Dealing with Writer’s Block — Just write about it!

Most writers suffer from an ailment called “writers’ block.” I Have given the malady a lot of thought over the years, and I do have some suggestions to offer. Here’s what I suggest to others: JUST WRITE! Sit down and grab your pen, and write something…even if its wrong. Start with a word like “the,” and add a noun… cat, woman, oregano plant…and build from there. Even if it doesn’t make a bit of sense, just get the fingers to work writing. Once a few sentences of jibber jab are flowing across the page, the muse will take over and unlock the channels of deathless prose that are stuck in your brain.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Well here is what I personally do when I sit down to write: I sit and stare at the pen, or inspect a fingernail. Then get up and head for the kitchen for a cup of coffee…what the heck, and pop something in the toaster. While away from the writing place I might as well use the bathroom. I try to ignore things like the washing machine beckoning for a load, or plants gasping for the watering can.

If the phone doesn’t ring, or the cat do something bad in the hallway, or the coffee stays in the cup, I head back to the writing place, sit down, and write some words like: “the elephant took a chance on finding a place to park in the busy driveway…” yep, doesn’t make sense, but heck…there just might be a spark of genius in one of the words in the sentence–elephant, driveway, parking… and there we go! Writing at last.

This post is a response to a Daily Prompt post. The post dealt with a wonderful suggestion for creating a sort of “job jar” for writers who often need a boost in creation of ideas to write about. The link is included below, in case readers suffer from writers’ block. And who doesn’t?)

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/prompt-box/#comments

The problem of the very fleeting nature of brainstorm ideas, like dreams, are such that ideas for clever turn of phrases, a hilarious thing that happened, a flash of brilliance from the brain–these happen all the time. We just need to be prepared to capture these gems and write them down for posterity.

Which brings me to the opposite of writers block–trying to stop the flood once the ideas do start pouring forth. Sometimes I can’t write/type fast enough, and have no way to remember the footnotes and flashes of insight that dash through like those metaphorical calendar pages that zip by in the movies.

Writers’ Block is always a good topic itself to set the writing juices flowing.

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