WRITERS BLOCK....
…how to deal when it strikes
Accept it. Intervals of idleness are essential to creativity. Sometimes you need to space out and stare at a wall, take a walk, draw a bath, stretch, cook, nap.
Don’t refer to it as a “block." Words have power, and saying you are
”blocked” tricks your brain into believing it. The late Maya Angelou, prolific poet and author, in response to the question “what do you do when you have writer’s block,” told the Harvard Business Review: Oh no, I don’t know that. I don’t know that at all. I just don’t call it a block. I’m careful about the words I use because I know that my brain will remember and will tell it back to me. And so there are times when I sit at that, bed, on that bed, with Roget’s Thesaurus, the dictionary, and the Bible, and a playing deck of cards. I play solitaire. And sometime in a month of writing, I might use up two or three decks of bicycle cards, giving my “little mind” something to do. I got that from my grandmother, who used to say, when something would come up, and it would surprises her she’d say sister, you know, that wasn’t even on my littlest mind. So I really thought that there was a small mind and a large mind. And if I could occupy the small mind, I could then go more quickly down to the big mind. So I play solitaire. And I’ve used up a deck of Bicycle cards, really good cards, in a week and a half. And sometimes, out of that week and a half, I’ve gotten two pages (of writing) worth looking at, and sometimes, I’ve got 20.Put it on ice, I mean literally. I’ve done this repeatedly with people or situations I want to put on ice, by writing their name on a piece of paper and sticking it in the freezer. Apparently Joan Didion took this a step further when she was stuck on a book. According to her longtime editor Shelley Wanger, “If she’s feeling stuck on something, she’ll put it in the freezer... The manuscript, in the freezer, in a bag.”
