I've been writing fiction for as long as I can remember, and for most of that time I would make my first drafts handwritten. I would do my first edit by hand as well, and then my second edit would be part of the transcribing process.
It was arduous, but I loved it. Collecting notebooks and pens, having one of each always with me, sneaking in writing moments in classes or during down time at work. And after a particularly long-lasting poor decision, I would bring my pens and notebooks out with me during smoke breaks.
That's what sunk me. I had a deliberate hiatus from writing during the planning of my wedding and getting married, then I got pregnant very quickly and had my first kid. After I went back to work following my maternity leave I unfortunately started smoking again, and a little after that I started writing novels and taking it seriously again. With a little one in the house, I fell into the habit of only writing when I had a safe chance to sneak outside for smoke breaks; a quiet ten or fifteen minutes, longer if I had the time for two cigarettes, my notebook and pen, and I was in business.
Then on Mother's Day 2018 I found out that I was pregnant again. I immediately quit smoking, and discovered in that first week that I had trained myself to associate writing with cigarettes. Without the smoke breaks, and with the added stresses and discomfort of early pregnancy, finding the motivation to pick up my pen was incredibly challenging. And if I did manage to actually start working on my fantasy novel, I would crave a cigarette so badly that I couldn't focus. I think that during my entire pregnancy I eked out one sentence and a single note in the margins. I told myself that during the second trimester when I felt less sick all the time I would start writing again. Then I told myself that during the third trimester when I was going to be less active anyway, that's when I would start writing again. The joke was on me, though; my third trimester coincided with the holiday season, I was nesting hard, and I did not have the energy leftover to even feel like a real human being, much less try to be creative.
Then in January 2019 my daughter was born. I could turn this entire blog post into a detailed account of what it was like going from having a teenage stepson and a toddler son to having both of those children plus a baby. But there are probably a thousand posts like that in parenting forums and websites. I'll leave it at saying that there were challenges I expected and some that I didn't, and one of the things I didn't expect was that I felt an almost desperate need to have something in my life that was only mine again. My identity is changed forever by being a mom, and I love that. I just didn't want my identity to only be motherhood. I want my children when they are adults, especially my daughter, to also know that becoming a parent doesn't end the self. I made these humans, I want them to do what fulfills them and makes them happy and enriches themselves and maybe the world. They're going to spend their entire childhoods hearing that that's possible, from me and from kids' tv shows and from teachers and relatives. But they should see it too. And I deserve to live it, myself.
And even with all of that pushing me, I didn't pick up a pen and notebook again. I'd broken the habit of writing. I was still afraid that if I started then the urge to smoke would come back strong (like it does when I've had a bad day or a stressful shift or a particularly good meal or the wind outside is just right or…). And I'd let my novel sit for so long. Nearly a year and a half.
Then I saw a submission call for short stories for an anthology, asking for a specific theme that I already actually had dreamed up the perfect characters for a few years previously during a joke conversation with a manager at the bookstore I work in. So I made a decision that wound up fixing… everything. I wouldn't try to dive back into my novel. I wouldn't grab the pen and paper again. I'd download a word processing app on my phone and write a short story that had nothing to do with my old project.
I've seen the writer's block busting advice to change your font to comic sans, and I bet that works for a bunch of people. Because it's about changing something up to rattle loose the block and get your flow back, right? I did a great big version of that. I changed my format, my project, my tone and mood and style, the tools I used to write, everything. I set a goal for myself. By August I was pushing myself to spend ten minutes each day writing. That was all. It was all I could manage at first and even that was a struggle.
But over time it began to shake everything loose. I started splitting writing time between my phone and my laptop and that was the last change I needed. In October I finished the first draft of that old fantasy novel (not without some major setbacks and one near meltdown, but that's a story for a different post). In early November I completed NaNoWriMo. I’m days away from finishing the first draft of a sequel to the novel I finished in October. I have a handful of short stories written. I have a few more novels plotted.
None of that would have happened if I hadn't changed the way I do things. I mixed everything up and it shook me loose. I let myself start small and the momentum followed. If you're ever looking at a writer's block that seems impenetrable, maybe it's not that you can't get past it, maybe it's just that the tools you're trying to use to dig through it aren't working anymore. Try changing things around and see what happens, and be gentle with yourself.