Coping with Writer’s Block

There’s so much pressure on the first line of anything. Those first few words carry the weight of the first impression of the entire piece. The pressure on that first line is palpable when you sit down to write an essay or a book idea or an instagram caption (or even a blog post). It’s so daunting when you think about all the famous first lines of history. “Four score and seven years ago,” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” “Call me Ishmael,” the list goes on endlessly. The prospect of living up to that level of notoriety while also considering how crucial the first line of anything is for marketability, creatives feel at a loss answering the age-old question, “how do you eat an elephant?” How do you sit down to realize an idea?

“One bite at a time,” as they say, but that first bite is very important. Without exhausting this metaphor to the point of describing the hypothetical steps to eating an entire elephant, the first “bite” of anything defines a lot. First impressions, or first bites I suppose, influence all following perceptions. The first “bite” of anything will always be memorable. When I was eight years old, my mom showed me the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” The opening scene scared me so badly that I cried a month later when my music teacher played the song in class for Halloween, all because of the first impression I had of Michael Jackson. Granted, I was in second grade, but that first minute and a half was the scariest thing my young eyes had ever seen. Is it fair to assume that the first impressions of someone reading a blog post for a college magazine are as striking as that of an eight year old watching her first Michael Jackson music video? Of course not, but the first interaction with something new is so defining. Whenever I hear a Michael Jackson song, I think of when I cried in music class in second grade because “Thriller” gave me nightmares. 

I guess that’s the biggest obstacle when it comes to writer’s block or artist’s block or just the block to mobilizing creativity. It’s so easy to come up with abstract ideas of a narrative, but once you sit down to actually put those thoughts into words, the pen suddenly feels incredibly heavy in your hand as the weight of the entire future of the work to come crushes down. There’s a sense that those little letters can’t handle all that stress, and suddenly you find yourself feeling bad for lowercase letters because they can’t stand up to uppercase letters and always have to stand behind them instead of just moving on and figuring out the first line later. In a way, it’s hard to feel satisfied and motivated to complete something when you don’t have a solid first line to build on or a tone to follow. 

The first line makes the abstract concrete. It makes it something that can suddenly be subject to judgment; it is the first materialization of the idea. It makes the work something real and tangible with no control over how it’s received. By writing a first line, it becomes an unfinished task, a project. Whatever vague idea was floating around is given existence in the words of the author and can therefore be read by other people.

It’s the same with first impressions with new people. The first ten minutes you spend interacting with someone are so crucial to the relationship as a whole. “I like your eyeliner,” were the first words one of my best friends ever said to me. It was December of ninth grade; we were in gym class. I was playing volleyball, and she ran past me dribbling a soccer ball, shouting over her shoulder as she passed. I remember the interaction so clearly to this day despite the fact that it was in 2019 when saying “yeet” was still funny. That’s not to say that everyone you meet will be present in your life forever, but that first interaction sets the stage for the ones that do. 

Every “first” is important, but that’s not to say it should hold us back. It’s difficult to confidently make decisions and initiate new projects if the shadow of the importance of the first line obscures the starting line. The whole “one bite at a time” thing doesn’t make sense until you just try it. I’ve spent a week trying to figure out what to write this blog about; my writer’s block has been cemented to the ground. Eventually, I forced myself to just start writing, listening to my stream of consciousness bounce a gentle rhythm off the keys of my laptop. Is it the best piece of writing in the world? No, but it got me to reach my deadline because I decided to just take it one bite at a time instead of worrying about producing Pullitzer prize-worthy media every time I sit down to write. Every bite is one bite closer to finishing, one chunk less to conquer. The first bite is important, but it can’t be done in one bite, so every bite, every step, matters just as much; the momentum makes it easier. Every bite builds off of the one before it and the ones preceding it, smoothing out the edges into the final product. The first line is important, but not defining the work entirely. Arguably, this blog post had a strong first line, but the rest had been a guided tour on my train of thought when I’m confronted with, God forbid, actually starting a project for an organization I voluntarily signed up for. Regardless, it got me to finish what I needed to, and it got you to read this far, so it can’t be that bad.