A lot of people I’ve talked with lately started their book with a ton of momentum. They were excited. They knew what they wanted to say. Maybe they even flew through the first few chapters.
And then…they stopped.
If you are stuck writing your book, I want you to know that the instinct you probably have right now is very likely the wrong one.
Most of us respond to a stalled-out book project by getting harder on ourselves.
We need to write every day. We need a better schedule. We need to get our butt in the seat. We need to stop procrastinating and just DO IT.
But y’all, if pushing harder was going to work, it probably would have worked already.
I’ve talked before about why I would love for writers to retire the phrase “push through”. When you are stuck writing your book, especially a book you care deeply about, there is usually something going on underneath the lack of productivity.
And piling shame on top of that something is rarely going to help.
In fact, I want to suggest something that sounds much softer than “push through,” but in my experience works a whole lot better:
Find a way to enjoy your book again.
Why you got stuck in the first place
A couple of years ago, I worked with Dr. Lisa Keränen on a book that had a particularly interesting trajectory.
Lisa studies the rhetoric of science. She is an expert, quite literally, on the ways we as a culture talk about things like health and medicine.
Before 2020, she had started working on a book about pandemics. She was interested not only in how viruses spread, but also in how conversations about viruses spread.
And then COVID happened.
Suddenly this book she had been working on became wildly, overwhelmingly relevant.
By the time Lisa came to me, the problem was not that she didn’t have anything to say. She certainly knew the topic was important.
The book had just been sitting for so long that she had lost confidence in her ability to push it forward.
I see some version of this all the time.
When you first start a book, you often have a lot of energy for it. You’ve probably been thinking about the idea for months or even years. And in a lot of cases, you’ve already rehearsed the beginning of the book in your head about seventeen thousand times.
So the first part comes relatively quickly.
Then you hit something harder.
Maybe the ideas get more complicated. Maybe you need to do more research. Maybe you don’t know exactly how two chapters fit together yet. Maybe you’re writing memoir and you’ve reached a story that your brain has some very good reasons for not wanting to revisit.
Your brain says: I need some time to think about this.
And your self-doubt says: You should be writing faster.
This is why I’ve encouraged writers to measure writing productivity beyond word count. Writing is a craft of ideas. Sometimes thinking IS the work.
But when you’re stuck writing your book, it is really easy to forget that.
Instead, you start beating yourself up because you’re not producing enough.
And then something extremely predictable happens: you start procrastinating.
When writing starts making you feel bad about yourself
It does not feel good to sit down and do a task that you have been telling yourself you’re bad at.
It’s awful.
That was a huge piece of what happened with Lisa. She described being flooded with self-doubt whenever she even thought about the book.
She has ADHD, and she started wondering whether her ADHD was the reason she couldn’t make progress.
That is identity-level self-doubt.
Now we are no longer asking, “What does Chapter 6 need?”
We’re asking, “Am I a person who is capable of doing this?”
That is a much harder question to write through.
This is one reason I think the conversation around mindset and writing matters so much. Once you’re stuck writing your book, the actual problem with the manuscript can get completely buried underneath everything you’ve decided the problem says about YOU.
There’s also some psychology behind this cycle. Procrastination is much more connected to our emotions than we tend to give it credit for. The American Psychological Association has a useful discussion of procrastination and emotional regulation, and research has also connected higher procrastination with lower self-compassion and greater stress.
Which makes sense, right?
If opening your book means immediately entering a conversation with yourself about what a disappointing writer you are, of course you’re finding reasons not to open the book.
So if you are stuck writing your book, I do not want your first question to be:
“How do I make myself write?”
I want you to ask:
“How could I make this feel good again?”
Here are six places to start.
1. If you’re stuck writing your book, look for the other side of the coin
We are living in a world where a lot of things feel heavy.
And if your book deals with something heavy too—trauma, injustice, violence, illness, grief, political or social problems—sometimes working on the book can feel like adding one more terrible thing to your day.
I know this personally.
I’ve written two books about the Black Lives Matter movement with my coauthor, Andre E. Johnson. When we were working on our second book during 2020, we were writing about an incredibly heavy subject in an incredibly heavy moment.
One thing that helped us was remembering that the movement itself was never exclusively a story about violence or death or police suppression.
It was also a story about community. Mutuality. Care. People showing up for one another. And, very importantly, a vision of a different world.
Memoir asks us to do something similar.
Sometimes we end the story in our own heads at the trauma.
But what happens if we keep telling it?
What changed afterward? What did you learn? What are you fighting for now? What might a better world look like because someone understands what you understand?
If you’re writing memoir and having trouble getting through some of the heavier parts, I’ve written more specifically about how to overcome memoir writer’s block.
But this applies to business and leadership books too.
If you are writing about a terrible problem in your industry, why do you care?
Probably because you believe something better is possible.
When you’re stuck writing your book, look for that thing.
The joyful purpose of your book is almost never rooted only in the darkness you’re describing. It is rooted in the possibility on the other side.
2. Remember what your book is supposed to DO
Another way to find your way back is to stop staring quite so hard at your topic and think about what you want the book to do.
Who is on the other side of this thing?
The nonfiction authors I work with have all kinds of answers.
Somebody writing an inspirational memoir may want a reader who has been through something similar to feel less alone.
Someone writing a whistleblower memoir may want to expose a problem.
Someone writing a how-to book may want to give the reader an actual path forward.
And one of the most powerful things about realizing your book is ultimately for a reader is that writing can become an act of connection.
This matters when you’re stuck writing your book because writing can become an incredibly closed-down process.
You’re alone in the room. You’ve got a cursor blinking at you. You are trying to yank some words out of your head and force them onto the page.
Gross.
Instead, imagine the person you actually want to talk to.
Explain this to them.
What do you want them to understand?
What do you wish somebody had told them five years ago?
What question are they going to ask you next?
This is also one of the reasons having ongoing support can be so useful. A book coach gives you an actual person to have these conversations with as the book develops, and our Editor in Your Pocket program is built around exactly this kind of ongoing thought partnership.
You don’t have to hire somebody, of course.
You can imagine a reader. You can talk to a friend. You can get together with somebody and explain the idea.
The point is to get the book back into conversation.
3. Change the medium
Sometimes when you’re stuck writing your book, you know exactly what you are trying to say.
You just cannot seem to SAY IT.
Anyone who has written anything knows this experience.
The idea in your head is perfectly understandable. It may not even be particularly complicated.
Then you try to turn it into sentences and suddenly you have apparently forgotten how language works.
This is where I like to change the medium.
The easiest version is journaling.
Grab a sheet of paper and a pen—preferably one you actually enjoy writing with. Bright colors get double points.
And then just explain what you’re trying to say.
Do not worry about writing the paragraph.
Do not worry about whether this is going in the chapter.
Just write to yourself: “Okay, what I’m actually trying to explain here is…”
And go.
If you’re at the very beginning of a memoir, this kind of exploratory work can be especially useful. You might also start with these suggestions for starting your memoir from scratch or work on the larger shape of the story with a memoir outline.
But you don’t have to write anything at all.
If you are good at speaking, record yourself explaining the idea.
If you work well in conversation, grab somebody and talk it through.
If you tend to have brilliant thoughts while you are walking around your neighborhood and absolutely zero brilliant thoughts while sitting in front of Microsoft Word, GO WALK AROUND YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.
Take your phone. Record a voice memo if you want.
The purpose here is not to trick yourself into producing more words.
It is to get the idea moving again.
Once it is moving, you can figure out what to do with it.
4. Get around other writers
I really love this one for anybody who is stuck writing your book, but I especially want my ADHD writers to pay attention.
Get around other people.
You do not necessarily need a formal writing group. In fact, I am often pretty skeptical of writing groups where everybody is constantly critiquing everybody else’s work.
Sometimes you just need somebody else in the room.
Body doubling is particularly popular among people with ADHD. The basic idea is extremely simple: another person is present while you do the task. They do not even have to be helping you with it.
CHADD has a good explanation of body doubling if the idea is new to you. The research base on body doubling specifically is still developing, so I wouldn’t present it as some magical clinically proven ADHD cure. But a lot of ADHD people find the practice useful for getting started and staying engaged.
And you don’t have to have ADHD to try it.
Ask a friend to meet you at a coffee shop and work for an hour.
Open Zoom with another writer.
Sit at the kitchen table while your spouse does something else.
Go to a library where other people are also working.
We are trying to make writing feel a little less like you alone, locked in battle with your manuscript.
If you’re trying to figure out what kind of writing support would actually be useful for you, I’ve also broken down some of the different kinds of memoir support.
You may need feedback.
You may need coaching.
You may just need somebody sitting there.
Those are different problems.
5. Figure out what you actually LIKE about writing
Here is a question I wish more writers asked themselves:
What is the fun part for you?
This is especially important for first-time authors.
If you’ve never finished a book, you have never gotten that rush of reaching the end, seeing the whole manuscript together, and realizing, holy crap, I wrote a book.
You don’t have that memory pulling you forward yet.
So if you are stuck writing your book, I want you to stop thinking about the finished product for a minute.
What part of the process do you genuinely enjoy?
For some people, it’s intellectual curiosity.
You like discovering something.
You like asking, “Wait, what happens if I put THESE two ideas together?”
You like taking an accepted idea and pulling it apart.
For someone else, the pleasure is structural. You have all these little pieces and you love figuring out how to arrange them so the reader gets exactly the right experience.
You might love storytelling.
You might love research.
You might love beautiful language.
You might be the person who will happily spend twenty minutes choosing between two verbs because there is clearly one correct answer and you intend to FIND IT.
This is useful information.
If you’re stuck writing your book, go spend a little time doing the part you like.
You don’t have to earn it by doing the miserable part first.
And if one reason you’re stuck is that the whole process feels huge and confusing, understanding the five stages of writing a memoir can also help you see what kind of work you’re actually supposed to be doing right now.
Because sometimes the thing you’re calling writer’s block is really just trying to draft when you still need to develop.
Or trying to revise before the manuscript has a stable shape.
Or trying to edit while you’re still making major structural decisions.
Those are all different jobs.
6. If you are REALLY stuck writing your book, do something ridiculous
Okay, this one is a little wacky, even for me.
If you have been stuck writing your book for a long time, I want you to give yourself permission to do something that has nothing to do with your book.
Something creative.
Preferably something with absolutely no productive value whatsoever.
I learned this one while working on my own memoir.
My memoir is almost finished now, and as you might expect, working on it has required me to revisit some emotionally heavy stuff.
At one point, I knew I still cared deeply about the project. I believed in it. I knew why it mattered.
And I did not want to sit down and work on it.
At all.
So I spent some time really thinking about what had happened.
And I realized I had turned my memoir into a second job.
This book has, at its core, a lot to say about creativity and joy and fun. But because I could see the marketability of the book, and I could imagine what it might become as a product, I had slowly sucked all the fun out of creating it.
I was trying to produce, produce, produce.
And ironically, I was not producing at all.
So I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a little kid’s watercolor set.
And I started painting.
Not scenes from the memoir, by the way.
I paint random shapes.
That is about the level of my visual-art expertise.
But I made things.
Things that didn’t need to become anything else.
Things nobody had hired me to make.
Things that did not have a launch date.
And wouldn’t you know it, letting myself play around with creativity made it much easier to remember that my book could also be creative.
There’s some interesting research behind the general connection between creative activity and well-being, too. Studies have found relationships between creative pursuits and psychological well-being, and reviews of arts-based interventions have found benefits for stress and anxiety in a number of contexts.
But also: you don’t need to watercolor because a study told you to watercolor.
You need to figure out what feels playful to YOU.
Paint something.
Make a collage.
Play an instrument.
Take pictures.
Cook something complicated for no reason.
Plant some flowers.
Write an absolutely terrible poem.
You are trying to remember what it feels like to create when nobody is standing behind you with a clipboard measuring the result.
What if the problem actually IS the book?
Now, I do want to add one important caveat.
Sometimes you are stuck writing your book because there really is a problem with the manuscript.
Maybe the structure doesn’t work.
Maybe you started writing before you had enough development.
Maybe you’ve accumulated 90,000 words and no longer know what the central argument is.
Joy cannot magically fix a broken structure.
But shame cannot fix it either.
If something concrete is wrong with the book, your job is to figure out what the problem actually is.
If you’re early in the process, you may need a clearer plan. These tips for accelerating your memoir can help you identify some of the foundational pieces.
If you’ve finished a draft and feel lost about what comes next, start by understanding how to begin revising your book.
And if you have a completed manuscript but you cannot see your way through it anymore, that is exactly the stage where outside eyes become useful. I’ve written about how to get useful feedback on a nonfiction manuscript, and Page & Podium also offers professional publishing and manuscript review support.
Sometimes “I’m stuck” means “I need to stop being mean to myself.”
Sometimes it means “I need to think.”
Sometimes it means “I need a second set of eyes because I can no longer see this thing clearly.”
Knowing which one you are dealing with matters.
You deserve to enjoy writing your book
If you are stuck writing your book, I want you to remember what the actual goal is here.
Yes, we want the book.
Of course we want the book.
But you can get so much more from writing than a finished product.
Writing can give you space to follow an idea until you finally understand it.
It can help you make meaning from something that happened to you.
It can connect you with people you may never meet.
It can let you make something that did not exist before.
And you deserve to enjoy some of that.
You do not have to turn every minute of writing into a test of how disciplined or productive you are.
It is your birthright to enjoy this process.
So the next time you find yourself stuck writing your book, before you build another writing schedule or set another deadline, get curious.
What is making this feel so hard?
Where did the fun go?
And what could you do today—not necessarily to produce more, but to make yourself want to come back?
Start there.
And if you’re trying to figure out what kind of book you’re writing and what you actually need to move it forward, take our free Expert Author Quiz. It takes about three to five minutes and gives you personalized guidance based on the kind of book you’re trying to create.
If memoir is your project and structure is part of what has you stuck, you can also explore The Memoir Method, our step-by-step approach to building a memoir that actually holds together.
Happy writing.
