I'm stuck right now. Completely blocked. Stuck like train on 22nd Street in the middle of rush hour. (Saskatoon reference!) Stuck like a feather in honey. Stuck like footprint in cement. I'm grounded, fastened, stymied, stumped, frozen, glued.
Whatever other colourful words you have for it, I've got writers block which is making it impossible to move forward in my current work in progress. And it's driving me absolutely crazy! Usually, I will write through it. Just keep the fingers moving on the keyboard and hope some magic can be conjured by sheer force of will.
But once in a while, that doesn’t work. Whenever I get like this, I often end up eating ice cream and pouting. When there's no more ice cream, here's what I try:
I review positive comments I've received in the past. I've been this a long time (over two decades), so I've accumulated a lovely list of those feel-good comments that never fail to lift my spirits when I'm having a rough time. "You're an amazing writer!" "Your characters were so real!" etc.
I listen to music. I almost always have music cranked when I'm composing fiction. So if I'm struggling to find my way in a story, I'll refer back to the last song that felt like it encapsulated the emotional kernel of the story. And I'll put it on repeat.
I get out of my head, out of my office. I go for a drive, a walk, a hike. Or I dig in my garden (during those lovely months when there's not snow on the ground here on the prairies). Doing something physical often unsticks my brain. Sometimes even doing something manual like dusting, vacuuming, or washing the dishes can be enough to shake something loose.
And if none of that works, I write really terrible poetry for my own amusement. Like really terrible. I can't even rhyme. Or I attempt to draw something. My stumbling efforts in another creative outlet sometimes inspire me in ways nothing else can.
Sometimes it's okay to walk away from something for a bit. One of the greatest things a writer to inform their writing - fiction or nonfiction - is live a life worth writing about. Cultivate experiences in your own world that will inform your fictional world more completely. So if you can't write, go out there and live until you have something to write about.
What do you do when you get stuck?
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