Tag: writers block

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Writer Encouragement

Earthlings Are Watching

You need to write, but you don’t feel like it. You have nothing to say, nowhere to start. You have a deadline, or a great idea, yet your brain is clogged. Some call it writer’s block. Best-selling author Jodi Picoult 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.”

Jodi Picoult Quotes. BrainyQuote.com, BrainyMedia Inc, 2020+.

That may be true, but for those of us with “too much time on our hands,” these suggestions might help.

Just Start

Get your coffee or tea, sit down at your desk, and pray! Then start writing. Compose a prayer if nothing else comes to mind. When your head is full of negative emotions, get all of your angst out onto the paper, such as, “I can’t think of a blessed thing to write about, and maybe I should quit writing anyway. Nobody wants to read what I write.”

Yes, we’ve all been there. Get it out and then move on. It may even be useful later for something like a column on “Writer Encouragement.” Just start somewhere, and as you do, chances are the Spirit will take over and lead you into something interesting God wanted you to say. Somewhere, in the midst of all of the mess you just spewed onto the paper, nuggets of gold may be hiding.

Give Thanks

Giving thanks may overcome writer’s block. List the myriad ways you are blessed. “I am thankful for the good health to sit in my chair and type.” When you have a deadline, “I am thankful someone wants my writing.” If you don’t have a deadline, “I am thankful for having all the time I need to do an excellent job.” Once you start the flow, it will become easier to keep going.

I have nine little blessings, ages one to fourteen, and they motivate me to write. After I wrote the first children’s book starring my granddaughter, my other grandchildren expected one as well. Everyone may not be blessed with grandchildren, but it may help to list the people you love. Consider how you want to write for their sakes—to encourage them, dedicate a book to them, leave a legacy of beautiful family stories, make them proud.

 Remember the Witnesses

A family trip to Red River Gorge, a famous rock-climbing spot in Kentucky, reminded me of an important truth. We were climbing a dangerous outcropping of rocks together. My adult children climbed ahead of me, offering a hand up when needed, and my husband stayed behind. I plastered my body against the slippery surface and slowly hoisted my weight from one tiny foot-hold indention in the rock to the next. My legs shaped angles they hadn’t formed in years. With plenty of help, I struggled through it.

With the final rise conquered under my feet, I realized a group of young climbers had been waiting above, watching and cheering me on! It reminded me of Hebrews 12:1.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Hebrews 12:1 (NIV)

Throw off all distractions—cell phones, the voice of the enemy, dirty laundry, alphabetizing the spice rack—and get to it. Remember, heaven is watching, and not only heaven, but earthlings as well!

In 1996, Susan E. Brooks moved to Mozambique, Africa, with her family where she taught art and English at an international high school and started journaling about her adventures. Twenty-six of the stories of struggles and victories in Mozambique are now published on her blog in a series entitled “Mozambican Odyssey.” She has since lived in Portugal, Ghana, and Cyprus, as well as in her home state of Kentucky, USA.

Meanwhile, nine grandchildren have come along, and she is inspired to write and illustrate a children’s book for each of them. Susan has self-published four children’s books so far.

In recent years, her stories have been published by Peace Catalyst International and in an anthology entitled Prayer Warrior Confessions. Follow Susan’s adventures and her art on her websiteL susanebrooks.com, Facebook susanbrooksart, and on Instagram @sebrooks81.

Categories
Courting the Muse

Why Your “Bad” Writing Holds the Key to Curing Writer’s Block

Long before the pandemic began, I used to drop into the occasional adult beginner ballet class. There, I’d stretch out vertebrae accustomed to being crunched together over a laptop, and curl fingers stiff from typing around a wooden barre. I stopped going after a while, but the monotony of sheltering in place made me want to dance again. With the studios shuttered by COVID, I turned to YouTube. Now, I tendu and plié at home in my yoga pants, clumsily mirroring the dancers I call up on my TV screen.

One Youtube dance teacher, the Miami City Ballet soloist Kathryn Morgan, posts follow-along stretching routines alongside her virtual barre classes. In one such video, Morgan stretches her legs long-wise on a Tiffany blue yoga mat. She rounds her back, hunching over with her spine forming a C-shape.

She says, “We’re doing this first” — with the curved spine — “so that when we do the normal head-to-knee stretch, the back doesn’t take over.” Then she straightens and hinges over, reaching for her feet. At home, stretching on a hardwood floor, I copy the curves and flats of her spine.

Morgan teaches us to sit in the “wrong” position first, releasing the distracting muscles in our back so we won’t be held taut by their tension. Doing the stretch badly, sinking into your comfort, allows you to do it well the next time.

I’ve written in the past about the virtues of bad prose, how reading ungainly sentences or ill-plotted stories can teach us to spot the flaws in our own writing. But, stretching with Morgan, I can’t help but think about how writing badly can sometimes be helpful too.

We all have questionable habits as writers. For me, it’s a shapelessness to my plotting, an overuse of metaphor, and a tendency to let my stories sort of… peter out instead of ending them with intention. For the most part, it makes sense to guard against these impulses toward sloppiness. But sometimes, thinking too hard about how not to write makes it hard to write at all.

I think, again, of ballet. Sometimes, the impossibility of turning out at the hip and pointing the toes and straightening the knee and tucking the pelvis, all at the same time, can freeze me in place before I even begin to move. To start dancing at all, I have to give myself permission to do it badly. Sometimes, I’ll even move in a deliberately off-kilter fashion, allowing my knees to knock together and my feet to flex. I’m letting my body have its way, before I subject it to balletic discipline.

When I find myself blocked by writerly perfectionism, I’ve found it helpful to give my “bad” impulses free rein too. But instead of doing this in the text of whatever I’m working on, I use a “fake” story as a scratchpad, deliberately staying away from the setting, characters, and even themes of my “real” project.

In this new document, which resembles an actual story only in the loosest sense of the term, I force myself to write thoughtlessly and without shame. I let my metaphors starburst into absurdity, my sentences tangle up in one another, my characters run off and disappear without reason. Instead of worrying about endings at all, I keep plowing ahead, rarely even reading over what I’ve typed.

Like releasing all the tension in my stiffened spine, writing with abandon like this lets me get my bad habits out of my system. Only then can I approach my “real” project unselfconsciously. It’s the writerly equivalent of dancing alone with your eyes closed, not even looking at your own clumsy, joyful shape in the mirror. In my opinion, there’s no better way to get over writer’s block.

Lucia Tang is a writer for Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the book industry’s best editors, designers, and marketers. To work on the site’s free historical character name generators, she draws on her knowledge of Chinese, Latin, and Old Irish —  learned as a PhD candidate in history at UC Berkeley. You can read more of her work on the Reedsy Discovery blog, or follow her on Twitter at @lqtang.

Categories
Writing for YA

Feeling Blocked? Five Tips to Help

I’ve never liked the term writer’s block and prefer to call it writer’s exhaustion, but it means the same thing. Hours or days of staring at a blank screen unable to type a word.

Recently, I’ve found myself at the crossroads between emotional exhaustion and distraction.

It’s common for creativity to dry up when a person is overwhelmed. Distraction also plays into the inability to buckle down and produce. Writing requires a lot of thinking and emotional input. 

At times I have plenty to say, but emotion stands firmly between my heart and my pen. Then I feel guilty and frustrated, which only adds to the stress.

In this situation, the first thing to do is to recognize the various demands and stressors affecting attitudes, feelings, and productivity.

Here are five tips that help when you’re feeling blocked

Focus on a different task for a short time.

Finding a new creative outlet can re energize, give a tired brain something else to concentrate on. We require times of refreshment, even when situations demand urgent action. It’s okay to take a moment or two, or three for mental health. 

Adapt. 

I received an email from a dear friend yesterday. An in-person writing group has been one of her anchors for years. A support system suddenly becoming unavailable is painful. Virtual meeting aren’t the same, but at least alternative methods exist. 

Many of my friends are taking advantage of writing conferences they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to attend. New seminars and opportunities are offered daily as organizations attempt to fill writers’ current needs.

While writing fiction is hard for me at the moment, taking notes isn’t a problem. For me, this dry spell is an opportunity to concentrate on learning craft. For others, the opposite may be true and periods of writer’s block are the perfect time to journal or explore a different type of writing.

There will be times when the well seems empty. Try to find things to focus on that are attainable. 

Celebrate accomplishments. 

I have a tendency to expect a great deal from myself, and it helps to stop and change my view point,  think about successes in light of my circumstances. I constantly need to remind myself I have a limited energy budget. We aren’t designed to do it all. There is no guilt in that admission. Recognize the goal posts along the way, instead of focusing on the never-ending to do list gives a realistic picture of progress and spurs me forward.

Find joy in the art of writing.

I am one for structure and schedules, which can sap the joy right out of what I love and turn it into a grind. I used to have a mindset that if it’s too much fun, maybe I’m not working hard enough. That’s not true. It’s still work even if I love my calling. It’s right and good to take joy in the gifts and abilities God has given.

Rest.

For me, the biggest obstacle is giving myself permission to allow time for self-care. Self-care is not selfish. It’s necessary for healthy functioning. It’s okay to take a break from whatever is stressful. 

It’s okay to be kind to yourself.

Donna Jo Stone writes YA contemporary novels about tough issues but always ends the stories with a note of hope. She blogs at donnajostone.com.