The ideas flow through your head, but not to your fingers. Whatever’s blocking you from wanting to put down has disconnected the path from your mind to your fingertips.

It happens to everyone—I hope. While writing is a great pastime, sometimes you just don’t know what you’re doing. Regardless of the plans, or the drive to even do what you set out to do. It’s a hopeless feeling, wondering if you’re ever going to be able to put more words down on the page anytime soon.

Usually, there are ways to bounce back; writing exercises, brainstorming or even taking a break from writing works. Go out and take a walk to get the blood flowing, the ideas might come back.

But this is different from being burnt out. Not feeling the will to write can be daunting and kind of scary in some situations. Is there a paper due in a couple of days? Can’t seem to get the words onto the paper to save your life?

Yeah, one of those moments where it’s impossible to even start an opening sentence for whatever is being worked on. My own opening line comes from what I’ve been trying to do for two hours or so. Write a column on something I find important or interesting. I have ideas, but no idea how to execute my ideas. Some weeks, I have an idea on what I want to do the next week as I send in my column for the week.

Of course, there were ways of preventing my case of not being able to write. I didn’t prepare ahead—it’s not like I’m rushing my columns. My free time outweighs any other time I’m working on other things. When I’m not brooding on not being able to write, I could be writing about common themes I’ve found while watching prime time television, the books I’ve been reading over the summer—even writing for my own pleasure.

But instead, I dread writing, which I find un-writer like. But I have these moments where I can’t come up with new material for my columns or stories. Sometimes, the suggested methods of getting rid of not being able to put words on paper helps. But other times, it doesn’t.

With just a couple of weeks left in the summer and before the BG News switches from summer to the normal issues, I’ll work on my writing struggles and get back on track. That will be my promise for the end of the summer—to get moving forward once again.