To Write or Not to Write?

Either way, guilt was waiting.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

This morning, I was flooded with inspiration. I’d been listening to a podcast on writing procrastination, and it struck a nerve. Every writing blockage I’d struggled with seemed to resonate back at me through my ear buds. By the end, my head was buzzing with ideas. I felt almost frantic trying to hold on to them, promising myself that when I had a quiet moment later, I’d pour everything onto the page.

But this afternoon, when I finally sat down at my desk, nothing came. Not a trickle. Not a fragment. Not one sentence or even a word. The torrent that had felt so unstoppable hours earlier had dried up completely. My head was hollow, swept clean. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find flow, it was that I couldn’t even find a place to begin. The words that had felt so urgent only a few hours before had slipped through my grasp, leaving me staring at the screen, waiting for something that refused to arrive.

And here’s the irony: what I wanted to write about was exactly this –blockages, guilt, procrastination. And there I was, stuck in the middle of all three, trying to force myself to untangle the very knot I was sitting in.

So, I did what I often do when I’m cornered by my own resistance: I turned the questions back on myself. What was actually blocking me? Why did the act of writing—or not writing—bother me so much?

The more I sat with those questions, the more I realized this wasn’t just about today’s blank page. It was a pattern I kept running into. My procrastination wasn’t about laziness or distraction—it was guilt. In both directions. When I wasn’t writing, I felt like I was failing, like I owed words to the world because I’ve claimed the identity of “writer.” But when I was writing, I felt guilty too. Like I was taking time away from actual responsibilities, as if writing was some self-indulgence I hadn’t earned.

The former had me perplexed—how could guilt about not writing stop me from writing? That’s how writing guilt works: it folds in on itself until it creates paralysis. The very thing that could ease the guilt (putting words on the page) feels impossible.

Think of it like dieting. You feel guilty about not eating vegetables, but instead of reaching for a salad, you double down with pizza and ice cream. Guilt doesn’t correct the behaviour; it intensifies the avoidance. Writing guilt behaves the same way. The more you tell yourself you should be writing, the harder it becomes to begin.

And here’s the crux: guilt doesn’t come from the outside. No one is standing over your shoulder demanding sentences (unless your publisher is, in which case, godspeed). It comes from inside, from the knowledge that you’re ignoring something essential. That’s why the guilt gnaws so deeply—it’s not about failing others, it’s about failing yourself. It’s an internal reckoning, a quiet battle with yourself for not tending to the thing you know you’re called to do.

And where does all that guilt leave me? Completely blocked. I don’t procrastinate by doing something useful. I don’t suddenly become a laundry-folding machine or finally scrub the kitchen. I procrastinate with nonsense: scrolling media, binge-watching Bridgerton for the third time, anything that numbs the discomfort of not writing. But the longer I go without it, the hungrier I get, the guiltier I feel, and the harder it becomes to return to the page.

Then there is the flip side of it: the guilt that comes while writing. It’s the voice that whispers, shouldn’t you be doing something more important? Shouldn’t you be folding laundry, answering emails, fixing the thing that’s been broken for weeks? Writing, in this framing, feels like theft—like stealing minutes from responsibilities that “matter more.”

But here’s the truth: if you’ve read this far, you probably don’t think of writing just as a pastime. It isn’t scrapbooking or sudoku. For those of us pulled into it, writing is a calling. A powerful impulse to make sense of the world through words.

And even if you did consider it a hobby, it would still be a hobby of self-improvement. Writing is good for you. It strengthens your brain both cerebrally and spiritually. It’s once again like dieting (though maybe I shouldn’t be writing this on an empty stomach), or like exercise. It feels good when you push through guilt and slip into flow, but it’s also good for you. Writing enhances your ability to think, to communicate, to process your experiences. The act of writing is valuable.

So, no—writing isn’t indulgence. It’s maintenance. It’s nourishment. It’s showing up to care for the part of you that hungers for more than errands and deadlines. And the maddening part? Knowing this doesn’t protect me from the cycle. When guilt meets guilt, it turns into a spiral, one that pulls you further from the page every time you circle through it. You don’t write, so you feel guilty. To alleviate it, you try to write. And you feel guilty again. Twenty minutes later, you have a half-concocted page of nonsense and a basket of unfolded laundry. It’s not productive. It’s not satisfying. It’s not good for any of us.

There is a solution, thankfully, but it starts with a mental shift. Guilt about writing or not writing isn’t proof of failure, it’s proof that writing matters. The guilt itself is a signal. And that means we don’t need to erase it or outwit it; we need to learn to write through it, to shrink it down to size until it’s no longer paralyzing.

Which brings me to advice that’s not mine at all but borrowed from the writers I’ve read and listened to, the ones who have unknowingly handed me the tools to survive this cycle. One piece of advice in particular comes from Anne Lamott, who gave us the “shitty first draft” and, with it, permission to be gloriously imperfect on the page. But another of her gifts is the “one-inch picture frame.”

Lamott suggests that when the task of writing feels overwhelming, you narrow your focus. Instead of staring down the whole project, you look through a tiny frame—just one-inch wide—and describe only what you can see there. One detail, one moment, one line. That’s all you need to begin.

And here’s where it connects to guilt: the one-inch frame doesn’t just shrink the project; it shrinks the shame. You don’t have to answer for every unwritten page, every unfinished novel, every deadline you didn’t meet. You only have to face the inch in front of you. Write one sentence, then another. Guilt can’t spiral if you don’t give it room to spin.

It’s not just about overwhelm, either. The one-inch picture frame also works on guilt for writing. Because guilt thrives on scale—it tells you that if you sit down to write, you’d better produce something important enough to justify the time you “stole.” But the one-inch frame dismantles that expectation. You don’t need to defend an afternoon or a draft. You only need to give yourself permission to write what fits in that inch: one image, one line, one thought. That’s all. And suddenly writing no longer feels like a grand act of indulgence, but a small, manageable act of self-care.

And here’s where Lamott’s advice meets mine: the solution to guilt in both directions is as simple as ten minutes at a time. If the guilt is about not writing, ten minutes of words is enough proof that you’re still a writer. Those minutes accumulate, and eventually they become pages, then chapters. On the other hand, if the guilt comes while writing, ten minutes is hardly a theft. The laundry can wait that long. Ten minutes is small enough to silence the voice that says writing is indulgent, but powerful enough to remind me that it matters.

That’s the shift that freed me. The guilt won’t vanish, but it might soften when you understand it. And when it still threatens to paralyze me, I use tools that make space for action. Sometimes that looks like Anne Lamott’s one-inch picture frame. Other times it’s my own reminder that writing is care, not indulgence. Every sentence, no matter how messy, is an act of alignment.

I don’t owe the world words. I owe myself a chance to live the way I’m called to live—by writing. And that happens the same way everything worthwhile happens: one small act at a time, until the guilt has nothing left to stand on.