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How to Overcome Writer's Block, with Marcy Pusey

Promotional graphic for The Resilient Writers Radio Show, Season 6, Episode 3: "How to Overcome Writer's Block, with Marcy Pusey". Features Marcy Pusey in a cozy pose, smiling in a well-lit café setting, against a teal background with earbuds on the left.

Links Mentioned in This Episode:

Overcoming Writer's Block: The Writer's Guide to Beating the Blank Page (Book)

How to reach Maarcy Pusey

 

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

 

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, writer. Welcome back to the The Resilient Writers Radio show. We're going to talk about Writers Block today. I'm really excited because I have Marcy Pusey with me today. And Marcy is a bestselling author, multi-passionate mompreneur, international, two times TEDx speaker, networker, mentor, and she helps people uncover and present their stories to help them fine tune their uniqueness, empower their lives and maximize their potential. 

And she writes books for adults, for children, and she has won or been shortlisted for many, many awards. Like first place Royal Dragonfly Book Award winner, Mom's Choice Gold Award winner, Reader's Favorite Five Stars Award winner, the Gitto List Award winner. Uh, and so many more. So welcome. Um, Marcy, I'm so glad you're here.

 

Marcy:

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I always find it to be such an honor when I get to be interested with someone's audience. So thank you. 

 

Rhonda:

No, it's so great. So glad you're here. So you also have a background in therapy, right? 

 

Marcy:

I do. That is my education. Yeah. 

 

Rhonda:

So, and you were telling me that you find that it is, you know, that it that the work that you do with authors often ends up being therapeutic. Can you say a little bit about why that is? 

 

Marcy:

Yeah, so the more I've studied about trauma and resilience and post-traumatic stress and all those things, the more I've learned where these elements sit in the brain and what those parts of the brain are responsible for. So I know that was like kind of clinical, but- 

 

Rhonda:

Ooh, I like that. Okay, say more, say more.

 

Marcy:

Yeah, so what I've learned in the process is that a lot of our hard experiences that haven't processed all the way through get stuck in our brain stem. And that is a part of our brain that is responsible for all of our automatic functions that are like blinking, breathing, sleeping, walking like things that we don't have to think about. And so, when we try to just tell our stories and we're fumbling around or we're getting stuck or the words aren't coming that's a sign to me that there's parts of that story that are still unprocessed in the brainstem because that part of our brain doesn't have access to making meaning of language, but it's very sensory, right? 

Because again, breathing, sleeping, blinking, walking, whatever those things are, writing is a very sensory experience. So even though we're using language, we're using our bodies to get that language out and we're really listening to ourselves as we write, especially if we're free writing. When we're free writing, we are listening to what our body has to say. So the therapeutic piece is that when people begin writing, if they don't know that, they'll start to label challenges they're having as I'm not good enough, I'm not actually a writer, I'd have writer's block or other things will even begin to mask it. I guess I just don't have time or I'm not meant for whatever it might be, right? But in reality, if you have someone who can help you long and recognize like, no, this is your brain really asking you to listen to some things that haven't been heard just by nature of where it is in the brain, then we can really begin to tap into some things that are healing and process through it and move it to the right parts of the brain. And so it ends up being incredibly impactful. And it doesn't matter who you're writing for or what you're writing. I've had children's book authors get totally stumped and like brain block. 

You know, I had this one come to me and she's like, I just have the worst writer's block. And it ended up being that she was putting her character through something she had experienced as a child. And that's what was stuck in her brainstem. And as soon as we could address, like I had her write a letter to the character to explain what was going on. And she was really writing to her childhood self. She balled and balled, processed through, got it all processed through, and then gave me the best first draft she'd ever given me of a book. 

Just an example of like, we are not always aware of what's coming up when we want to tell our stories, but that unique piece of my therapeutic background, when I'm listening or watching someone, I can usually pick out like, oh, here's what's going on from a brain perspective now. Let's look through that. And yeah, so writing is an incredible, that's just one piece of how writing can be so healing. I think also when you start to get feedback on your writing, it can just validate so much of your experience, whether it's a true story or a fictional story that's got always a blend of truth.

There's such a healing thing there when community comes around and validates you. Because often we've been in communities that have invalidated us. And the only way to have that kind of relational healing is through connection, restored connection with others. So I could go on and on about that, but it's just a highly impactful therapeutic experience and we don't talk enough about it. 

 

Rhonda:

Right. And we just, and we get to that through the act of writing. The act of writing. Right. Wow. Love that.

So let's talk a little bit about writer's block. I feel like whether you call it, so I refer to it as creative anxiety. Steven Pressfield calls it writer's resistance. But I think most writers think of it as writer's block. Like I'm stuck, right? I don't know what to do next. Or, you know, we just feel very resistant, very anxious and so on. So I just want to make sure I get the title if you're right, your book, right. It's overcoming writer's block, the writer's guide to beating the blank page. Love.Love that. So tell me why you wrote this book. 

 

Marcy:

Yeah. So I have been a writing coach, a publishing coach and consultants and service provider for a while. But before that, even I've been a writer. I mean, I've got 20, my own book. I'm on my 20th book that I'm publishing this year. So first I experienced all of these things, but then I found myself repeating things over and over and over on coaching calls with people who were working through their stories. And I was like, there's some patterns here. 

And then of course I could connect that with my understanding of the brain and therapeutic things and go, ah, you know, we keep addressing the surface level. Like I picture the iceberg, right? We see the iceberg and we're like, that's the problem. And yet there's this entire piece under the water that we can, if we look down, we can go, oh, there's more to it, let's address the right thing. Or in the book, I really, I use a car metaphor, like what's under the hood. We have to check engine.

And that just tells us so much, like something's wrong or about to be wrong, right? The check engine light. But until we get under the hood and investigate, we don't really know what's going on. So some people just treat the engine light, like take it to the shop and get them to turn it off or try to put in a little more oil or whatever it might be. But if we get down in there, we can actually see that I love the language of anxiety and resistance because that's really what it is.

And so I wrote it because I was saying it so much. I thought, okay, let's get this out of my one-on-one or even my group coaching calls and let's expand the amount of people that I can say this to, to help them overcome whatever is in their way between their goal of writing and actually like getting their message out there. 

 

Rhonda:

Right. And you talk about the five major types of creative blocks. So can you say a little bit about, I think many of us just think, oh, writer's block is writer's block. But like until I read that, I'm like, I don't know what types, you know? So can you talk a little bit about the different types of writer's block?

 

Marcy:

Yeah, definitely. So again, this was from patterns I noticed in my coaching and in my own writing. So I broke it down into mental blocks, emotional blocks, scarcity blocks, which is really still, there's some overlap really, right? Like scarcity is just the belief that I don't have something that I need, whether it's tangible or emotional or whatever it might be. There's something missing. Attentional blocks, so things are getting in the way of our ability to focus and give attention and then procedural blocks, which are, I just don't know how to do it. I don't know what to write in. I don't know what to do after I write. Like there's so many people who just get stuck on the actual pieces, tools, platforms of writing and that can become an obstacle even without realizing that that's what it is. Right. Or technology. 

 

Rhonda:

And do we usually have, like do writers usually show up with like one particular form of block? One type of block or like, as you say, there's some overlap. Would you end up with like two or three different kinds of block all at the same time? 

 

Marcy:

Yeah, that's a great question. I think we can go in and out of them and we probably will default towards one more than another just depending on who we are and how we are wired and the stories that we tell ourselves. So ultimately, I think a lot of these are based on messages that we have believed that may or may not be true.

Right? So just going back to that scarcity idea. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough money. If I start this project to publish it, I don't have enough knowledge or life experience or expertise, right? This, I, all of those are stories. We can give a better story to every one of those and remove that block right away. Right? Even finances, someone might be listening, going, finances are not a story. I actually do not have money, but the thing there is there are ways to get money. And there are, it doesn't always have to be the traditional like nine to five job. It can be pre-selling your book and starting to make money on it before you've sold it to finance it, right? 

It can be doing a Kickstarter. It can be selling lemonade on the corner, like whatever. When someone wants something badly enough, money is actually not the problem, right? We can go find it. And I'm not trying to make that so simplified. Like I came from poverty. I realized there are legitimate financial situations, but I've also learned how coming from poverty taught me a scarcity mentality. And as I've lived life a little bit, I've realized, man, that scarcity mentality will put me in a freeze state, will paralyze me. And then I'm sabotaging my ability to get out of the poverty states because of those stories and because of my belief that other people have money, not me, or no one's going to buy this thing and resell it. Right? So.

Those are calls I have, if that comes up for somebody, that's like a whole coaching call where we're working on the mindset of scarcity. But one day for somebody, it might be, I don't have enough of something. And the next day it might be, I'm not good enough, which would be some of those mental blocks. And then you might just flip right down into like, oh, you know what? I don't even know if I should use Google Docs or Pages or Word or...Scrivener. So I think we can flow in and out of them, but we're going to find that in life, the thing that is getting in the way of our writing is getting in the way of a lot of other things as well. 

 

Rhonda:

Oh my gosh. I find that so true. So true. Like when I learned how to basically regulate my nervous system, um, or my writing life so that I could sit down and write without these constant thoughts of it's not going to be good enough. You know, it's going to be so without all that getting in the way, it had so much spillover into the rest of my life. Yes, totally. 

So, do you think that the cure for writer's block or the ability to overcome writer's block is, like, is it a personal thing or is it everyone should do the same three things? 

 

Marcy:

No, I think it's personal. I think there's a number of things that will work for a lot of people. And in my book, I give all kinds of tips and strategies that have worked for all kinds of different people. But I consistently say, like, if this isn't the thing, don't do it. I am 100% of the belief that we are uniquely wired and what works for one person is not the one size fits all for everyone, even if there's some overlap in patterns. And I've experienced this personally, just even in mental health things. 

uh, you know, everyone's like, just take deep breaths to regulate your nervous system, like just intentional deep breathing. And when I, that's my go-to. Yeah. So it's so great. It works for so many people, but when I would do it, it would trigger panic attacks. Cause my body was like, we all deep breathe deep when we are panicking and we're in trouble. Okay. So again, it was an internal messaging system deeply embedded in my brain that deep breathing means we're panicking. 

So I guess we should panic. So I had to find other things. And then I began to learn that I'm not alone in that, but I think I'm a minority. So such a silly example, but I think it's so important to, your question is so important, that all of the tips and strategies I talk about in the book are try it on and see if it fits. And if not, try something else. But what I talk about in the book is the brain. The brain is the same, apart from like mental illness, where a brain has been rewired to do something.

Even then there's things that are similar, but the brain does operate the same way. And so I think in that regard, when we understand how the brain is showing up in our anxiety and our fear and in our resistance, it's a lot easier to stop and ask ourselves then, okay, from my brain, what is the message that it's believing that's causing this block? And so the process is the same, but what specific tool you use in that process might look different. Does that make sense? 

 

Rhonda:

It does. And I love it. I think my own experience has been that thinking about the brain and, you know, kind of geeking out on some of the brain science stuff has helped me also stop judging myself and depersonalize. Like if it's just like the basic building blocks of what it is to be human, then there's nothing wrong with me as a writer. 

 

Marcy:

No, 100%. Yeah. 

 

Rhonda:

And it really just takes that a way cause I think part of it is first we have the problem, and then we shame ourselves for having the problem. Like if I was a better writer, more talented writer. If I was meant to be doing this I wouldn't have this problem. And it’s just not true. No.

 

Marcy: 

No. It’s all storytelling. So if I just go into the briefest most superficial understanding of the brain, it is this, it is there to help you survive. And it wants you to survive physically, which we all think about, but it prioritizes emotional safety as strongly, if not sometimes more than physical safety. That is something we miss. So if there appears to be a threat to our sense of connection and belonging and identity, then it will have the same fight or flight freeze, fawn response that it has when a bus is coming down the street and we look like we're about to get hit. We don't think of that, we don't talk about that. But when you sit down, to write anything, that active writing is tapping into a part of your brain that wants to be heard. 

So even if it's fiction, you're going to be playing with ideas that have been meaningful to you, right? So you sit down and you start writing. If you start to write about something hard, which a lot of our stories are, right? That's what makes stories. That's what lights our brain up is that when there's a story that has some obstacles and overcoming obstacles because that survival brain is like, Ooh, maybe I'm going to learn something that I can apply to my own survival toolbox. 

That's why we engage stories the way we do. Our brain gets like, yes, pay attention. We might learn something. Okay. But that also means that when we're sitting down to write that story, our body can't tell the difference between our imagination and our present moment reality. So it begins to respond as though you're living or reliving the story that you're telling, right? So all of a sudden your survival team is like, danger, danger, danger.

Like this is a threat to our emotional safety and belonging. Who are we, right? And you'll have all of that resistance. So if you're aware of that, then exactly, remove the shame and you can actually talk to that survival brain. I use some animals in one of my TEDx talks, you can see the animals I use, but I use some animals to represent three parts of the brain and I have people talk to them. So the meerkat, which sends off the signal, this alarm that there's danger, well, it just has a story that is believing. It just needs to know something different. 

So I'll be like, Meerkat, thank you so much for wanting to keep me alive and for paying attention to what seems threatening to me. I love that, I need you, right? But I think you have some misinformation. What I'm sitting with right now happened in the past. And I'm using that story to help people now so that they, whatever, can be inspired or have a new way or learn something that I've learned, whatever it might be. We're safe, my feet are here on the ground, I'm sitting at a computer, I'm in a different season of life, we're okay.

What do you need from me to feel okay? And then just listening. And sometimes it's free writing. Like sometimes it's just write what you hear, the responses from your body. Sometimes it's enough to just tell yourself you are safe. This is just body. This is something that happened in the past and we're using it for good right now. We can correct the misinformation that our brain has when it's trying to keep us safe.

That can remove, not only does it remove shame, but now it empowers us to be part of the process that our brain is doing to keep us alive in a really powerful and important way. And that's again, where the therapeutic part comes in. Like we're doing so much self-healing and self-talk and funding just to get our stories out. And again, it doesn't matter if it's fiction, non-fiction, or children, for adults, this is the process. And so that's why understanding the brain can be so helpful, even in the most simplified way.

 

Rhonda:

Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about something that comes up sort of related to writer's block or maybe it's a precursor to writer's block. I'm thinking about imposter syndrome, especially if you don't have a first book out yet. I think the brain, you go to do something, the brain looks for evidence that you've done it and it goes, nope, you've never published a book before, you don't know what you're doing and then it freaks out constantly, right? So how can we...What can we do to get over imposter syndrome, do you think? 

 

Marcy:

Yeah. Imposter syndrome is a deep seated belief, right? That somehow I'm deficient and or people are going to reject me. It's the threat to our sense of emotional safety. So who's down to those two forms of safety, right? So when we can recognize that, we can really confront the message that we're hearing and ask if it's true.

Right. Am I deficient? Well, I don't know what is deficient mean. I'm not a good enough writer. Well, every writer who's ever published has had a team help them has had an editor. Has either had a coach or some, some, somebody else in the corner to help shape it. So I don't even know what a good writer looks like because every book I've ever read came after a team touched it. 

 

Rhonda:

Right. Has been like with five different people in that book having to shape it. Yeah.

 

Marcy:

Yeah, so even if I am deficient, I can get a team. I know people that can, you know, I know how to find an editor. I know how to contact Marcie or go to the podcast, Rhonda's podcast and listen to tips and things. So if we can just break that down to what's true, I can take a writing class. I can join a critique group and grow in the craft of writing. Our brain, as soon as we give it a tool, that shows that we can take a next step, it will leave that paralyzed state. When it's in paralysis, we can't do anything. It's that free state, right? It's this belief that I'm helpless. 

So I always take people back to, you're not helpless. Okay, let's say, let's say you truly believe that you're deficient. So then what? What are you gonna do about it? Are you just gonna stay there and be sad about yourself? Are you going to take a step towards being less deficient? Right? If it's nobody's gonna care about what I say. Really? Well, why don't you just try it out and see? Why are you making decisions for other people? People might say, I want to write a book on forgiveness, but there's so many, I'm like, look around the world. Are we very forgiving yet? 

 

Rhonda:

There's still room for another book. 

 

Marcy:

There's still room. So let's add another voice to the choir. And that's how I see it. We, as writers are a choir and we have our different harmonies. We have what we bring to that song. We're not in competition, were actually expanding something beautiful into the world. And there are people out there who will only hear it through your voice because someone else's voice is different. It doesn't reach again, the uniqueness of people. Your voice might reach the people who hear it and experience it and feel it the way that you do. And they need your words to help them feel less alone. 

But if you, I'm gonna say selfishly, choose to believe that nobody cares and make that decision for everybody and withhold your story, then that's. That's selfish. You've helped by all kinds of people. And what if they had withheld their stories? What if they had said, well, I'm an imposter. Nobody's gonna care. I'm not good enough. And now you're not impact. Brene Brown. She did her TEDx talk and she immediately the next day was like, I want every, I want take it down. It's so embarrassing. It's so bad. She wanted them to take it down. It already had like already a million views or a hundred thousand or something. And she was just like, oh my gosh, people are watching this horrific thing. It's amazing. And I just think what if she had given into her own imposter syndrome and withheld the gift that she's been to the world? That's each of us. Don't with build your gift. 

 

Rhonda:

Yeah. Oh, that's so good. I think also I, you know, when you, you can kind of get into these habits of the things that you tell yourself, right? Where you just, you're, you've been telling yourself something for so long and sometimes it's helpful just to have, I talk about like just cracking it open for a little bit of light to get in. So I use this mantra “I'm learning and growing as a writer” because if I sit down, I'm like, this isn't perfect. This isn't perfect. This isn't perfect. But I'm learning and growing as a writer. I can work on it. I can revise it. As you say, I can engage in editor, coach, whatever. Right. And that just that the difference in even what I feel in my body, when I tell myself I'm learning and growing as a writer compared to this isn't good enough. One keeps me writing. And one sends me to find a cupcake. You know?

 

Marcy:

Yeah. It's permission. It's permission to be on a journey and in a process. And if you think about the state of our world, people are less interested in what the experts and people with all the letters after their name have to say anyway. They want to know, have you walked in my shoes to some degree? Have you experienced anything hard in life? And are you human?

There's such a value right now for authenticity and vulnerability, and that looks like being imperfect and sharing that, and it gives permission to other people to be imperfect too. So even that mantra for yourself is so powerful, but then to be able to share that with other authors or readers, I'm on a journey. I'm gonna keep getting better and better as I go like every other author, and I'm gonna do the work, and everyone's like, oh good. Does that mean I do the same? Yes. Yes, let's all just be on that journey together. 

 

Rhonda:

Oh, I love that so much. So I'm gonna link in the show notes to where you can get Marcy's book, Overcoming Writer's Block: The Writer's Guide to Beating the Blank Page. You can get it on her website, https://marcypusey.com, and I'll link out to that as well. I'm so glad you were here today. This was a great conversation. Thanks for joining me, Marcy. 

 

Marcy:

Thanks for having me, really. It was just, yeah, it's wonderful.

 

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers. And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. And I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.

 

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