5 strategies for moving through “writer’s block”
It is not neurotic to sit at a desk all day devising an imaginary world. It is not even neurotic to sit all day at a desk trying to devise an imaginary world but not succeeding in doing so. What is neurotic is to hate oneself for doing or not doing either of these activities.
—Victoria Nelson
[This post is a follow-up to The art of the coddiwomple (or, “writer’s block” revisited).]
Drafting is joyful again, though it isn’t enough to feel relieved and grateful. I’ve been asking myself, What has helped? And why has it helped? How do you channel your creative energy while you’re waiting on that breakthrough? I’ve teased out several distinct practices and ways of being, which I have semi-consciously employed in tandem. Only one or two of these suggestions may resonate for you, so let’s just say the point is to keep close this one pure nugget of truth:
It may look to all the world like you are “stuck,” but you are actually in DISCOVERY MODE.
Stay curious and reflective and you’ll come up with more than a few solid strategies of your own.
I’ve settled upon my own definition of discipline.
Counterintuitive as it may sound, thinking of myself first and foremost as a “soft animal body” (thank you, Mary Oliver!) has done a world of good for my creative discipline. When I talk to friends about Kate and Nancy’s excellent parenting of my nieces and nephew, I characterize their approaches as love and discipline in perfect balance, and that’s something we can employ in our relationships with ourselves too.
For example, I have often called myself “clumsy” out loud when I’ve dropped or knocked into something. The other night, when my boyfriend dropped something and reacted the same way, I said: “What if we promise we are not going to call ourselves clumsy anymore, no matter what?” He readily agreed.
The next morning, I bumped my elbow into a carton of blueberries, a handful of which went scattering across the kitchen floor. “Aha!” I cried. “I am not allowed to call myself clumsy!” Instead, we arranged the fallen blueberries into an arrow pointing toward the dog, who promptly gobbled them up. We got a good laugh out of it, and though I can’t quantify this, I feel sure I poured that positive feeling into my workweek, which has been extra productive and joyful. (Note to self: research the research on reparenting and creativity!)
What discipline is:
Setting an intention to do a certain type of work (drafting, revising, admin, etc.) at a certain time of day, for a certain length of time (or until I feel jangly-brained, which happens after two to four hours of drafting), with distractions minimized; and following through on that intention to the best of my ability.
Setting reasonable boundaries with regard to my working conditions (see what I wrote in my last post about the DC Writers’ Room).
Preparing for productive work sessions by either packing lunch and snacks for the day (which entails meal prep and grocery shopping) or deciding on a solid takeout option (read: good value and keeps me full for hours, like a Chipotle sofritas burrito) ahead of time.
Also discipline: A willingness to recognize when the work I planned to do isn’t actually the most effective or fulfilling work to be doing that day after all, and pivoting accordingly. Reaffirming the value of scratching.
What discipline is NOT:
Inward name-calling or other forms of self-beratement. (No more “lazy” either!)
Setting up an unnecessarily complicated productivity system that I will inevitably not adhere to for more than a day, leading us back to habit #1.
Trying to adhere to a 9-5 Monday-Friday work schedule because that is what is understood and respected in this culture.
Revising a manuscript from 10am to 11pm (or later) with very infrequent bathroom and meal breaks. (It may look like I am “working hard,” but it is certainly not healthy.) In general, being “so in flow” that I forget I have to pee.
All this amounts to setting healthier boundaries with oneself. Remember Victoria Nelson’s adage that creative discipline arises naturally out of one’s deepest preferences? Many of the most profoundly contented moments of my life occur at a desk in a shared space where silence is the rule, with a pile of notes and a thermos of Earl Grey. Those are my preferences. Notice what your preferences are and then do your best to live by them.
More than ever before, I am continually on the lookout for a reason to laugh.
I want to improve my comedic writing skills, and I want to get better at not taking things personally and taking myself less seriously in general. But the pursuit of these worthy goals isn’t what’s making a difference.
I believe this meme originated with Merry Blacksmith, but please feel free to correct me.
I figured out pretty early on that as a creative person, it is critical to surround yourself with folks who’ll only say “You’re so silly!” or “Man, are you WEIRD!” in a tone of astonished admiration. Admittedly these folks are rare birds, as clearly implied by the Apple Dictionary thesaurus:
Having friends who truly appreciate one’s quirks is necessary for the maintenance of one’s self esteem. Yet it hadn’t occurred to me that being in a relationship with someone who actually enjoys me randomly speaking in cartoon voices, and with whom nonsense song lyrics and groan-worthy puns are a secondary love language, could have such an amplifying effect on my creativity. No coincidence that the middle-grade novel I’m drafting right now is the funniest thing I’ve written (and that includes Petty Magic). Of course, part of this newfound facility with jokes and wordplay is the result of the foundational work of character development, but where do hilarious three-dimensional characters come from?
“Would you still love me if I was a worm?”
“Well, dear, that would all depend on whether the scenario owes more to Kafka or Rick Moranis…”
Or let me put it to you this way: how conducive are etiquette and convention to creativity?
It doesn’t matter if it’s comedy in a more structured form or indulging one’s absurdist tendencies in private—it seems obvious, doesn’t it, that “silly people” are more likely to think thoughts no one else has ever thought before? (Okay, so we won’t ever know for sure—suffice to say it is possible.) Think of the jester of medieval legend, who was the only one allowed to point out the absurdities of the court. In this sense, to be “foolish” is to be wise.
So go ahead and rejig the lyrics to a cheesy ’80s power ballad on the fly. Sing at the top of your lungs. Giggle uncontrollably. Repeat.
And see what happens next.
I have re-immersed myself in children’s lit.
Last Christmas I gave my niece a copy of Phoebe Wahl’s Little Witch Hazel, and we love it more every time we read it together. The summer chapter is the most thematically relevant for (most) grown-ups, but my favorite is the winter chapter, in which Hazel spends all day helping her neighbors (tending to wounds, caring for newborn bunnies, and so forth) in the shadow of an impending blizzard. I revel in the moment when Otis swoops down to gather a lost and tired Hazel up out of the snowy darkness, and I get to hoot like an owl.
When Heather visited last year I shared the book with her, and of course she saw right away how nourishing this book is for one’s inner children. In a recent newsletter she wrote,
“As a child—okay, even now—I wanted to live at the base of a tree, with a rounded hobbit door. I'd wear felt slippers and sleep under quilts and live by candlelight, eating berries from my neighbors, the deer. Braided rugs under my feet, cups of hot cocoa, a roaring fireplace despite the fact that I live in a tree.”
Heather surprised me with this Little Witch Hazel print for my birthday! (Photo by Jason.)
The material comforts and aesthetic pleasures of such a fantasy life are actually about cultivating a sense of safety and belonging, whether the reader is four, a hundred and four, or anywhere in between. Cozy children’s lit puts us in the best possible head- and heart-space for creative renewal.
As for middle grade, I’ve listened to many old favorites on the Libby app, like Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Egypt Game, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the version narrated by Brooke Shields). I finally “read” Howl’s Moving Castle—I did not enjoy it as much as I expected to, although I will certainly be reading more Diana Wynne Jones—and I can also recommend the audio versions of Karen Cushman’s The Midwife’s Apprentice and Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Da Vinci’s Cat (her Newbery-honored The Book of Boy is one of my all-time favorite middle-grade novels).
In general, when you’re feeling creatively pinched it’s one of the wisest things you can do to immerse yourself in categories and genres you wouldn’t normally read. Little Free Libraries are the perfect resource for serendipitized book selections! (More on LFL in a future post on systematically “redistributing” my home library.)
I have analyzed the narrative structure of novels (and films) I remember fondly.
I’d been wanting to reread my favorite Neil Gaiman novel, and it turns out the plot of Neverwhere corresponds quite neatly to the 15-beat Save the Cat! formula apart from the transposition of beats #11 and #12 (“All is Lost” and “Dark Night of the Soul”). This makes sense given that Save the Cat! is largely (if arguably) a distillation of industry conventions, and that Gaiman conceived of Neverwhere as a television mini-series and novelized it in the midst of the scriptwriting process. Richard’s misadventure in Neverwhere maps even more neatly onto the Heroine’s Journey, since his descent into the underworld is a literal one, and he makes it through his ordeal with help from a cast of newfound trickster-frenemies who eventually become true friends. (There’s more, but in case you haven’t read this novel yet I don’t want to spoil it for you.)
I enjoyed this exercise so much that I want to make this an official (if occasional) practice. Once Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun trilogy is complete (June of this year!!), I plan to analyze the overarching plot strands Book-Architecture-style, though realistically I may not finish this exercise before 2025. (Please leave a comment if this is something you’d find helpful to have in PDF format inside my resource library!)
Depending on the novel (or film) you choose, a closer reading can open up many more fruitful avenues of learning. I gained a whole new level of enjoyment (and more to the point: writerly insight) in reading this feminist essay by Belle Waring on the hidden narrator of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, for instance, and from a fascinating film studies dissertation analyzing the 12-beat story structure Frank Capra used in several of his best-known films. (Thank you, Brian Geoffrey Rose!)
I practice “selfish creativity.”
“Going pro” means that nothing you write is purely for your own satisfaction. Even lines from my private writing tend to worm their way into my novels. (Yes, I want to see how many times I can drop a “worm” in this blog post.) Have I ever promised myself I’d write a story “just for me” without thinking at least fleetingly about eventually publishing it?
…Nope.
With all my talk of creative cross-pollination [here’s a YouTube link from 2021], I’ve been dancing around this concept for a long time now. “Selfish creativity” refers to a creative practice that IS solely for your own delight and satisfaction. It’s not something you’re secretly hoping to make a living at someday, or something you feel like you “should” be “into,” like baking focaccia because everybody else is (apparently) doing it. It’s something you do because it makes you feel radiantly happy to be alive.
(The first thing that popped into your head when you read that last sentence? That’s probably it.)
Since I was a little girl I’ve wanted to sleep under a quilt I sewed for myself. For a long time, I made quilts and gave them away. Often the same with my knitting. I’ve been talking in therapy about my tendency to overgive, so designing (and finishing!) things for my own home and person has become a therapeutic exercise as well.
Working on this project (the pattern is “Minnie Stars” from Quiltfolk) in the midst of “writer’s block” has allowed me to feel much more serene about the situation than I would have otherwise. Because how could I berate myself for not being creative enough when something so colorful and comforting was taking shape under my own two hands?
It’s taking forever to quilt it by hand, and I’m okay with that. I’ve bound it so I can use it on the bed now, and will finish the handiwork next summer (…perhaps? I’ve got a bunch more projects waiting!)
Do you know how good it feels to fall asleep all warm and snuggly on a cold winter’s night, under something you made?
Maybe quilting’s not your thing—it could be something else. But find and do the thing that gives you the shimmers, and watch how it changes your writing practice (not to mention your inner monologue).
I’m going to save a discussion of private writing specifically for moving through “block,” and how best to approach writing about your writing, for a subsequent post, because I know not everyone has the time to settle in for 4,000+ words.
Let me know if you have tried, or intend to try, any of these strategies—and how it’s worked out for you! 🪱
My Patchwork Writing Process
I've been writing novels for more than twenty years now—CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?—but there is always more to learn about the craft, and more to observe of one's natural inclinations. This is how and why I do what I do. Here are some ways I might fine-tune a particular step in my process—for greater "efficiency," yes, but also for greater enjoyment.
As I listened to the audio modules inside my dear friend Heather Demetrios's new on-demand course, You Have a Process, it occurred to me that while I've spent plenty of time charting out my idea-generation process—on YouTube and inside The Bright Idea Kit—I haven't reflected too much on the actual drafting, which is far and away the most intimidating part from most aspiring writers' point of view. If you'd asked about my first-drafting style before going through You Have a Process, this is what I'd've told you:
I bring piles of handwritten notes to the Scrivener document. I don't write in chronological order. Usually I'll write fifty pages or so and then I'll outline the entire book. At the end of a writing session, I try to have a kernel of a scene to start with the next day—something I'm excited to dictate into Scrivener as I'm watching it play out in my head. Maybe eighty percent of the time I slip into flow within minutes, the other 20% being tooth-pulling days, but I don't get down on myself. Doing yoga, going for a walk, taking a shower, cooking dinner, or working on an easy knitting or sewing project helps with a mild case of creative constipation (because I don't experience "block," per se—not anymore). Whatever isn't quite coming together, the solution generally slides in at an oblique angle (i.e., it has nothing to do with whatever is in front of me, but it shows up because mentally I've cleared the space for it.)
This is all true, but it's not as specific (and therefore as helpful for other writers) as it could be.
From the beginning I understood that many (if not a majority of) writers draft their stories in chronological order, and it didn't seem like a problem that I never felt inclined to write that way. In my initial drafting phase, I sit down to write whichever scenes I feel like. I'm only 30% of the way through my first draft of the time-travel novel, but I've already written a pivotal conversation that happens in the last chapter. At some point as I was listening to my friend's warm and reassuring voice coming out of my bedside speaker, I had the most delicious little a-ha moment:
I draft a novel in much the same way I cut and assemble a piece of patchwork!
It's been a long time since I've blogged about my crafting—I have a baby-quilt show-and-tell post from 2019 still languishing in my drafts—though I have shared more on Instagram in this video on creative cross-pollination and this one on "avocational ambition." (Those are YouTube links, in case you don't have an Instagram account.)
Baby quilt for my cousin Jenni, 2019.
The most basic definition of patchwork is cutting large pieces of fabric (usually quilting cotton) into smaller—sometimes very small—pieces, rearranging and then stitching them into a visually pleasing design. Sometimes it's traditional and perfectly geometric and other times (as in "crazy" or crumb quilting) you're making it up as you go. It's not a perfect analogy, but for me it's an illuminating one: because in both disciplines I generate purposeful fragments—discrete moments of connection or observation or insight, without thinking too much about context or finishing—and after months of working in this fashion, I can arrange those many pieces into a sensible order and add the necessary "sashing" so that each scene continues "seamlessly" (har, har) into the next.
My first curved piecing (2018).
Slowly coming together...
Arranging and adding the sashing.
To mix our metaphors here, what I'm calling "sashing" is what many writing teachers would refer to as "connective tissue." In a particular chapter, I might have 60% of scene A, only a half-finished dialogue from scene B, and a scene C that is more or less complete. Because I have my outline by this stage—my self-drafted pattern, in needlework parlance—I mostly know what more is needed in scene A, how to get the characters to the point that they are having the conversation in scene B, and how to segue into scene C. There are still question marks here and there, particularly where the science (or "science") is concerned, or more historical research is required, but as I proceed from here I have every confidence that I will eventually gather the information I need to fill those lacunae.
In essence, I compose my first draft in two stages: there is the initial draft-whatever-I-please, cutting-up-calico-into-itty-bitty-pieces phase, and then there is the arrangement and assembly/filling-in phase. Both are enjoyable, but the second phase is more consistently so because I already have a large bank of material to work with. It's easier to compose a line that sings—a sentence I can feel proud of—if it's closing out a scene I half-drafted three months earlier.
Amazing, isn't it, how long it's taken me to notice just how process-oriented and low-pressure my natural method of drafting truly is! (And of course now I'm thinking about how I can demonstrate using actual writing samples—that'll eventually be a video inside the Bright Idea Kit. I'll include photos from my crumb-quilting, which is an even tidier analogy!)
[EDIT, November 2023: my Teachable courses are no longer available (I gotta cough up to keep them live, and I don’t have the bandwidth for marketing right now), but I will make it available inside my Resource Library; subscribe to email updates to snag the password.]
Hot water bottle cover for my friend Joelle.
Comet Party Summer School: the Vision Statement
What are the two most powerful words in this or any language?
I am.
I’ve been thinking about this ever since Jill Louise Busby dropped me a DM after reading Life Without Envy. Thank you for being a vessel, she wrote.
I am a vessel, I thought. I said it out loud. And the more I said it, the righter it felt.
In the beginning, I only wanted to tell stories. I wanted to be clever and I wanted to be recognized for my cleverness. The other day I cracked a journal I kept in 2007, scanned one entry, and felt a sweet surge of relief that I am not that person anymore. (This is why I keep my notebooks.)
The evolution out of a desire to prove oneself into a desire to contribute is the central tenet of Life Without Envy, and for me that first twinkling happened in the summer and early autumn of 2010 when I volunteered on my friends’ homestead farm in Vermont. I have never been quite so content as I was those days I spent planting and weeding and watering, sleeping in a platform tent, rising before six to watch the sun coming up over the treeline as the fog withdrew from the rolling meadow before me. Best of all were the people: Gail and Paul and their neighbors, their daughters, and my fellow volunteers. That summer we all felt like Gail and Paul’s brood. Nature + making myself useful + community as close as family, that’s all I need to be happy.
The meadow at Harmony Homestead Farm.
My experiences at Sadhana Forest and Squam Art Workshops the following year brought the new desire into focus: more nature, more community, plus ethical veganism, art, and handicrafts. At Sadhana Forest I helped with meal planning and prep for something like 35 to 45 people, and I became my grandmother’s granddaughter (more fully than ever before) even though the cuisine couldn’t have been more different than the lasagnas and salmon loaf of my childhood: food is one of my love languages. It’s how I love my family and friends, it’s how I love myself, and it’s how I express care and concern for people I don’t know all that well yet. And I loved the feeling of being at sleep-away camp and making beautiful things alongside new friends who had also come to make beautiful things and bask in the tranquility of Squam Lake.
I thought of how one of my grade-school friends had gone to music camp every summer; I remembered the name of the organization, so I Googled it, curious as to how much it cost. Well, I don’t know how much it was back in 1995, but in 2013 it was $8,000 for a six-week program. I started to think, wouldn’t it be great if kids (whose parents could never afford a typical sleep-away camp) could have an experience like Squam? And what about kids who didn’t have parents to come home to?
I’ve been to Squam many times now—as student, teacher, and staff—and each time it bothered me how white and upper-middle-class we were as a group. More recently, Elizabeth has done a wonderful job of highlighting and supporting the work of artists, artisans, and teachers of color, but the economic inequities remain; I’m sure many knitters would love to spend four days taking classes at a lakeside cabin but will likely never have that $1,400 to spare.
On one trip I stopped at the general store in Holderness and found a rack of greeting cards with quotes attributed to Rumi: “Live your life as if the universe is rigged in your favor…because it is.” I had a flashback to a church my family and I visited above Lake Kivu in Rwanda, where 11,000 people were murdered during the genocide. Slavery, lynchings, civilian casualties. I felt this fury any time somebody brought up the Law of Attraction. The universe is rigged in your favor: this was a message appropriated by and intended solely for privileged white women like me.
I met Rachael Rice at Squam in 2014, and I referenced her excellent blog post in Email Marketing and "Authenticity," but the message is too important not to share again here:
“Can we imagine the impact of our work beyond those who can afford it?”
Nowadays the summer camp in my mind is primarily for grownups—at least to start with—purely for logistical reasons. During quiet afternoons at the Providence Athenaeum I would dream of a library in the forest with cozy carrels where writers of all stripes and sensibilities could focus on their manuscripts. Everyone would see themselves represented on the shelves in this library. Attendees who could afford to pay for their retreat-time would subsidize those who could not; or maybe it would be a pay-what-you-can model? Filling vegan lunches packed with care, just like the ones that fueled the Bones & All revision at Hawthornden. Childcare. Hammocks and more hammocks, hammocks everywhere, and a home-sewn quilt on every bed. Writing workshops, painting and drumming workshops, workshops on foraging and herbalism and anything else people want to learn about. Safe spaces for members of marginalized communities to come together (“safe” meaning that every soul in the place understands why “no white people in this room for the next two hours” is not racist). A food forest. A swimming pool. Campfires and jam sessions. Tiny houses, perhaps—though after reading Sunaura Taylor’s wonderful book Beasts of Burden, these spaces I was dreaming of became ADA-compliant. And because white saviorism is something else I’ve been thinking about a lot, I saw myself asking, What do you actually want and need? How can I help make it happen and then leave you to use and enjoy it?
Every day—up until just a few months ago—I’d been asking myself, how the heck am I going to get from here—making next to no money off my writing at the moment, without much saved—to there, that pretty plot of acres with architectural blueprints in hand?
I’m not sure what’s shifted, exactly, I just know that I don’t need a bridge, I AM the bridge. I’ll bring this retreat into being one plank at a time. The workshops? I can make those happen now. That’s why I wanted to publish this post on the day I launch The Bright Idea Kit and finally hang my shingle as a writing coach. The course is a $200 investment and coaching is $100 an hour, perhaps a tad ironic given the vision I’ve just shared with you, but I’ve poured all of my twenty years of experience into this class and I’m feeling confident that it’s going to catalyze a lot of creative awakenings. In terms of walking my talk, I am making myself informally available for aspiring writers who can use the mentorship, and I’ll allot more bandwidth (creating an actual program, perhaps?) as I get myself sorted financially. I'll also be hosting free workshops starting later on in 2021 (first up: the power and potential of private writing!)
I see myself—white hair, liver-spotted hands—working away in one of those carrels. I am a writer. But my greater work for this lifetime is to “take up space” by holding space for others, to create a warm, welcoming retreat and inhabit it for the rest of my life without ever claiming it as mine.
If you’d like to be a part of this community (virtually for now and eventually IRL), you can join my mailing list to watch it all unfold and participate as much as you feel like. Thank you for reading this, and I wish you a healthy, joyful, and fulfilling 2021! ✨
EDIT: Adding the link to Be Seen Project founder Mindy Tsonas Choi's relevant and insightful piece from March 2021, "The Cost of Selling Belonging."
Too Many Hobbies?
After spending my childhood drawing and painting, I feel that part of me has atrophied—I may be a published author, but in another sense I still feel creatively unfulfilled. I wanted to be a fashion designer when I was a kid, which probably has a lot to do with why I'm so obsessed with knitting now.
Last spring (thanks to Margaret) I discovered Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider, which is one of those great books on craft and practice that can change your life, if you let it. But one of the passages that struck me most concerns everything that isn't writing or reading: the concept of too many hobbies. Schneider proclaims, "I gave up sewing forever," and rather implies that there is no room in a writer's life for any other creative endeavor. I don't know that she meant to say this, but that's the impact it had on me, and naturally I have to disagree.
To a certain extent I think the practice of diverse arts can enrich and inform, like creative cross-pollination; but there's no denying there is such a thing as too many hobbies, leaving one feeling scattered and unaccomplished in the few activities that matter most. There never seems to be enough time to do everything because there isn't enough time to do everything. A couple of recent posts on the Unclutterer blog have driven this home for me (Saying farewell to a hobby, part 1; part 2). (Update, 2024: have removed the links since this blog is defunct.)
The trouble in giving these hobbies up, though, is that on some level we all think we can be Renaissance women and men—if we only devote enough time to each thing in which we think we ought to excel, then we will, and in the process we will become better, more "well-rounded" people. I "ought" to speak at least two foreign languages, play the guitar, sew my own sundresses, knit all my own sweaters, paint and read and write. But we can't all be Leonardo da Vinci, and if you've ever read his biography you'll know that's actually a good thing.
I have a left-handed Fender acoustic guitar in my closet that hasn't come out of its case in years. I guess I should find it a better home. I know I'll never be as good a painter as I am a writer, even if I do take it up again. But I'm not really talking about jettisoning the hobbies you aren't AMAZING at—if you love to do it, it doesn't matter if you aren't "good enough" to do it along with the pros.
Maybe it comes down to this: if you're truly passionate about it, you're already doing it. What do you think?