Below are some writing tips from a graduate writing retreat hosted by UC San Diego’s Teaching + Learning Commons. These tips are centered around how to overcome resistance to writing when you find yourself doing (or thinking about doing) avoidance behaviors.
- Recognize what is happening—with compassion toward yourself. Make peace with the fact that you are avoiding your writing. Wanting to avoid writing is not evidence of your inadequacy.
- Try to find the fear that triggered your “bodyguard.” Fear comes in all shapes and sizes. What about writing, or writing this project, worries you? Whatever it is, it does not own you.
- Be compassionate with yourself, and your bodyguard. Allow yourself to feel grateful: for a body designed to protect you, for the opportunity to work on things that are important to you, or anything else.
- Start with something small. Compromise with yourself to do one small thing and then re-assess how you are feeling. Try setting a timer for 15 minutes, or free-writing for five minutes, or working on one task from your task list. After you are finished, decide if you want to keep going.
- Re-train your bodyguard. After you are finished, acknowledge something about the writing process that you enjoy. Purposely find something that was enjoyable about the experience, so that your bodyguard can learn that writing is not dangerous.
Remember: Recognize—but do not indulge—your “productive avoidance” behavior. That’s just your bodyguard.
Hope these help you. I recommend checking out the Teaching + Learning Commons (specifically The Writing Hub) for more writing and productivity tips. Also, check out this past post that contains tips I learned from one of their writing rooms.
– A.Y.