Ink, Doubt, and the Ugly First Draft

There are days when I sit down to write, and nothing comes. Not a word, not a phrase, not even a half-baked metaphor. The cursor blinks like it’s mocking me, reminding me that I once thought I had something to say. And maybe I do. But writer’s block doesn’t care what you know deep down. It only cares that right now, in this moment, you can’t seem to prove it.

For a long time, I thought the block came from laziness. Then I thought it came from not having the “right idea.” But the more I talked to other writers, the clearer it became: the block is fear. Fear of writing something bad. Fear of writing something that reveals just how ordinary you are. The worst part? You don’t fix that by writing better—you fix it by writing worse. Intentionally.

That’s what finally pushed me through a long dry spell. I gave myself permission to write badly. Horribly. I didn’t try to write a story—I tried to write a disaster. I gave up on clever sentences and went for clunky ones. I didn’t fight the suck. I embraced it.

And weirdly, it worked. Once I stopped aiming for good, I could actually write again. When the pressure dropped, the words returned. Then came the part where I got to rip into that mess with fresh eyes and a critical edge, turning garbage into something readable.

Other times, the block wasn’t fear—it was friction. A scene didn’t work. A character felt off. I’d sit there thinking I lacked motivation when really, I was just bored with what I’d written. The solution was never to push harder, but to pause and ask: What’s wrong here? That small shift in thinking saved me more times than I can count. Sometimes the fix was just cutting a scene that didn’t belong. Sometimes it was giving a character permission to make a different choice. Whatever the case, the breakthrough wasn’t mystical. It was mechanical.

Strangely enough, what helped me most on some of those rough days wasn’t what I wrote—but what I wrote with. My favorite fountain pen, perfectly weighted and gliding smoothly, became a kind of ritual. It wasn’t about romanticizing the process; it was about making writing feel like something tactile, something real. If your tools feel clunky or your pen skips, it adds just enough resistance to make quitting feel easier. If you're using a fountain pen, it’s worth knowing how to clean it properly. A clean pen writes better—and honestly, that small improvement can be enough to keep you going.

I also learned the value of routines. A short workout before writing cleared my head better than any app or timer. The goal wasn’t inspiration—it was momentum. And even if I wrote nonsense, I still had something. I started to think of those pieces as parts of a bigger, messier whole. Little story fragments that might someday come together.

Eventually, I realized this: writer’s block isn’t a wall. It’s a signal. It tells you something’s off—your expectations, your scene, your habits. You don’t break through it by waiting for magic. You push through it by lowering the bar, changing the angle, picking up a better pen, or walking around the block until the noise in your head settles.

And when that still doesn’t work? Then I leave it. I remind myself: the story can wait. The words will return. They always do.