Ep. 57: Four Mindset Shifts to Break Through Writer's Block

Writing a book is a daunting task, often exacerbated by our own negative thoughts and beliefs. But what if changing the way you think about writing is the key to getting unstuck? 

In today’s episode, I give four mindset shifts that can help you break through writer’s block. These simple but transformative mental reframes can turn a deeply stressful process into a more fulfilling, creative journey. So tune in to discover how changing your thoughts can help you reignite your passion for writing and help  build a world you want to inhabit.

Also, in this episode I announce my new one-on-one coaching program, the Career Reset, designed specifically for overwhelmed academics. This program will help you clarify your career vision, create space for what truly matters, and align your work with your internal purpose, all in just six hour-long sessions over four months. Whether you’re looking to re-energize your academic career or contemplating a significant change, this program offers the guidance and support you need. Check out all the details on my website at YourWordsUnleashed.com.

Check out Leslie's website at www.YourWordsUnleashed.com!

The three ways Leslie can help you in 2025:

#1: Six-month Your Words Unleashed signature book writing coaching program. Through 8 hour-long sessions tailored to your own needs and goals, we will pinpoint what’s keeping you stuck. We’ll figure out personalized solutions and strategies so you can create direction and lasting momentum with your book writing. I’ll also provide detailed feedback on your writing throughout

#2: Four-month Career Reset Program for Overwhelmed Academics who want to reconnect with purpose. Over the course of 6 hour-long sessions, we’ll clarify your personal career vision, create space for what matters, overcome internal obstacles to change, and define what success means on your own terms so you can work less and live more.

#3: Group Zoom Workshops that balance personal well-being with writing productivity. Topics include transforming your dissertation into a book; connecting to the deeper purpose of your work; as well as boundary setting.

Check everything out on my website and if you are interested in any of these, please shoot me an email at ...

Transcript

YWU Podcast Episode #57

4 Mindset Shifts to Break Through Writer’s Block

Hi there, writers!

We’ve finally reached the summer, at least in North America, and I know that many of you are reassessing your life and priorities after a brutal school year.

Before I dive into today’s episode, in which I’m going to give you four mindset shifts that will help you break through writer’s block, I want to ask you a few questions.

Do you want to work less during the school year?

Okay, I know that everyone would say yes to that.

So let me add, do you want to work less during the school year but have no idea where you’d cut back because everything feels equally important?

Do you feel like you spend most of your time attending to everyone else’s needs but your own?

Do you have the strong sense that how you’ve been working is unsustainable, and something is going to give in terms of your health or relationships?

Are you feeling like you’ve lost passion for your work because just there’s WAY too much of it on your plate?

Finally, do you feel like you’re in a professional rut but you don’t have the time and space to figure out to fix it?

If you have answered yes to most or all of these questions, you’re probably in need of career coaching.

And I’m thrilled to tell you that I’m here to provide it for you!

Today I want to reveal my new one-on-one coaching program for overwhelmed academics that I call the Career Reset. 

Since first becoming a life coach in 2018, I have coached academics on all aspects of their lives and careers.

I’ve coached people on issues ranging from marital and relationship problems to navigating the loss of a parent. 

But one of the things I enjoy the most is helping overwhelmed, frazzled academics clear out the clutter from the lives and reconnect with an internal sense of purpose.

I love working with folks who are burnt out to reorient their careers towards their own values, needs and priorities.

In fact, even though I’ve only advertised myself as a book writing coach for the past few years, I’ve consistently been doing career coaching for certain clients.

And what I’ve been noticing is that people are more burnt out than ever and in need of more internal guidance than ever.

So the Career Reset Program will do four things: it will clarify your career vision; create space for what really matters; overcome your internal obstacles to change; and align your work with internal purpose.

We’ll do this in six hour-long sessions spread out over four months.

You’ll come away from the experience reinspired by your work and have the tools to make your academic career healthier, happier, and more manageable over the long-term.

I want to help you take real steps toward creating a career that doesn’t shortchange your life.

And since I know some of you will have this question, this coaching program will also help those of you who are seriously considering leaving the academy. 

I invite you to check out all the details and sign up for a free consultation on my website at YourWordsUnleashed.com.

Today’s Episode

So now I want to transition into today’s episode and offer you four simple mindset shifts to help you break through writer’s block. 

You know what I’m talking about: those times when you feel stuck or like you’re working hard but making no progress.

As those of you who’ve listened to this podcast for awhile or have worked with me before know, I believe that at least half of accomplishing a major goal like a book comes down to your own thoughts.

Your beliefs about yourself or your writing—and I know many of you don’t distinguish between the two, although I think you should—determine the entire process.

Writing a book is already a very difficult thing to do, but your thoughts about it can make things easier or harder. 

What many people don’t realize is that we have a lot of control over our thoughts and, with some conscientious work, can change them.

But if you’re like I was when I was writing my first book, I didn’t question my own negative thoughts about writing.

I took them as a given.

On a daily basis I told myself that writing was SO hard. 

I got hung up on the fact that I had no idea how to write a book. 

I believed peers who said that your first book needs to be innovative and groundbreaking, and I didn’t know if I could do that. 

Believing all of this turned me into an anxious, stressed-out mess, which made writing feel like I was pulling teeth.

And I also didn’t let myself rest or relax nearly enough, because I felt like I needed to be putting everything into my work.

It was not a fun time, and I would never do things that way again.

Many people think that the only way to get writing done is by putting immense pressure on yourself.

That might work for shorter-term goals like finishing a grant proposal or a journal article, especially when there’s hard deadlines you have to meet.

But that feast or famine approach does NOT work with a book.

There’s a reason I say that writing a book is a lightning rod for all of your greatest doubts and insecurities.

It’s such a long, arduous process that you come face-to-face with your own flaws and limitations on a daily basis.

And writing a book requires much more of you personally.

Not only do you need to restructure your life and schedule around it, if you don’t want to burn out, but you must also have faith that all of these moving pieces will eventually come together into one coherent piece.

This makes it very easy to stall out with writer’s block.

Furthermore, writing for an audience rarely feels like a safe thing to do.

It means making your thoughts public, and therefore making yourself visible to the world, on an entirely different scale.

That’s freaking terrifying. I know, I went through it with my first book and again when I launched my podcast. 

You don’t know how it’s going to be received. 

And sometimes people really do attack one another’s work, and it’s scary to think that you might be targeted too. 

It’s another area where you need to have faith.

But, putting your ideas out into the world is like exercising a muscle in your body that you’ve never used before.

This muscle might feel weak and hurt right now.

But if you consistently and consciously do reps with this muscle, you will get stronger and writing will inevitably start to feel easier and easier to do.

Perhaps you will even obtain some deep satisfaction from doing it.

And practicing these four simple new thoughts is an exercise that will help you when the pressure is too high and you’re getting stuck. 

1)    My book is just one part of my total body of work.

The first mental reframe I want to offer is, “My book is just one part of my total body of work.”

I know you have spent countless hours, days, and years working on your projects.

Arguably, you know more than any other person in the whole world about your topic.

The problem is that this wealth of knowledge compels many authors to try to fit absolutely everything they know into their book.

And this, in turn, leads a lot of people to spin their wheels for months or even years on end.

They might have lots of different ideas of how to structure their book, and therefore they have a hard time choosing one vision.

Without this focus, they can’t create boundaries around what needs to go into each chapter and what can be left out. 

But what if you considered that your book, as monumental as it is, is just one piece of your total life’s body of work?

Your book represents a significant milestone in your scholarly journey, but it's not the only thing you'll ever produce.

Instead, your book is part of your larger, more cohesive research agenda that also will take the form of journal articles, book chapters in edited volumes, and future books.

Each piece of work can elaborate on the themes and findings of your book, creating a rich, interconnected tapestry of research that showcases your expertise and deepens your impact on your field.

So reflect on what you are learning during the process of writing your book. 

What new skills are you acquiring? What challenges are you overcoming? What new questions have arisen that you want to continue investigating further?

Use these insights to inform your next projects and set new goals.

But you don’t need to include everything into your book. 

Instead, knowing what should go in depends on the needs of your reader, as I’ll talk about next.

2)    My book is an act of generosity to others. 

So the second mindset shift I want to offer is for you to think of your book as an act of generosity to others.  

Now, what do I mean by this?

Essentially, I believe that too many scholarly book authors think of their books as a way to prove themselves to others.

They want to sound smart and so they take themselves WAY too seriously.

Their prose ends up stiff and dry or they use overly complicated terms.

Their data might be fascinating, but they how they write about it sucks the life out entirely.

This happens for very logical reasons. 

It’s often a protective posture that comes from trying to protect yourself against the harsh critiques of other academics who can make or break your career—whether that be your advisor or reviewers.

The unfortunate result is that many people adopt a highly academic tone in the hopes they will be taken seriously by a small number of experts who also take this stuff way too seriously.

It’s a lot harder to write this way, and it can easily trip you up.

On top of this, I’ve noticed that too often, authors take their audience’s attention for granted. 

They just assume that people will read their book cover-to-cover and remember key details.

When the truth is that your reader’s attention is actually a gift. 

They could be doing about a million other things, including reading a million other books, but for some reason they are choosing to read yours.

That means you need to treat this gift with care.
  
 So how do you do this?

I suggest it’s by writing not to impress, but to develop a genuine emotional connection.

Through your words, you are building trust with mostly strangers who are curious about the world you inhabit.

You know this world like the back of your hand, but don’t forget that most of them don’t.

To maintain their trust, you need to be a generous host and show readers you care about them as newcomers.

This means using terms that are recognizable.

It means flattening power hierarchies.

It means putting yourself into your writing and letting people know what you actually think.

It means sounding like a human being because you are a human being first and a scholar second. 

So, I suggest you think of your book as a generous invitation to others to think in new ways and to open up new conversations.
  
 You do not have to write THE definitive book on the topic. (I mean, you might, but that's not up to you to decide.)
  
 When you put pressure on your project to "wow" others, you'll often second-guess yourself, feel disconnected from purpose, and never believe it's good enough. 
  
 You'll stall out and spin your wheels.
  
 If this is you, I encourage you to recenter what fascinates YOU about the topic and what kinds of new conversations you want to have with others about it.
  
 As a generous host, welcome others into your world and your unique way of thinking.
  
 Work on connecting with your audience, not impressing them.
  
 This, I've found, is what keeps the door open for long-term inspiration.

3)    It’s all just an exercise.

So the third mindset shift is for when you’re stuck because you’ve been fixating on writing perfectly. 

Many people put outsized pressure on themselves to write something groundbreaking or, at least, very impactful on their fields.

As I mentioned, I tried to do that when writing my first book, and it was a horrible experience!

Shooting for perfection often leads authors to hold onto their writing much longer than necessary.

They end up not obtaining useful feedback along the way that could really improve the work and speed it up.

It also creates enormous anxiety and self-doubt when time keeps passing and they haven’t yet produced the perfect product.

Let me give you an example. 

I once coached a brilliant, deeply insightful graduate student who was the first person in her family to go to college.

This student was stuck for years, unable to progress in her program until she finished a term paper for a methods course.

When I asked what was holding her back, she said, "I haven't found anything new and theoretically interesting from my data."

Bear in mind that she only interviewed 8 people, as per the requirements of the class.

So I told her, "The goal of your paper is NOT to find anything new or novel. It's to show that you know how to use interview methods! It's just an exercise."

At this, the student let out a massive sigh of relief.

She told me, "Thinking of this paper as an exercise means I can just focus on the process rather than getting so hung up on the outcome." 

So I encouraged her to think of literally everything in academic life as an exercise.

The methods paper is an exercise that will help you write the methods section of your dissertation.

The dissertation is an exercise that will help you gain some of the skills to write your first book.

 Your first book is an exercise that will help you write the second one.

And so on.

If we think of everything as an exercise, it opens up the possibility of learning, growing, and experimenting as we figure things out.

It helps us create individualized strategies that can be used again in the next stage or the next project.

It dials the pressure down and allows us to be present in what we're doing instead of always being in fear of how others will judge us.

So during your next writing session, consider how you might approach your book differently if you knew it was just an exercise.

Would you be more playful?

Would you try new things and allow yourself to go in new directions just to see where you end up?

4)    I’m becoming the writer I want to be.

So the fourth, and final, mindset reframe I want to offer is an offshoot of the last one. 

And, it is: “I’m becoming the writer I want to be.”

This is for those of you who often tell yourself, “I’m not a good writer.”

Or, an alternate version of this is, “I’m not a good thinker.”

These thoughts shut people down more quickly than almost any other.

And this is what we in the coaching world call a limiting belief!

It’s thinking about yourself and your abilities as static and unchangeable, which comes from having a fixed mindset.

And it’s ironic because many of my clients who believe these thoughts are also writing books that fundamentally question the idea of anything being fixed or unchangeable.

The thought, “I’m becoming the writer I want to be” leaves the door open for transformation, for experimentation, and for growth. 

I’ve been reading an incredibly captivating, deeply touching memoir called Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, by Suleika Jaoud (Sulayka Jo-ad).

She chronicles her odyssey of being diagnosed with leukemia at age 22, going through intense treatment for four years, and then coming out the other side not knowing how to really live.

And the second half is about her relearning how to live.

But she has an incredible paragraph from page 324 from when she is at tail end of a long road trip of self-discovery that I want to share. 

She writes, 

“Gazing up at the Milky Way, I remember when all I wanted is what I have in this moment. 

Sitting on the kitchen floor of my old apartment, sicker than I’ve ever felt, my heart fractured into ten thousand tiny pieces, I needed to believe that there was a truer, more expansive and fulfilling version of my life out there… 

I needed to believe that when your life has become a cage, you can loosen the bars and reclaim your own freedom. I told myself again and again, until I believed my own words: It is possible for me to alter the course of my becoming.” Unquote.

And this is possible for you too!

Summing Everything Up

So let’s sum everything up.

I’ve given you four simple mindset shifts you can make to interrupt the negative self-talk that causes writer’s block. 

#1) My book is just one part of my total body of work.

#2) My book is an act of generosity to others.

#3) It’s all just an exercise.

#4) I’m becoming the writer I want to be.

These thoughts help you recognize that while writing is scary, that doesn’t need to stop you from doing it.

Changing how you talk to yourself so that you create an internal sense of safety is a skill like any other.

At first, these thoughts may not land with you in an authentic way. They may feel foreign.

And yet I would offer that the discomfort of creating new thought patterns is vastly less painful than always looking outside of yourself for validation and permission to be human.

The question is, how do you want to show up in the world? And, how does your writing contribute to building the world you want to inhabit?

It’s about being in relationship with others rather than trying to prove to them you are smart or worthy.

And shifting your mindset will eventually allow you to view writing as an intrinsic part of being alive.

Finally, let me remind you that practicing fear, self-doubt, and pessimism take just as much, if not more, energy than trust.

So lean into the process of becoming. 

You may be both surprised and delighted at what unfolds along the way.

Again, please check out the details of my new Career Reset coaching program on my website.

I’ll talk to you again soon!