When I interviewed dozens of successful writers for a book, I discovered that many of them experience anxiety or fear related to writing. Some of those feelings may be a result of needing to satisfy so many "requirements" at once. (That’s even true for bloggers.) You want to create work that pleases yourself as well as your editor and future readers, but how can you ever know if you’re choosing the right words out of all the hundreds of thousands available?

Happily, some writers have figured out ways to make use of self-imposed constraints to write better and, paradoxically, with more ease and less self-torture.

Consider the following strategies.

How to Set Your Own Limits to Allay Writing Anxiety

The constraints of writing alphabet-themed mysteries (“N” is for Noose and so on) concentrate her creativity in a (mostly) positive way, novelist Sue Grafton told me. She compares writing mysteries to a hand of bridge, where you’re always dealt 13 cards, and within those cards you have no idea what you’re going to do or where you’re going to go. “And so the skill,” she said, “is to take the rules and regulations and push them as far as you can.”

One way to both loosen and focus your thinking, whether you’re planning to write poetry or prose, is to give yourself an assignment such as: Write a series of lines beginning with “I wish. . .” or “No!” or “Alas!” or “Amazingly. . .,” or, as my late husband Stephen, a boundary-breaking poet, once suggested, “The elephant has big balls.” Then give yourself five or 10 minutes to write. Any of these line-starters, or any other you devise, will force your brain to get itself in gear and turn out words. At the same time, you may find yourself tapping into emotions you had no idea were so close to the surface.

It often helps to reframe the task you’re facing. If you can narrow the gap between the effort you will be putting forth and the distant reward that may or may not ever arrive, you’ll find procrastination is far less likely. Thus, for instance, divide a longer project into smaller sections, such as chapters or individual sections within a chapter. Define the goal and your tasks in a less abstract way. "Write a great novel" can feel intimidating, whereas it's so much more doable to think, "This afternoon, I will write a paragraph about each of three different kinds of days I would like my character(s) to experience, from best to worst."

“For me, the anxiety of writing is the anxiety of possibility," wrote Dashiel Carrera in his essay for Lit Hub, “Five Writers on How Writing with Creative Constraints Unlocked Their Projects.” When Carrera began composing his novel The Deer (Dalkey Archive Press), he writes, “I began each session with a clock next to me, forcing myself to hit a word count before the alarm buzzed. The incredible pressure of this process no doubt influenced the mental state of The Deer’s protagonist—panicked, confused, full of dread—but his voice was able to take on an independence and agency I wouldn’t have otherwise thought possible.… Adding a time constraint helped me step out of my own way.”

According to novelist Aimee Bender on the pw.org site: "I'm a big believer in structure, and the idea that creativity loosens up when constrained a bit. I like to set a firm time for my writing; you could make a word count limit, (250 words today and I cannot leave the computer until it is done!) or set a timer and write for thirty minutes.... I often have to sit through a lot of restlessness to get to the work, but the restlessness, in my mind, can be a clue that there's something interesting and unknown up ahead, something unfamiliar."

Some writers told me they have a hard time getting into it when they know they have a shortened amount of time. I (and most likely other people) experience the same thing—in both writing and in sex. I personally can't or don't want to begin the necessary process of letting go if I know I may be interrupted or if time is limited in any way, regardless of how little time is actually needed. If a part of the consciousness has to remain aware of the time constraint, something isn't free to happen. Yet some love both writing and other activities when time is limited, as they find the increased tension a bonus.

I can’t recall where I read this, and I don’t think it would be practical for many of us, but Victor Hugo supposedly would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing. Now, that's dedication.

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