How to tell if you're a Visionary Writer experiencing Writer’s Block

If you read my previous post, What is a Visionary Writer, you’ll already know that YOU ARE a Visionary Writer! (If you haven’t read it yet, click here to take a look).

But… maybe you have a slightly icky and uncomfortable feeling because, well, um, you’re not actually writing. And if you’re not actually writing, it’s hard to really call yourself a writer, right?

Let’s back up there and just affirm – absolutely – that you are a Writer. Whether you are currently, technically, ‘writing’, or not. If you feel called to write, or even if you feel curious about writing, you have my full permission to call yourself a Writer; and you can give that permission to yourself, too. 

Writers write. Writers also dream and vision and plan and read – reading is essential for writing – and journal and talk to other writers, and many other things besides. 

One of the main things writers can tend to do though, is procrastinate. Yep. It’s probably the one big thing that almost every writer who has ever lived has got in common. Procrastination. Otherwise known as: Writer’s Block. 

Notebook image by Yannick Pulver

Picture this: 

You’re sitting at your laptop and you’ve told yourself you’re going to write, but there’s a cup of coffee going cold on the desk beside you and the cursor just keeps blinking on the blank screen, like it’s tolling time on your dreams. 

You’ve blocked this time off on your calendar for “writing”, but it really means “free-time” that you fill with replying to emails, scrolling through social media, making lists, planning what you want to write, or searching for “a good place to write” – which is, literally, anywhere other than where you currently are, right now.

You take your journal to a café and order a latte and a brownie and spend all the rest of your “writing time” sipping coffee and eating cake… 

If this is you, you’re not alone. It can be a big – and heavy – part of the Writer’s life.

So, why do we do it, and why do Visionary Writers, specifically, get Writer’s Block?

Writer’s Block can – and does – happen to any writer. But why are Visionary Writers so likely to experience this phenomenon when we sit down to write?

Consider this: 

One of the most common reasons why I believe anyone gets Writer’s Block is because the model that our western culture and society (not to mention our education systems) teach us about writing is that it a solitary pursuit, undertaken by a lonely genius, and that – after much wrangling and wrenching – it results in a work of great literary value that is published and studied and kept in libraries…

If that’s what we’ve been taught about writing – even subconsciously through studying all those great, ‘canonical’, classic texts all the way through our writing education – it might be hard for us, as Visionary Writers, to break out of that box and recognise the true value of what we ourselves have to say. 

Let’s not forget, too, that western literary tradition has been shaped according to patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial value-systems, which have tended to violently silence and exclude certain people’s voices and life-experiences from having the right to write and be read. 

As a Visionary Writer, you might also be finding that – when you sit down to write – your words don’t seem to want to come out in the ‘normal’, ‘standard’, or ‘right’ way. Perhaps you are neurodiverse – as many Visionary Writers are – or perhaps you just don’t need or want to write in the old ways any more. But if you’re sitting there trying to force your writing into a shape that doesn’t fit, or make your writing something it’s not, you’re likely to be experiencing a pressure around your desire to write that feels like it might be blocking you from even starting. 

Could you be experiencing what I call “writing trauma” – held memories of all those times you were told you were doing it “wrong”, or made to stop writing with your left hand, or told not to doodle on your page? 

Visionary Writers are here to do things differently. 

You are here to write new forms and new ideas and new possibilities into being. 

Maybe that needs new ways of writing that you haven’t felt free to explore, so the words have just been blocking up around your heart and your throat and your solar plexus, and never quite making it onto the page. 

There are many ways that our voices have been silenced, and our power to co-create has been squashed. You may be carrying past experiences from this life or previous lifetimes where this has happened to you physically or violently. These can be big challenges to overcome, requiring deep healing and lots of compassionate support. 

Visionary Writers have big [r]evolutionary visions to share, so our words and wisdom have not always been welcome in this world.

But things are changing.

There’s a place for you, and your voice, and your vision.

If this feels resonant for you and you’d like to explore more, you can subscribe to the stack for regular updates, or go here to get my book, Writing & Thriving: Writing Tips and Wellbeing Tricks for Visionary Writers.