve their boredom.

Admissions officers read thousands of essays every year. Yours doesn’t have to be the most creative; it just has to be a good read. And how do you write such a marvel? By telling a story.

4. A winning essay isn’t an essay.

I probably sound like a Zen master here (The essay must write itself, Grasshopper), but my point is pretty simple: the college essay is mislabeled. It’s really a story. It should have a main character — you, presumably —  a setting, some sort of conflict, and suspense.

George wrote about how he developed Chronic Headache Syndrome at the beginning of seventh grade, when the family moved from New Mexico to an urban high school in Connecticut. The syndrome is triggered by a virus, and in a type-A person it creates a sort of negative feedback loop: the headache causes stress, which makes the headache worse.  George’s mother and I took him from one doctor to another. All of them prescribed drugs that would have turned him into a zombie. Finally, we found a psychiatrist who was an expert in biofeedback techniques. The doctor hooked George up to a machine that measured his brain waves. It had a monitor that showed an array of red bars.

“If you relax your brain,” the doc said, “you create Alpha waves that will help make your headache go away. If you can turn all the bars green, I’ll give you a prize.”  Being the goal-oriented type, George sits down at the machine and PUSHES his brain. “UUUUGGGGH!” He’ll make those bars turn green.  (Note how I switched to the present tense. It makes the story seem more immediate.  If you think you can handle this tricky tense, consider using it for your essay.)

As George stares at the red bars, he thinks about himself—about the 50-something merit badges he earned on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout, about his love of competitive Nordic skiing, how he climbed the 48 tallest peaks in New Hampshire before he turned 10, about how his whole identity has to do with meeting goals. But he comes to realize that the single-minded pursuit of things doesn’t always get you what you want.

Still the bars won’t turn green. He realizes he has to do more than just relax: he must allow himself to trust that some things work themselves out on their own. “Is this what faith is?” he asks. And then comes the last line in his essay: “All the bars turn green.”

That essay had all the elements of a story: a character, a conflict (type-A kid struggling against his type-A’ness in type-A fashion), suspense (will he make his headache go away?), and an epiphany (the nature of faith). He told the story with grace and humor, revealing just the kind of intelligent, maturing soul admissions officers love. (Hey, cut me some slack. I’m his dad.)

5. It’s all about epiphany.

Admissions people look for students who learn and grow, so your essay should show you learning and growing. Whether you write about your hook or your headache, don’t just brag or describe. Your essay should have a moment of revelation: what did you learn from your experience? How did it make you the thoughtful, sensitive, brave, strong person you are (or would like an admissions person to think you are) today? Show a process of learning, and a moment of revelation.

6. Make yourself good and miserable.

George did more than 30 drafts, spending a summer writing whenever he wasn’t working at his job or hiking outdoors. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, and it made him miserable. In other words, he felt just like a writer! With any luck, he’ll avoid following in his dad’s footsteps (I’m a writer) and go on to earn an honest living. Maybe he’ll advise students on their college essays, grow rich, and support me in my dotage. And to think a college essay started it all.

Jay is the author of the popular rhetoric blog, Figarospeech, and author of the bestselling Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion. His latest book is How to Argue with a Cat.  He worked at Dartmouth College for ten years as an administrator—not in the admissions office, but he saw the process up close.