The Writer's Block

I suppose I should make at least one post on writer’s block, just so I can say that the title for the blog is appropriate, huh? Getting over writer’s block is all about letting the creative energies flow unabated. And writers block is caused, in my opinion, when we let other things dam up our creativity. I get my best inspirations and creative ideas from anomalies that occur during my day, things that stick out among the mundane rituals and cause my mind to switch to a chain of thoughts that become more and more creative, as I allow the anomaly to serve as permission to my conscious mind to think in the abstract.

So, here are some ideas for tearing down the dam and letting the creative juices flow, but, in essence, I think that a writer has to get used to playing and being silly: with objects, ideas, people, themselves, words, gestures, rituals, etc.

• Hand write a letter using your non-dominate hand to the last person you talked to. (No need to send it unless you want to make them think you’ve had a stroke, though)
• Do something you haven’t done since you were a kid like play hopscotch, climb up in a tree and sit on a limb, or dig a tunnel in the dirt outside and drive a car through it (a Hot Wheels car, not your Honda)
• Study something from nature in great detail and up as close as possible. Spend several minutes admiring the colors, shapes, sounds, smells, textures, and other details . Then step back and take it all in again and see how it really “fits” into the world around it. Admire how it has made it’s place and serves a function.
• Lay down on the ground and look up at something, I.e.: the ceiling, the sky, a person standing over you.
• Lay down in a pile of leaves.
• Stand up while writing.
• Take a drive to a place you’ve never been.
• Create lists of things, including a list of lists to create. Also include a list of “What If” questions, I.e.: what if the sky was green and the grass was blue?”
• Sit down in an interesting place and start writing, I.e: a closet, at the bottom of an empty pool or bathtub, against your front door, in your child’s bed, on a trampoline, on the tailgate of a truck, under the kitchen table, etc. This one may not be good for extensive periods of time, but it might help get the floodgates open.
• Write the words vertically down the page instead of horizontally across it
• Try writing with no capitalization, or perhaps no punctuation.
• Read a page from a book entirely backwards or upside-down
• Walk around a room pointing to various objects and call them something other than what they really are, I.e.: point to a blender and call it a bed (however, try to avoid pointing at your family members during this exercise as you may find yourself in over your head if you are really “letting go.”)
• Pick an object and describe it as if you were talking to someone who was blind and had never seen the object before.
• Create a song from a paragraph you’ve written or read.
• Write what you’ve already written from the opposite perspective.
• Tape record a conversation you have with your dog, cat or other pet and then listen to it.
• Bare your feet and subject them to different textures, I.e: set them on sandpaper, an old throw rug, marbles, grass, noodles, in ice or warm water, loosely wrap them in plastic wrap, squish them into Playdough, weave yarn between the toes.
• Create your own unique dance moves.