roadblock
an episode of new girl, hemingway's experience and finding your niche
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There’s a scene in New Girl where one of the characters, Nick, is struggling with writer’s block. He blames it on the fact that he has been living life too casually and he needs real-life adventure like Ernest Hemingway. Nick then goes to the LA Zoo drunk, trying to decide if he could beat a gorilla in a fight.
Similar to Nick, I’m suffering from writer’s block. Unfortunately, I can’t channel Hemingway as his biggest inspiration for writing was his experience of the first World War. I think it’s fair to say that I’m fortunate enough not to have lived through one. He was also fascinated with death and actively sought out experiences that would allow him to become intimate with death and dying. I want to write something worth reading, but I don’t think playing chicken on the train tracks is going to help me get there. While it could provide inspiration, I can guarantee you that I would somehow get stuck on the train tracks and actually get hit by a train. I’m not sure I’d survive that well enough to tell the tale.
So I did what any person does when they encounter writer’s block — I read a shit ton of other people’s work for inspiration, trying to find something that might help springboard a new perspective, or nurture an idea I didn’t know — lodged in the back of my brain. And while I did read some great work (
, , and to name a few), none of it was stuff that I felt I could add to.So, on Wednesday afternoon, I attempted to apply “Solvitur Ambulando,” a Latin phrase that
shared with me last week. It means “it is solved by walking.” So I put on my sexiest walking shoes and headed to my nearest high street for a coffee. It’s about 4 kilometres away but I used it as a brainstorming session and it was good to stretch my legs. I listened to a podcast, then some music.Nothing came to me. I imagine that there are multiple versions of me that live inside my head. We are re-enacting that spiderman meme where they all point to each other. Except each of my versions are asking “who has a good idea?”
So I gave myself another day to come up with something, the clock ticking ever closer towards that Sunday deadline.
On Thursday morning, I sat in the sun with my computer on my lap. I suppose I was attempting to recharge my creative batteries, and that inspiration might strike me if I sat outside. But I soon realised I am neither a solar panel nor a plant, and that I was more likely to just get sunburnt — but at least that would be a story idea.
One of the difficulties with writing each week is that you're supposed to write on something you specialise in — be it motherhood, cryptocurrency, international affairs — anything at all, but there should be some sort of topic. Mine are personal essays and, as my one-line bio would describe, “notes on life’s delightful indulgences.” It’s not as if my life is a living roller coaster of stories. I feel as if I’ve chosen a topic both so specific and yet so broad that I have nothing to say. And that’s difficult because the internet and basically every writer on
who shares their success says it’s down to “finding your niche,” and “being consistent with your writing.” What if I can’t be those things? If I abandon my one-line bio, who am I as a writer?You — the reader— have found something of interest somewhere in that single sentence and among my previous posts for you to follow my work. It’s a rigid way of thinking, to abide by something I decided, I chose, nearly a year ago as my topic. How do I grow my readership if you don’t know what to expect from me each week?
I spiralled. The sun was out, there was blue sky and all I could do was have a mild-existential crisis. I know I was overthinking this, but as any overthinker will tell you, it only snowballs further. I then questioned whether I should write at all — what on earth was I thinking? I’m no expert on anything. I’m 26. How cocky of me to show up here and pretend I have any sort of clue on what the fuck is going on. I’m adulteen at best (a new word I’ve come up with that describes the halfway point between teen and adult, similar to how the ages 10-14 is considered a tween).
I get why Nick wanted to live like Hemingway. When you live through a war and attempt to dance with the devil, you get stories, you get adventure and have a perspective you can share with people. Something to ‘wow’ them. I feel that I need substance, something valuable to share with you that is relatable, in order to feel worthy of being a writer on the internet.
I haphazardly wrote this post in a mixture of sentences and bullet points, hoping that if I just let the verbal diarrhoea pour out of me, some seed of coherent thought would develop. There was no direction, no point that I was trying to make. But then I suppose, maybe, that is the point. You don’t have to be an expert on anything to write something worth reading — you can just write what you think.
I realised that nobody is an expert on everything and everybody who has ever written anything is writing from their own perspective. And the reason we read other people’s work is because it does two things for us: it either re-affirms our beliefs that we are more alike than we think or it offers us a different perspective that we’ve not thought about before.
The people I enjoy reading most do both these things for me — sometimes they’re sharing something funny, sometimes it’s an insight, sometimes it's educational. My long-winded point is, what you write doesn’t have to be pushing the needle on a societal topic, it can be whatever you want — a list, a photo of the week, a random coffee thought that you want to share, it can even be off-topic to what you usually write about. I think that the people who follow your work, follow you because they like your writing, your thoughts, not necessarily the exact topic that you’re writing about.
A fellow substack writer shared this quote with me the other day, which I thought about a lot this past week:
“You either give up or you keep going, both are painful so you may as well keep going.”
If you’re in a writer’s rut and you too are swimming in a vat of anxiety and self-doubt, I hope this quote and this essay offers you some support. I’m not giving up and neither should you.
See you next week with a hopefully less dramatic, but equally relatable, topic.
Many experts are tedious and boring, thanks to their expertise!
Such a relatable post, Natalie - thank you so much for sharing these valuable words!