I did not know about writer’s block, but only after some time, before I arrived to work in the Middle East from Europe, doing two master’s degrees. I decided to write about what I have gone through when I was in the thesis writing and as an author and writer. Then I will present the most well-known papers on writer’s block in 2026. The first writing was about the metropolis of London transforming. Many universities connect writing to the learning process; see my article The Act of Creation: Learning by Writing. I wrote a lot, and I checked a lot, but that was for every section of the writing. A sudden stop came when I felt that I was tired of writing and I needed a cup of coffee, so I went each time to make one. The stop was caused by rereading each paragraph after extensive checking and fear of leaving something behind that could show I am not professional to my professor.

Actually, it was a mix of long hours of writing and the stress of checking and rereading the paragraphs that made me leave the writing from time to time. Another thing is that I had to bring a lot of text, sit and gather and summarize it, then transfer it from handwritten paper to the computer. This process made me feel uncomfortable with writing and to take rest and leave it from time to time. Another important matter: this situation made me leave writing because my thoughts were not concentrated, and the ideas were scattered away from me because I was doing all the activities of rereading, checking, writing summaries, and transferring them from paper to computer. So, I just wanted to finish the writing without focusing on the ideas and the aims and objectives of the writing.

The next writing was about the effect of technology development on the creation and innovation in architecture work. I took an example from practice, the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, as a base study. This example made the writing exciting in the beginning but became stressful after some time because of a lack of sufficient resources for the writing. That gave the feeling that the writing would receive strong criticism because of the small reference coverage and mostly architectural magazines. The ideas I wanted to study had limited support because of a lack of resources. Adding to that, there was a bigger task, doing the graduation urban design project, that took a lot of my energy in terms of thinking and side search for information. In addition, all the activities I mentioned earlier were happening in cycles over and over again. My psychology was down because I did not find sufficient references for the research I was doing about the technology development.

After a short while, after finishing all the design work, I started the big research: the thesis writing. Here, things were easier because I had a plan for writing, and I discussed it with the professor, unlike the former ones. That gave me a psychological boost, and my mood became positive. The continuous support from the professor relieved me because I was also under stress gathering information, analyzing, categorizing, and putting summaries down on paper as usual, and transferring the information from paper to computer.

Another attempt was to write about urban planning, politics, and how people plan, and that is reflected in the writing. Here, the task became more complex, starting from finding references. The actual matter is that there were a lot of references and the problem of screening them to find the exact ones for the research. That took a lot of time from the time allocated for the writing, leaving very little room for the writing and all the processes related to it. In addition, waiting for a specific meeting to check what they were discussing to reflect on the writing topic also took a lot of thinking and caused a lot of stress. Then the discussion was really far away from the subject, which put my mood really down, but I was forced to select one of the meetings and that was the closest match. And I knew that my capacity at that time to write this research would take no less than ten days, and I was running out of time. I did not have the mood to write, and I faced lots of stops, and I even stopped and went to sleep to rest my brain.

The strange thing is that when I was writing at night, and the TV was on, and the voice was very low, the stops were not severe, and I managed to write continuously and smoothly. Adding to that when I was writing in the evening and sitting near the window and having a view of the garden or outside, it also reduced the stop time, and I managed to continue smoothly. Innovative writing needs a specific environment; see my article Writing academic essay – the innovative flow.

There were a lot of urban development plans or they call it local development plans for three countries, and this, I thought, would give me a headache also like the remaining writings. Collecting the local plans from all three together, they were ready and available, so there was no effort to be made to search for other resources. Selecting a method or a political model to be the base of all the research and how the plans were built against the model really made it easy and very comfortable. And that put me in the mood to do a lot of work and do a focused work and to bring together the ideas, and the analysis became stronger. That was done without a plan, and things were going very well because all related matters were ready and there were no missing papers or search activity. In this situation I never faced a stop and things went very smoothly till the completion date.

I never imagined, after the experience I gathered in writing, that I would face real trouble in one of the important writings required to evaluate a development proposal. The first shock was that I was handed, with my colleagues, a document of 500 pages, and 12 local strategic plans and 7 reports. The first thing is that this is a development proposal that has to be convincing to the government and the public, and that made the task very hard. The required writing is just simply writing your evaluation but what does that mean? It’s the big challenge. The development proposal covers so many fields: political, social, economic, and, adding to that, the professional part related to practice. And that made it really uncomfortable because the request was very vague and general, and you were lost in the middle of enormous data to dig through.

Here, it wasn’t simply following a plan for writing or writing without a plan. It wasn’t that you brought support from others who have more knowledge. The matter is that the request for writing was just general and vague, which leaves the writer in the middle of nowhere. You don’t know where to start or what to write, what to evaluate or criticize. In the end, the task of writing was deliberately finalized quickly because the mood for writing was very low.

Traveling long distances to do research and write is not something everyone can do. You have limited time to finish the process of research and writing, and you are facing a funding matter. When the new location costs you a lot of money, this is the first stress you will face. Adding to that, you are always thinking of the time to complete, to reduce the amount of money spent. I called someone in the public sector to hold a meeting to gather information, and he was the only one. He informed me he was in the hospital, and he could do it on the phone. I called him a couple of times; there was no response. People in the public sector do not respond to emails; when you visit someone to ask to speak to him, they say: send him an email. All three doors for gathering information were closed.

In this way, you can see how much stress you already have before even starting to write. The only thing left is getting documents from libraries and public sector archives. And when you are writing about professional practice, you will mostly not receive help from anyone, or only very limited help. I started writing while having all these pressures and the most important doors for information closed. So, I knew that the writing would face a lot of problems because it is related to practice. I did not realize that I spent most of the time roaming around, and the time for writing was very short, just to get away from this pressure, and my mood was down for writing. I had to go out occasionally to sit in a nearby park to rest my mind and to lift my mood for writing.

When I came back to the Middle East to return to professional practice, and I thought to start writing, I realized lots of things from my experience abroad in writing that would make me write a lot.

Making things clear before even writing one single word, and that’s without planning anything for writing, regardless of the topic I am going to write about. For example, gathering the documents and deciding at least the direction of writing using a method, model, technique, and so on. This makes it very easy to complete a writing task without writer’s block happening.

Mostly, when I set out to write about a complex subject, I put the writing in a plan. The plan includes what documents I need. Where to get these documents and where to search for them. Method of collecting the information: manual or direct writing to a computer. Am I going to ask people in an interview, or going to do a survey and ask questionnaires? The amount of writing for each section of the writing. How much time do I have to accomplish the writing in total and for each section?

Selecting the proper environment is essential to do focused writing and to complete the task on time. What time of day to write, where to sit, and in which conditions. For me, I realized that I am more productive when I am connected to the atmosphere of a pleasant scene like a park or garden with quiet surroundings. That is at night or in the evening, facing a window and the view outdoors. On many occasions when I am alone, and the TV is on with low volume, I really become comfortable and face no problem in writing.

As a matter of fact, if English-tongue writers are facing writer’s block, then no one will blame non-English writers for writer’s block. These writers face problems of lack or shortage of words to express ideas what a foreigner will say, that he is not of English tongue origin. I personally, in the past, faced this problem of lacking the ability to express ideas easily, and that is not because of mental failure. It is because of less vocabulary and less knowledge of words that express the meaning and make the writing look more professional. So, in order to reduce the time at least for rereading and checking the writing that gives you the proper time to express ideas is to lean on software that checks writing and gives advice for enhancement, and this applies when you are writing a book, research, or professional report.

These days, I really lean on my bank of English vocabulary when I am writing for my website and keeping things simple so all readers can understand easily.

Anyone in any field likes to be rewarded for doing something special. So, I invented the idea of rewarding myself when I am accomplishing a milestone or writing something special by inviting myself out for dinner, or doing a recreational activity somewhere nice to lift my mood and relieve my mind from stressful writing. When I am writing something, in most cases I apply all these steps to make my writing more focused, more enjoyable, more useful for others, results-oriented, and to help others to achieve their goals and ambitions.

My personal experience with writing since 2016 revealed that when a writer has complete knowledge of a subject of writing he holds firm ground when writing. The writer will not pass any occasion that makes him fall into the writer’s block zone in any way. 

In the following section, I will go through the two papers that I read about writer’s block to stand on the academic work related to this matter, and to present the recent findings on experiments on writers and their advice for others to avoid writer’s block, and to see whether writer’s block really exists in practice.

The two papers reviewed.

Luiselli presents a resource guide of the several influences on writing production. He defines writer’s block as when a person has difficulty with word fluency and meeting deadlines. Ahmed investigates the cause and characteristics of writer’s block. He says that writer’s block has been defined as the inability for a writer to produce new material.

Luiselli shows that previous research says procrastination happens because a writer knows that there is no penalty for delaying or completing a task. A student having difficulty in writing was put under a small test by dividing the writing task into five small parts and was asked to complete each one individually. This made her complete the assignment successfully without delay. Another girl in therapy, sitting as before with conditional rewards, reached a satisfactory end. He pointed to research on three groups of students: one asked to do a specific writing task, second also but when they feel like it, third they had to write when they reach target, they need to denote $15. The report shows the first one was the most successful. Another study on students shows that they were informed to submit their manuscript throughout the semester, and if they fail, they need to submit the final manuscript two days before the deadline. The studies were on students, and none of the research was applied to professional writers facing writing challenges. He described the writing process in a short paragraph. 

Ahmed shows that research in the 1950s pointed to the cause of writer’s block as a non-conscious activity. Second, when a writer tries to control the writing process deliberately. The 1970s research thought that writer’s block is the cause of writers’ behavior, procrastination, irregular habits, and poor self-control of writing activity. 1980s research used a single student to do a scheduled writing that improved the productivity and the number of words written. Other researchers link writer’s block to emotional and cognitive factors. This research was conducted on writers by doing interviews and also passing questionnaires to college students. In the late 20^th century, research done on the effect of brain injury on the writing process and writer’s block delivered positive results. Ahmed described these effects in depth while describing the writing process.

Luiselli presented a writing strategy that he assumed students should follow in order to produce effective writing and avoid as much as possible a writer’s block. First, Schedule Writing Sessions by allocating a specific time of the day every week or whatever is convenient to you. Second, Writing Session Behavior means writing, and the writer should not put too much focus on clarity and meaning in the beginning. Third, Goal-Setting/Progress Monitoring means setting short-term measurable writing goals like writing 500 words a day. Fourth, Reinforcement means allocating rewarding actions to oneself when following a process or schedule, or completing a task. Every step of this strategy is underpinned by research conducted earlier by researchers.

Ahmed describes, from the literature, that there are four causes of writer’s block: physiological

These show factors that disturb the functioning of the cognitive writing process. Motivational, which makes writing less enjoyable, and fear of criticism. Cognitive, which relates to perfectionism and fixed writing rules. And behavioural, which relates to procrastination or having a non-unified writing schedule. He indicates research was conducted on selected professional writers count 101 from different age sector and gender to stand on the cause of writer’s block. This research resulted in identifying the cause of writer’s block as physiological and emotional. Another study was conducted to show the relation of causes and characteristics of writer’s block. The research results were that the common characteristics of the physiological and emotional writer’s block relate to heavy memory use, decision-making, and complex problem solving.

The strategies for solving writer’s block were also researched and 13 strategies were proposed and writers were asked to identify the best for them. The highest score came to strategies of taking a break and taking a walk.

The research results were that the physiological, motivational, and cognitive happened during the first phases of writing and were related to stress, anxiety, and fluctuations in energy levels that affect the problem-solving process.

Comparative Table: Two Papers on Writer’s Block

Criteria follow the structure of the review: aims, literature, research study, strategies for solution, and the description of the writing process.

Research papers reviewed

• Ahmed, Sarah J., “An Analysis of Writer’s Block: Causes, Characteristics, and Solutions” (2019). UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 903. https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/903

• Luiselli, James K. “It’s Not Writer’s Block: A Resource Guide for Improving Writing Productivity.” Behavioral Interventions, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1002/bin.70145.