You’ve either read the American author William Goldman, or you’ve watched a film adaptation of one of his novels. I’d put money on it. He wrote a slew of cult classics that covered wide swaths of literary territory – from the tongue-in-cheek fairy tale adventure of The Princess Bride to the Nazi-driven conspiracy thriller Marathon Man. If neither of those ring a bell, surely, you’d remember the movie poster for Magic, his tale of a magician at the mercy of a malevolent ventriloquist dummy called Fats. (Please let me know in the comments if you, too, were permanently scarred by this bit of 20th century horror.) During his lifetime, Goldman was prolific, but he was no stranger to writer’s block. According to authorial lore, he once said, “The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.”

During the casually squandered years of my twenties, I did a lot of not writing. I had a novel-in-a-notebook that I carried around with me and occasionally pulled out at a bar or in a coffeeshop, mostly to look smart and avoid conversations. Despite years of lackluster and half-hearted efforts on this now-lost-to-history masterpiece, I never made it past chapter five, and slowly, sneakily, life got a stranglehold on my time. Suddenly, I had an infant, a neverending pile of laundry, and no sleep to speak of. I was not writing all the time, and it occurred to me that I might have missed my writing window.

My thirtieth birthday approached just as my son was starting to sleep through the night and take long naps. Fearful that advancing adulthood would annex whatever time childrearing hadn’t, I decided to write a bad novel in a month just to assure myself that I could write something, anything. I had no characters in mind, no plot, just a vague inclination towards action-adventure in a foreign land. I finished it in thirty days, just ahead of my birthday.

The novel (called Bronte Sparks after the protagonist) was as bad as I’d dreamed, but it was finished, and I loved it, flaws and all, because it meant that I could write a novel. Neither nature, family, nor society were actively preventing me from sitting at my desk to write; it was me. The simple fact is that I found it much easier to not write than to write. However, in finishing that one bad novel, I’d also learned that writing a novel could be fun and freeing, especially if I allowed myself to just write without the pressure of writing a masterpiece.

I’m approaching fifty now, and at this point I’ve begun to suspect that the only way to move past not writing is to write. I don’t like it anymore than William Goldman did, but the logic is irrefutable. That doesn’t make it easier to swallow. I hate when logic flies in the face of my feelings, and I often, still, don’t feel like writing. I’d rather bake cookies or read on the porch or listen to a podcast on the beach. Honestly, sometimes I’d rather clean the toilet, and I usually try to pawn that particular job off on someone else.

So what do you do when you want to write, but you also kind of don’t want to write?

Cut yourself some slack.

I went through a two-year creative drought during the height of the COVID pandemic, and I was worried it might be permanent. Turns out, I was just mentally and physically exhausted. I needed to rest. Go figure. Since 2022, I’ve found myself on again and off again with my work-in-progress Queen Hag, frequently not writing for months at a time. However, I’ve realized recently that the ideas needed downtime to marinate and meld and metamorphize. If I’d been more diligent, I might have missed out on some of the insights and inspiration that are my favorite parts of the story now. In short, sometimes not writing is right, and when that’s the case, give yourself some grace. This too shall pass.

Read widely and every chance you get.

I’d wager your desire to be a writer comes from your love of reading, so this should be an easy win. Thrilling novels, thought-provoking essays, and clever poems are all potential muses when you can’t get yourself to write. Even a bad book can fuel your imagination and your ambition. My Perilous and Sparks novels, which are much less bad than my first novel, were inspired by a campy mid-century YA series called Christopher Cool: Teen Agent. It wasn’t a great series, but I loved the idea and had to make it my own. Cross-pollination is often exactly what you need to get excited about sitting at the keyboard.

Hang out with fellow writers.

I overcame my pandemic dry spell by taking online classes with the writer Allyson Shaw and then in-person classes with Tom Kies at CCC. I can’t say I was instantly writing hundreds of words per day, but carving out time to spend with encouraging writer classmates and mentors helped me ease back into the game. In addition to offering encouragement and collaboration, a supportive writing community can keep you accountable, which can activate a therapeutic dose of healthy guilt that forces you into the seat even when you don’t wanna.

Support and encourage your writing community.

I wasn’t a cheerleader in high school. (I was way too Winona Ryder circa Heathers.) But being a cheerleader for my writing friends makes me feel a little sorry for that cynical miss I once was. When I take a minute to read a friend’s blog post or to share an announcement about an upcoming book signing, it reminds me that I have goals, too, and there are people cheering me on as well. Sometimes, that’s enough to make me want to get back to my own keyboard.

Suck it up.

As a latchkey kid of the 80s, I am intimately familiar with the parental pearl of the era, “Suck it up.” It was how my parents let me know that life ain’t easy, but it probably beats the alternative. It’s easy to see where the cynical miss may have been led astray, but they weren’t wrong. In fact, Goldman repeats the sentiment in the conclusion of his quote on not writing, “The easiest thing to do on earth is not write…But this is life on earth, you can’t have everything.”

If all else fails, seek inspiration in a possessed ventriloquist dummy and let him do the heavy lifting.