Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

14Start with Dear Mom . . .

What if you have trouble simply getting off the starting block?

The fear of the blank page is the number one cliché in writing. “Some call it writer's block. Others call it procrastination,” photographer and author Dane Sanders told me. Whatever you call it, it stops people from writing even before they start.

I don't believe in writer's block. “My father never got truck driver's block,” as the journalist Roger Simon has said.¹ A house framer isn't daunted by the pile of two-by-fours. Nor was Edison intimidated by the blank lightbulb, points out Colin Nissan in a piece on the humor website McSweeney's.²

More often than not, writer's block—or the reluctance to begin—is rooted in fear and anxiety about knowing where, exactly, to start. I get that, because I procrastinate, too.

Before I begin to write, I pay all my bills. I catch up on any movies or TV series I might've never gotten around to seeing. I change the oil in my car. I waste an hour or two on Facebook. I descale the coffee maker. I decide to create something really complicated for dinner. Only then do I leash up my dog and decide on the walk what the first line I'm going to write will be when I get back home.

So I might not believe in writer's block, but I do believe in writer's evasion. I believe in writer's difficulty and writer's procrastination and writer's I-wonder-if-there's-any-donuts-left?-I-should-go-check.

A writing GPS can certainly help lubricate the start, as we've discussed. ...