Working Past Struggles

By Daniel Yocom

It has been a few months since I wrote an article for the League’s blog. Over the past couple of years, it was hard to get any writing done, at least anything that would be considered consistent. I was going through struggles. The truth is I am still going through struggles. Not being able to sit down and write felt like a part of me was missing. I needed to do something about it.

I know everyone has times of struggling. What I went through was probably different than the challenges you have faced in your life, and they are most likely different than challenges you will face. The challenge itself is not what I’m writing about. It is how to get beyond some of those struggles.

Will these ideas work for you? I don’t know. My hope is I can give what I have done to help me through some challenging time to get myself back into writing. In the very least my hope for you is this will help you find something here that sparks your imagination to help you get through whatever is stopping you from writing and get you back into being a creative person.

I was beginning to fear writing. This wasn’t imposter syndrome. I was afraid to sit and write because I was worried something would come up and I would need to be involved in what was happening. That was part of my life. I was on call for something that was important to me, more important than writing. I wanted to be available for that call to come in and the fear of missing it made me afraid to write.

The first thing was what I just told you. I identified what hindered me from being able to write, to being creative. It was easy to find other things like playing a game or getting lost in reading. But writing was something I liked to work on for a stretch of time and I was worried the interruption would be too much. Identifying the issue that was stopping me gave me the opportunity to examine the deeper issue and take care of it. I’ve heard writer’s block was mostly having something of higher priority. I identified mine and was able to put it in perspective.

I was still struggling. It was hard for me during that time to string together a coherent thought many times. I struggled to get from one paragraph to another. Even putting sentences together was hard. Instead, I started doing free writing. Allowing myself just to write whatever came to mind, no structure, no grammar, no spelling, just words flowing out of me.

That was a lot of self-examination because of what was happening in my life. That may or may not be what is causing you problems from writing, for me it was part of it. The secret became the knowledge that I could sit down and write. I could break away from my writing if I was interrupted. I could come back to what I was writing or start something else. I was reestablishing the habit of writing.

After I found I could get back into making words string together in a way that made sense, I worked on creating other habits.

The next habit that is making a big difference is one I have heard other writers, authors, League members talk about—writing daily. As this habit has taken root once again as part of my activities, my productivity as a writer has increased. My creativity has also increased. I now feel better about myself and what I am doing.

The issues I have been dealing with haven’t gone away. I am still on call and there are times I need to drop whatever I am doing and respond. I now feel better because I have material I am working on and that I can let it sit while I take care of what I need to do. It waits nicely for me.

Over the past decade all of us have gone through turmoil as so many things happen in our personal and larger worlds. Our lives change and we are bumped out of the driver’s seat and are just along for the ride. As creatives, a time will come when we want to get back in control of where we are going and how we get there.

I once heard Andy Rooney talking about being a writer. I’m not going to try to quote him, but here is the gist of what he said about retiring from writing. Writers always have something to write about.

I’m sure you have something to write about. Something you want to say. Don’t let issues stop you from sharing your stories.

About the Author

Daniel Yocom writes about geeky things because people say to write what you know. Their love of the geeky, nerdy community dates to the 1960s through games, books, movies, and stranger things better shared in small groups. They’re an award-winning writer and editor of short stories, books, and hundreds of articles published by blogs, magazines, and gaming companies.

They enjoy attending conferences, conventions, festivals, sharing on panels, and presentations. They are serving on the boards of the LTUE Writing Symposium and the League of Utah Writes as the president of the Infinite Monkeys Genre Writers chapter. They also serve on the Selection and Awards juries for the FilmQuest Film Festival and as the Panel Coordinator for the SaltCON Tabletop Gaming Convention.

Dan wants to help others reach their goals as creative people.

Join them at www.guildmastergaming.com.