Reboot Your Internal Writing Machine in 5 Grueling Steps

Writing brain has the blue screen of death? Try these ridiculously difficult fixes!

Leigh Victoria Phan, MS
3 min readOct 20, 2022
Photo Courtesy of Elnur on Adobe Stock

You haven’t written in days? Read 50 serious how-to articles? Haven’t done anything? That’s okay! You just need a reboot!

Grab a cup of coffee (or liquor) and let’s figure out how to reboot your internal writing machine. Start by turning it off and on again. Yes, really. The human equivalent of power cycling is a nap.

Okay. You napped? Great!

Now…

1. Buy a typewriter!

Bonus points if it’s vintage and costs as much as your rent. Look at that sexy beast — it’s just overflowing with historic value and authorly charm. Imagine, maybe a famous (or brilliant but obscure) writer wrote upon it in the past. Who knows who might’ve had it before you.

So buy a typewriter! And type away! Guaranteed to keep you motivated and entertained for approximately 3 days.

2. Go to your favorite ridiculously expensive coffee shop to write… and end up not writing a word!

You did it. You put on pants. You got out of your tiny, cluttered apartment. Some would…

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Leigh Victoria Phan, MS

Brooklyn-based writer and poet. Designer in NYC. Drinks books and loves coffee. Has an MS from NYU in Integrated Design & Media. Working on an MFA in Fiction.