In the Pixar movie Finding Nemo, we meet Marlin, a clownfish who has lost his son Nemo. On his way to find him, he meets Dory, a black and blue tang fish who has short-term memory loss.

Despite her limited mental capacity, she gives Marlin a great piece of advice that eventually helps him locate his son. She says, “Just keep swimming.”

This is great advice not only for finding lost kids, but also for finding lost words.

When you feel blocked, when you feel like the words just won’t come, remember the words of the novelist Jodi Picoult. She said, “I don’t believe in writer’s block. Think about it — when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn’t it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer’s block is having too much time on your hands. If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

The very best thing you can do for your writing career is just keep writing. No matter how bad it is, you can improve it later. Just get the words down and keep moving.

Those blocks that are keeping you from writing are just like Pixar characters: they may seem real, but they don’t actually exist.

Today’s Challenge: When you’re feeling blocked, have you tried to just keep writing?