Writer's block

How overcoming this hurdle on my Master's helped me reach a new level of productivity that helped get me ready for a PhD.

I love learning new things, and am firmly subscribed to the idea of being a lifelong learner. I am fascinated by the process of learning, especially how things that perhaps might not seem to be enjoyable in the short term can provide a feeling of such deep satisfaction in the long term. My Masters was one of those things. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved it, but it was difficult and time-consuming and the process of breaking through my own limitations was profoundly uncomfortable. I imagine it might be similar to the feeling one gets from climbing a tall, difficult mountain, where after reaching the summit and making it down again safely, all that effort and danger and money spent seem completely worth it. Except my journey to completing my Masters was a mountain climbed mostly in my own mind, and it did not come with an Instagram-worthy photo of a sunrise viewed from the peak. It was still pretty spectacular though, or at least felt like it, mostly due to the mountainous hurdles I created for myself.

At the beginning of my Masters I was putting in the time needed to get the necessary reading done. After several months I had filled an entire notebook with handwritten research notes, complete with handwritten referencing information. As an aside, the handwritten research notes were a terrible mistake, but more on that in another another post. At this stage in the project, I had finished my primary data collection, and I'd largely planned out the paper in my head. I make this clear because I definitely wasn't doing nothing, but as far as getting started on writing my actual paper, I had nothing. I had a trip abroad coming up which was a soft deadline of sorts, as I didn't want to have to work on it while I was away. Then I went on holiday, still with nothing written. I made quite a bit of progress during the holiday, analysing results, creating tables and graphs and charts and anything that felt like progress that wasn't actually writing a first draft. For some reason I was suffering from the absolute worst writer's block of my life, and the pressure was rising as the deadline loomed nearer and nearer.

I returned from the trip with about two weeks until the deadline, and no first draft written. Most of this remaining two weeks was time off work, but I was now feeling highly stressed almost constantly. Whenever I sat down to write, I was completely unable to get anything done. It was the strangest thing to experience. I desperately wanted to get something written, I had the paper mostly planned out in my head for months already, but for whatever reason I was unable to get any writing done when I sat down at my computer.

A few more excruciating days passed, when at last, with only about a week to go until the deadline, I finally broke through whatever was preventing me from getting anything down on paper and started writing. Time was extremely limited, and from that point on I worked only on this. I spent all my waking hours focused on this one monumental task, except for eating and sleeping. The last few days did not come with a great deal of sleep, instead I chose to work late into the night in some kind of nerve-wracked suboptimal flow state but nonetheless making progress and plugging away at the project until it was finally done with only a few hours until the deadline.

I could have worked straight up to the deadline but due to the time difference between China and the UK the deadline was not until 7am for me, and I had reached a point by around 3 or 4am on that final night where I was equally likely to make it worse by changing anything else. I was utterly exhausted and I felt it just had to be good enough like that, so I called it finished, submitted the paper and went to sleep with a load of residual, highly-strung energy as well as a feeling of relief.

That could have been the end of the story right there and then, and like the other times I had done something similar, I might have once again learnt nothing from it, ending up doomed to repeat the same mistake over and over again. This time though, things were different. As I went to work the day after submitting my paper, and for another few days after that, I had a sharp, stabbing pain in my chest that didn't go away after the best part of half a week. I think it was due to a combination of a week straight of poor posture while hunched over my computer, a lack of sleep or exercise, and of course being exposed to a monumental amount of stress for a prolonged period of time. I genuinely thought to myself that I would not survive the Masters if I was going to continue to do it like this. And as I did really want to finish my Masters, I needed to find a sustainable way to get my work done. I took about a week off from anything Masters related, tried to relax and let the extreme stress leave my body, and then started reading for my next module paper, making sure to start writing immediately, even if it was only my own reflections on what I was reading, or thoughts about how it might relate to my context, or anything that was relevant that got me writing from the very beginning. I kept this up for every piece of work that followed, which worked so well that my new problem became always having far more words written than the word limit allows. Reducing this down is far less stressful than staring at a blank page though, so I consider this one of the big battles won on my route to a PhD.

I tell a version of this story to every new cohort of teachers that want to join our Masters programme. Even if the chance of this story preventing others from making the same mistake is slim, then at least if they do experience a similar rough patch, they might remember that this is part of growing as a person and that the discomfort will pass, if they can overcome whatever is holding them back. Understanding that it will probably be a difficult journey is important, but also a potentially very rewarding one, and that perhaps the things that are really worth having are rarely easily acquired.

If you are currently struggling from writer's block and are wondering how to break through it, here are a few ideas. The first is to start writing, but not what you are trying to write and can't right now, just anything to get into the flow of typing and getting words written. For example, write down how you are feeling right now, how angry or frustrated or stressed you are at this inability to produce the work you want, then write down your feelings about the work itself and perhaps this will eventually help flow into getting some ideas down about the actual task too.

Another technique that aims to keep the barrier to writing low is telling yourself you'll write “two crappy pages per day”, as made famous by Tim Ferriss. I like the idea behind not overpromising, you're not writing a final draft yet, all you're doing is getting some words onto the page and you can figure out the rest later.

Have you experienced something similar, or do you have any other strategies for breaking through writer's block? I'd love to hear your opinions, you can reach me at hello@markhubee.com.

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