I always used to write. No one could keep me from writ­ing down my ever-chang­ing thoughts, my nev­er-end­ing stream of con­scious­ness. I was con­stant­ly writ­ing, but what am I doing now? I only write long after I am sup­posed to. I no longer write for fun—honestly, some­times I feel like I no longer write at all.

I have a friend whose dream is to help change the world’s per­spec­tive. Lit­tle does he know he has long had this gift to help oth­ers expe­ri­ence a more real and sub­se­quent­ly beau­ti­ful way of life. He once told me that moti­va­tion will not come to you. It is some­thing you must exer­cise every day so that you might ingrain your­self with a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self. You are more than your failures—and more than your fleet­ing suc­cess­es. You can be so much more. You need to keep push­ing your­self and forge moti­va­tion rather than wait­ing for the impos­si­ble to hap­pen.

So here I am, with pen to page—or rather fin­gers to keys—ready to start mak­ing good habits. I want to write, that much is true. I want to suc­ceed. 

Writer’s block is so much more than get­ting stuck. It is con­tin­u­al dig­ging. Bury­ing myself along the way. And when things start to set­tle, I am remind­ed that the world and all my loved ones are mov­ing on with­out me. With­out me?

So, here’s my start.

When you expe­ri­ence writer’s block, what do you do? Next time you find your­self in this sit­u­a­tion, remem­ber that it’s okay if you don’t write today—try again tomor­row. Pace your­self; if you expect to write for a dead­line, and only a dead­line, you won’t have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make your writ­ing your own. If you feel rushed, your cre­ativ­i­ty can be over­looked.

Take a breath. Free your­self from dis­trac­tions. Allow your­self to take breaks. Often, we feel pres­sured to write and think only about pro­duc­ing rather than cre­at­ing. As some­one who describes myself as a pas­sion­ate writer, I some­times dread sit­ting down to write and leave my projects until the last minute. Due to my pro­cras­ti­na­tion, much of my work feels rushed, and I don’t leave time to make my writ­ing into some­thing I am proud of. 

Don’t set­tle. That’s some­thing I had to learn the hard way as all of my assign­ments met the require­ments, but they didn’t sound like my writing—at least not some­thing I would be proud of. Push your­self to go beyond expec­ta­tions and prove what you are capa­ble of to the world.

Give your­self time to write and make it a part of your rou­tine. It’s okay to start slow as long as you con­stant­ly move for­ward, improve your skills, and learn how to love writ­ing again. As stu­dents, we need to make sure we are main­tain­ing our men­tal health, stud­ies, and rela­tion­ships; I pro­pose that we pri­or­i­tize our pas­sions and the recla­ma­tion of our writ­ing.

Good luck and keep writ­ing, my friends.

Kira Keir

This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.