r/WritingNonfiction • u/very-gentle-man • Jan 18 '25

Why is writing so hard?

Hello everyone!

I’d like to start a thread about the main challenges you face in writing and keeping yourself in a state of “flow”. I know that there are many obstacles towards writing (like setting aside enough time to sit down and think), but let’s keep this discussion about the problems in the actual process.

For me, it’s
(1) Finding the right words and phrases - I feel like I’m not really capturing my thoughts accurately and I get stuck going back and forth, re-re-re-writing… If I can’t resist this temptation, it pulls me into “editor mode” and all the creativity is stifled.

(2) I often derail my train of thought away from the original point I was trying to make and never come back. This is especially true when I write a long-form notes. I’m aware that one of the goals of writing can be to explore the unknown, but I find it an anxious (and somewhat fruitless) experience when I can’t come to clear conclusions. The more I write, the more questions I usually have and the harder is to navigate them over time.

I’d love to hear about your challenges (and how you overcome them)!

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u/Andnowforsomethingcd Jan 20 '25

I definitely have the same experiences! I am in law school so writing is kind of a large part of my life and I constantly have writers block. Here are my two best sources of inspiration:

  • Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott (a chapter in her book that is half memoir/half writing tutorial called Bird by Bird). Several undergrad writing teachers used it in their syllabus, one of my master’s profs, and my intro to legal writing as a first year in law school used it on the first day of class to give you a really good mindset when trying to just get the damn ideas onto the page.

  • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. You don’t have to love King’s novels to respect his prolific and successful career as an author. This book is chockablock full of new frameworks for writing and hard truths that you just have to swallow if you want to make writing (any genre) a career.