Here are the main reasons I get stuck when I’m writing big or important projects. Let me know if any of these feel familiar.

• I’m not quite sure where I am going with this story or article.
• I have research to do, and I’m not sure where to begin.
• I know how to do this scene, but once I’m done that I’m not sure what to do next and I’m worried I will start to flounder.
• I don’t understand these characters well enough to write about them believably.
• I could start writing, but since I don’t have my themes figured out, I’m just going to have to do a bunch of rewriting.
• I am worried that what I am writing isn’t interesting, original, or well-developed enough.

All of these problems produce the same highly obnoxious result: I don’t write anything. I freeze up, with that nasty, anxious feeling in my chest. It all stems from a single central problem: Being so worried about how far away the finish line is that you are afraid to take the next step.

In life, as in writing, you only ever have one decision to make. No matter how complicated your task, no matter how huge the project, you only have one single question to answer:

What am I going to do right now? What am I going to do next?

Big picture thinking and long-term goal setting is only important if you can answer Yes! to the following question:

Am I moving forward?

If looking at the big picture is keeping you from taking that next step, you need to stop doing it right now and take a step. While it’s true that momentum is not the same thing as progress, doing anything is always better than doing nothing.

However, that doesn’t mean you should be careless about it. For a long time I read this kind of advice and assumed that the solution to the writer’s freeze-up is always to do more writing. To just write and try to blast through my paralysis. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t. That leads us to our next important point:

Sometimes, the next step is to figure out the problem.

Sometimes the way to move forward is to stop and figure out why you are stuck. The feeling of intimidating often comes in the form of a vague and indefinable sense of dread and helplessness. The task ahead of you seems so big and scary that your response is to freeze up and not deal with it. That way lies paralysis.

1. When you find yourself stuck, take a deep breath and go through the following steps:
2. Ask yourself exactly what the problem is. Be specific, be honest, and be brutal.
3. Spend 10 minutes writing down potential next steps. If you don’t know what the scene after this one is going to be, maybe you need to brainstorm ideas before you start writing. If you don’t know how to do the research because it seems too huge, spend some time narrowing down the micro-specific area you need to research.
4. Pick a single step that you think might move you forward. A single step you can execute right now.
5. Execute that step! Do that research, or free-write about the characters that are giving you trouble, or write a brief outline or treatment of your next few scenes.
6. Check to see if it is working. If it is, great! You’ve solved your problem! Enjoy it while it lasts. If it isn’t working, then either you have mis-identified the problem or you don’t have the correct next step. Start over! Trust me. It’s worth it.

The worst thing you can do in your writing is stop working on it when it gets too intimidating. It’s a natural reaction, and the best way around it is to have a careful and specific strategy for dealing with it. This is the one that has worked for me. Give it a try, and see what it does for you.