Jacques B. answered 10/01/24
English Lit, Composition and Creative Writing Tutor
Poet William Stafford claimed to not be afflicted by writer's block because he followed one bit of self-advice: "Lower your standards." One of the main sources of writer's block is the pressure writers put on themselves to write well, or even just to begin well. But no writer can hit it out of the park every time they sit down to the keyboard. If the ideas or the words are not coming, sometimes it helps to scale down one's ambitions. Maybe today it would be better to focus on something small, or to keep things simple. What happens as a result is that you will write something. Even if it is not your best work, it keeps the wheels turning until the next time you write. Or what sometimes happens is that once you are freed of the pressure to write something brilliant, the words and ideas flow more easily and the work is better than you first expected. The point is that "Lower your standards" brings humility into the mix, and that is often just what the situation calls for.