Flash Fiction Chronicles

by DJ Barber

Sometimes looking for an idea to write about leaves me frustrated, although there are many places online to find a “word of the day”, a “string” and so forth. I have an exercise for any aspiring or seasoned writer to try when nothing is coming to mind. Many motion pictures are made with a series of scenes. So this exercise uses scenes as a format to get your creative juices flowing.

I call it: Series of 6.

Let’s begin with elements.

Write a 300-400 word scene with water as its basis. It can be the sea, a lake, a stream or river; or even rain. Now do the same with fire, earth and air. Each time create a scene. This need not be a complete story with beginning, middle and end. Just set the scene, create a picture.

Or I might use seasons.

Again, write a 300-400 word scene with the seasons as its basis. This can be about temperatures, seasonal weather, amounts of light and dark, cloud formations.

Next try the directions of the compass.

This can be about cultures, traveling, or climates.

With each, I write just a short scene, no more than 300-400 words.

Again, this exercise is to help spark a larger idea and help to create a story, be it flash, short, or novel.

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DJ Barber lives in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. He writes by a window and watches the wildlife pass by as he waits for the muse to send ideas his way.

I often hear of “writer’s block,” that nemesis of creativity. It’s as if the Muse stole your joy by sleeping on the job.

 Instead of writing ‘sweet nothings,’ whisper to her, “Get up! I want to write!” Of course, ladies don’t like to be yelled at, so that might not work very well. At the same time, she needs to be on your schedule. (If we always wait for the Muse, it might be a very long time between epiphanies. And that would hardly be amusing.) I suppose then a gentle caress to stimulate her out of sleep might do the trick. Seduce her gently.

 Okay. How do writers do that? There are two things that have worked for me (after I realized she can never be forced).

 First, in the in between periods, do something, anything that is creative. The important thing here is to recharge our right-brains—our creative centers. It doesn’t matter what it is. It can be related to our writing, but it doesn’t have to be. 

 Begin with the arts—movies, museums, music—for entertainment and relaxation. But don’t limit yourself to these. Explore nature! Take a walk in the park, hike a trail, or sit down and observe your backyard flora and fauna. Even if these aren’t practical, drive in the country or to the mountains or seashore. Go someplace that is quiet where only thing you hear is the symphony of nature. Embellish the experience: smell her hair, the scent in the wind, the moist earth, the salt sea; taste her, the honeysuckle and wintergreen berries, the mountain stream; touch her, the velvet moss, the paper skin of fallen pin oak leaves, the wet silk of her lake.  Just look and be awed. In an interview last year, I went into more detail (Liquid Imagination, August 2009). http://www.liquid-imagination.com/Interviews/Mannone.html.

 It is always a good idea to have a small notebook. Record impressions and triggered memories, etc., but don’t worry about it if you don’t. Avoid being legalistic about it because it will be self-defeating to the creative process. Defeat any negative feeling for failure to write something. Relax. Don’t obsess over having to jot something. If you do, you do; if you don’t, no problem. Remember, your sub-conscience is recording things, too. You will be surprised what will wheedle them out later and what it is that is coaxed out.

 Second, the prompting of the mind will awaken the Muse. What a prompt does is trigger the retrieval of memories, even the volatile ones in short-term memory. Sometimes the prompt lets you cherry pick a gem from the past from which a story or vignette will emerge. At other times, the prompt acts like how a laser works—a prompt cause a simultaneous cascade of memories stored up there concerning a specific recollection(s).

 The prompt is not what you might think it is. It’s not “write about this or that” (where the “this” and “that” are very general things). How often have you heard, “write a story/poem about your childhood” or “write something about the Fall”? These might work for some who are already primed to write, but often don’t do much to “unblock” the writer’s mind. Rather, the prompt I am talking about is much more specific to guide the mind. In other words, the prompt should prod the Muse, not dictate to her. These specific things could be a group of words, images, and even sounds, textures, smells, and emotions, if additional context is provided. Soaking in all of this, the mind will have a fresh source of metaphors in the making.

 For example, let’s look at something you are likely familiar with—a list of words to include in a composition. A single word may not do much for you, but a group of them might. There is a behind-the-scenes process the mind attempts—it tries to connect the words. Once a link is made, focus on that—thinking and writing develops and the genesis of the poem or story begins.

 Consider, for example, an actual list of ten words (including categories) that I was challenged with in March of this year: lapse, exacerbate, clatter, muscle, glow, squander, foible, a geographic formation, an animal, the name of a punctuation mark.

 Don’t obsess with having to use all the words/categories. It is legitimate to use any part of speech (glow/glowing), number (muscle/muscles), or conjugation (clatter/clattered/clattering), as well as homonyms (muscle/mussel, lapse/laps). Now you try the exercise, then read on.

Look at my poem, “Empty Shell,” appearing in The Legendary (July 2010). I didn’t use all the words, but others were used in ways that were new to me: http://www.downdirtyword.com/authors/johncmannone.html. Exactly how did this poem evolve? When I read through the list, nothing jumped out at me. But on the second pass when I read the word “muscle,” I thought of “mussel” because the category, “geographic formation,” had triggered the image of sea in my mind (because I love the sea and the mountains, they were pinged first). Immediately, I realized that the word “mussel” performs double-duty, since it is a kind of “animal,” the remaining category. So the focus was set—a mussel in the sea—and my mind combed my memory for experiences with mussels. I remembered mussel shells on the seashore, the clink they made when dropped on pebbled sand. I remembered its striking mother-of-pearl patina on the inside of the shell, this pearly sheen, of course made me think other shells, and particularly, the oyster, especially the pretty ones in the Pacific that make pearls. And some mussels make pearls, too, though not generally pretty ones. I wondered, how a pearl is made? And why? Philosophical ideas prodded more thinking and the context for the poem emerged. I let the epigraph by John Donne (a great 16^th century metaphysical poet) make the important leap from what might have started as a simple poetic description of nature to a full-fledged poem with layers of meaning and depth. The literary metaphor in that epigraph enabled the novel use of the pearl as a “punctuation mark,” the final category in the list.

There are many more effective prompts, and I introduce them in a course I teach, the Anatomy of Poetry at To Write Well. But if you visit my brand new blog, The Art of Poetry, you will get the protracted version of this essay (under the Writing Prompts tab) and learn more on how to seduce your Muse— make love with creative writing, whether it is poetry or flash fiction, it doesn’t matter.

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John C. Mannone is a widely published award-winning poet nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize in Poetry and the 2010 Rhysling Poetry Award. His poetry and short fiction appear in numerous literary and speculative fiction journals. He has been appointed the poetry editor of Silver Blade: The Quarterly Journal of Fantasy Fiction and he is on the creative writing faculty of To Write Well. John is also a nuclear consultant and physics professor in east Tennessee.

It has happened to many of us at one time or another: The words are flowing, the story is unfolding on the page and then … the words just stop.

(a) Work on something else and hope that, in the interim, the block will resolve itself.

(b) Try to force your way through the block.

 (c) Read back through the story until you reach the last point where you were excited about what would happen next, and delete everything that came after.

Different writers have different solutions. I know plenty of people who manage to fight through blocks quite successfully. I’m not one of those people.

I generally choose option C.

I believe that writer’s block is my subconscious mind’s way of telling me that my story has derailed, that what I am writing now is not as good as what came before, that I am no longer telling the story I should be telling. Sometimes, the block occurs only a few sentences after the point where the story derailed. Sometimes, five or 10 pages or more go by before I realize something isn’t right. However big the off-track section is, I get rid of it all. Why? Because the only other viable choice – fighting through the block – keeps me going in the same wrong direction that caused the block in the first place.

So next time you hit a block you can’t write your way out of, you might try this:

Cut-and-paste the offending material into a separate document. Don’t delete it outright because something in there might be worth salvaging later. Spend as much time as you need to figure out what went wrong and what is the right direction for your story. Then put your butt back in your chair and write.

Chances are, the words will start flowing again.

Jennifer Campbell Hick’s work recently appeared in Science Fiction Trails. She lives in Arvada, Colorado where she tries to find time to write between two full-time jobs as a journalist and a mother of three.

In his post “Make in Fun” (on Wednesday 11th November ’09) Alexander Burns wrote “To that end, I’ve determined that a writer has learned most of what they need to know about storytelling by the age of 10 or so. After that, all that’s left is to learn how to make it good.” I totally agree. What’s more it reminded me of something that I do from time to time – Eavesdrop! On my kids, and especially my daughter who will turn twelve this month!

I know it is a sneaky habit. I’m a bad mom. Sorry! But I can’t help it. The stuff they talk about, the books they read, the things they do, and more importantly write and so often the stories they tell themselves or to each other is so interesting. So inspiring too. For my writing I mean.

You see, kids have these absolutely wide open windows in their minds. Information, ideas, imaginary things keep flying in and out all the time. They have this absolutely fresh way of looking at everyday, mundane things. They keep “discovering” the world around them. If you sneak around the kids, your imagination is sure to get fired up.

I loved it when my daughter and son too, were younger and talked to themselves when they either drew pictures or played with their toys. The stories they told themselves were entertaining, though not always, actually almost never, logical. Probably that’s why they were so entertaining in the first place. I did not plagiarize their stories (it seriously didn’t occur to me at that time, and now I wonder if I did miss an opportunity, since my kids wouldn’t sue me for that, would they? ). I wish I had recorded some of that prattle, though. Sigh. Nevertheless, eavesdropping on their imaginary voyages and adventures did inspire me and often liberated me from my adult constraints of fact and form.

Anything is possible in a child’s inner world. Nothing is improbable!

Not even lemon yellow polka dotted purple ice cream
Served in a jelly belly bowl with a slice of moon beam!

Some of the stuff they think of and say actually provide fodder for us adult writers. Like the time I found my daughter, then around nine years old, looking thoughtfully at the artificially created turquoise waters of a swimming pool. After sometime she muttered, “Rapture of the deep is what happens to sailors when they are drowning; they don’t want to come up.” I stood still. She had connected something ordinary with something extra-ordinary and seemingly unrelated to the present. She skipped away to do something else and I found myself seeing a vast stretch of turquoise water all around me and feeling an immense sense of ecstasy wash over me. My daughter had just opened up a new dimension, another portal before me. The first draft of my poem “Rapture of the Deep” was born then and there; the poem was later published in A Little Poetry. Another time, on a rainy evening, I heard her advise a frog that was staring at her from its perch on a low railing, almost eye level with her, that “he was better off as a frog!” She was around six then and far more fond of birds and animals than Barbie dolls and princesses. My Story “Return of the Frog Prince” almost hopped off my head and was published a couple of years later in the Lily Literary Review!

It’s not always that a poem or a story takes shape every time I eavesdrop on my kids, or any kids for that matter. But their artless words and wide open hearts are not merely joyous to behold, like a rainbow seen in the crystal light after a shower, with the scent of renewed life all around you, they have a potent magic in them. I think the magic is really the cleansing quality that they have, something that makes you shed, at least want to shed, your inhibitions and adult complexes. The effect is wonderfully refreshing. And I think that is good for writers.

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Rumjhum Biswas has been writing poetry almost since she learned to read and write. It was her way of getting back at the world. Now a plump, bespectacled and hopefully respectable mom of two and wife of one she continues to write poetry and also fiction, because while poets remain poor some fiction writers do get rich and that gives her hope. Her publications and mutterings are here: http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com/ She also jabbers from time to time at Flash Fiction Chronicles.

I’ve noticed something about my writing lately. The less I TRY, the better the finished product is. This seems counterintuitive, so I spent some time thinking about it – while I was supposed to be editing Fear of Falling.

If I were a comic book character (Writer-Girl, saving the day with her impeccable grammar, excessive parenthetical references, and her catchy turn-of-phrase!) I would have an arch-nemesis. (That’s one of the rules. Good guys are really boring without bad guys.) Self-Sabotage would be mine, thwarting me at every turn. (Kind of like Spiderman vs. Spiderman in the black outfit. I picture Self-Sabotage looking like Writer-Girl, only dressed like one of those women in a courtroom drama with the suit and the glasses perched on their nose so it looks like they’re looking down on everyone else.)

To carry on with this analogy, the second Writer-Girl sits down at her keyboard to Write Something Important, Self-Sabotage gets a call and shows up to throw the whole arsenal at her – insecurity, fear, distraction, indecision, doubt … you name it. And sure Writer-Girl can slog through, pretending to ignore the efforts of her arch-nemesis, telling herself she can revise it later. But we all know that Self-Sabotage shows up at the revision table too.

Interestingly enough after fifteen minutes visualizing the adventures of Writer-Girl and her struggle to finally defeat Self-Sabotage, the few plot points in Fear of Falling that had been giving me trouble fell into place, and I finished the revision without difficulty.

I had an idea yesterday morning. I looked at the word-crumbs for writer-pigeons, and did my vocabulary thing. (I list the prompts, then give either a definition or a synonym or two or three out beside it. Thinking about non-traditional ways to use a prompt sometimes starts the creative process.) But then I pulled up Bejeweled 2, and started playing in Hyper mode. Self-Sabotage just smiled to herself, thinking she was so good at her job, she didn’t even need to show up anymore …

And between rounds, I made a few notes about how the prompts could tie together. But before I could get too serious about it, I went back to Bejeweled. While most of my brain was scanning for matching gems at warp five, the rest of it was thinking about the prompts and the quote.

Twenty minutes later I had the skeleton of an entire story, which I wrote with little interference, and which turned out to be pretty decent. Decent enough, in fact, to have the potential to be a real short story and not just a flash piece. (Not that there’s anything wrong with flash. Just sometimes the characters need more space to tell their tale.) In contrast, the story I tried to write last week – when I was determined to write and wouldn’t let myself do anything else until it was written – is terrible. Beyond terrible. A complete cacophony of contrived, disjointed images. I only haven’t deleted it entirely because I can’t bring myself to think it’s beyond saving. Yet.

To test the theory that sidetracking my logical mind can improve my creativity, I did the same thing again this morning with a different set of prompts. And lo, twenty minutes later I have the outline of a story that looks to be good (I was so excited that the shameless trickery worked that I had to blog before I actually wrote the piece.) I guess it’s based on the same logic that dictates you will not think of the answer to that random question while you’re thinking about it, but hours later you’ll sit straight up in bed and say “Ethyl Merman!” (or whatever the piece of information you were looking for is.)

So yeah. In case there’s anyone out there who gets super paralyzed when they sit down with the intention to write, maybe you can try not trying and see what happens. Worst case scenario: you’ll get better at Bejeweled. :p

(Reprinted from Blogging in the Dark)

TL.Schofield is an old mom and a new bride, living in central GA with a white dog and a black cat – one of which she is allergic to. Her first published piece is currently posted at 10Flash. She recently placed two stories, Arrival and Escape, in Flash Fiction Chronicles String-of-10 Flash Fiction Contest and blogs at Blogging in the Dark.

LATELY, I’VE BEEN FIGHTING THE EXCUSE MONSTER— that insidious little voice inside my head that whispers excuses for not writing. I’m too tired. I’m too busy. I have no ideas. The list goes on and on.

Now, there is a difference between a reason and an excuse. Sometimes, you really do have writer’s block or you just worked a ton of overtime and are brain-fried. But, other times, you’re just giving into the excuse monster.

I guess it’s the same for any aspect of your life. You have to put time into something to get something out of it or to get to the next level. If I don’t spend time writing stories and honing my craft, I’m won’t have stories to submit or ever improve in my craft. Both of those mean that this writing thing is never going to be any more than a hobby for me.

Writing as a hobby isn’t a bad thing. Tons of people do it. But I want something more. And if I want that something more, then I have to banish the excuse monster and his whispers about laundry, returning phone calls, and surfing the Internet, and get writing.

Of course, even still, the odds are against me. There are way more aspiring authors/novelists out there than those that get published every year. But, to quote one of my favorite movies, “Your odds go up when you file an application.”

What about you guys? Career or hobby? What do you think? And what do you think will help you achieve your goal?

Erin M. Kinch lives and writes in Fort Worth, Texas. Visit her blog, Living the Fictional Dream at www.erinmkinch.com for links to her published stories and more of her musings on writing. A version of this post was originally posted on her blog on 7/10/08.

AFTER A LONG DAY AT WORK or arguing with family or just simply dealing with trivialities, I find it close to impossible to sit down and simply begin writing. My muse is a sulky teenager who, having been ignored all day, is not particularly interested in spending time with me now. Maybe I’m romanticising the whole process but it does seem impossible, to me, to simply sit down and start churning out words. I need to tempt the muse to me and so I’ve come up with fast activities to help me shift into the right mindset: creative flashes.

Creative flashes are similar to flash fiction, both take you for a brief foray to another place. I like to use them to change my mindset and achieve a different focus for a short time. I read voraciously but I can sometimes find that reading-for-inspiration can lead to reading-as-work-avoidance and in extreme cases, reading-all-day-long. So when I’m struggling to find a place to start creating, I find small artistic things to do which focus my mind on being active rather than passive acceptance. These activities also serve to remind me of how many different ways there are to be creative.

Part of the point is to warn my brain and my body that we are shifting to a different type of activity, where creativity is key and editing (and chores and worries) are left behind for a short while. I like quiet and simple tasks that I can do anywhere with very little preparation.

Here are some examples of some of the ways I start my creative time:

• Decorate a miniature Zen garden. These are sold all over the world and usually don’t cost very much. Someone bought this one for me as a joke but I really enjoy it as a means of interrupting my thoughts and changing gears.
• Make a low effort slow-cook meal. Perfect dishes are the ones where you throw a bunch of ingredients together and then simply wait. It makes me happy to know that good food is happening while I am writing, as if I’m being doubly creative. Some examples of dishes with under 15 minutes preparation: Boston Baked Beans, Braised Brisket, Tuscan Oven Grains and Greens or even a quick Chocolate Cake.
• Get the camera out and take photographs of every day items from new angles. You don’t have to leave the house, you don’t have to create a masterpiece. Just focus on the detail. Some inspirational ideas: screws, feet, the sky or just collections of ordinary things with bright colours.
• Identifying unfamiliar things. I go for a brief walk with the goal of identifying just one bird, any bird at all as long as it’s not a sparrow nor a pigeon. You could do the same with flowers or spiders or even cars. All you need is a local website that helps you to know what features you are looking for.
• Make an interesting looking drink. Orange juice with a shot of grenadine. A glass of water (in finest crystal!) with a slice of lemon and a sprig of mint or thyme. A martini, carefully measured, with a perfect olive and a swirl of lemon peel. If you have a sweet tooth, try making this rainbow drink with four flavours. Obviously the drink should taste nice but part of the point of this exercise is to make something both pretty and functional to enjoy as you get working.
• Make an active decision to daydream. Put on a track of music: an old favourite, a new release or even just whales whistling. Then turn towards the window and watch the sky.
• Create easy online art. I’m a big fan of Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas where you simply move the mouse to draw, left-click to change colours and within seconds you have a pretty picture. If you want more control, you can use art.com artPad where you can swap between splashing paint and drawing with a brush. Or just get out paper and a bit of paint! I am not particularly artistic so I love the ability to click a few times and end up with something pretty.
• Customise a notebook. I buy cheap notebooks and then print out pictures to glue onto the covers. The edges end up curling up and it doesn’t look very professional but the images make me smile and there’s something soothing about cutting paper and gluing it as if it were the only thing that ever mattered.

And then I sit down and write.

Sylvia Spruck Wrigley was born in Germany, spent her childhood in Los Angeles and now lives in Spain where she writes within striking distance of the Mediterranean. Her flash fiction has been published in Every Day Fiction, Boston Literary Magazine, MicroHorror, Dark Tales Magazine, and Fear and Trembling. You can find out more about her on http://www.intrigue.co.uk/

Finding time. Most of us have a life besides writing, and even if you don’t commute to some horrid little cubicle, drive a bus, work nights at the hospital, dig in the ground, or construct buildings—you still must walk the dog, get the kids to school, get to school yourself, or make friendly with neighbors and family.

My muse will keep me up nights, get me itchy when I’m out with friends or family, nag at me incessantly at times. All of which keeps me focused on writing, but it isn’t always practical to put your life on hold to write.

And so I attempt to put aside a time of day, for me it is mid to late afternoon. I also find the midnight hour alluring since the phone is mute and my mate is away many a night working the graveyard shift.

But mornings still come at precisely the same hour every day so that later bit of time can be a bother if you lose track touching up the short story or novel chapter a bit too late and the alarm sounds too soon after you’ve nodded off.

 Rule 1 is write every day. Sometimes as little as a sentence, or less! But do something every day! If you’ve been spirited away to some quiet restaurant take a moment when the others have run to the ladies, or gone to grab another round, or even have struck up a long conversation across the table, to grab a napkin and jot down a bit of something you can work up into a thought, paragraph, or chapter later on.

The other issue is when the muse abandons you, leaving you blocked up and frustrated as it spends time with a younger, more attractive writer, or whatever the muse does when it’s not being a nag. The best idea I believe is to go to some prompts, Even if you have zilch, you can write them down and save them for more inspirational moments which surely will return.

And lastly, don’t beat yourself up! The editors of all and sundry markets will be happy to do that for you. Your job is to write, practice it, hone it until it’s sharp and witty, and become your own biggest cheerleader. Put aside a chunk of time every day—and write, write, write!

DJ Barber writes stories, flash, poems, and novels. He was born in the northeast and lives in the northwest. When not writing he has a wife and two dogs that keep him busy.  He has been published online at Every Day Fiction, Moon Drenched Fables, Tales From the Moonlit Path, Big Pulp, Every Day Poets, and Everyday Weirdness.

In print, DJ has been published by Darker Intentions Press, Odyssey Magazine, has a short story in the anthology, Damned in Dixie, and has a flash in the Best of Every Day Fiction 2008.

DJ would like to remind everyone that even a broken clock is right twice a day.  DJ’s website is located at http://canyonsofgray.blogspot.com.

Editor’s Note:  Authors offer more suggestions on how to get words on the page. 

FROM CLIFFORD GARSTANG:

Although I can’t say that writer’s block per se is a common problem for me (I’m more plagued by the distractions of the internet and life generally), there are a couple of things that I do if I seem to be having more trouble than usual getting my thoughts and/or fingers moving. They’re both too simple to expect to do any good, but they seem to anyway.

One is to just look out the window and describe what I see. It may be the ominous clouds or the way the sycamore tree in my front yard has suddenly come into leaf, or the cat bird that sits in that tree and seems interested in what’s going on inside. The other method is to transcribe. I have a favorite book at hand and if nothing else works I simply open the book and start reading and typing. In fact, I’ve been working on typing a whole book. I chose one with a cadence that I think works for me, particularly in the book I’m currently writing, and it seems like a good exercise, if nothing else.

Clifford Garstang’s Short Story Collection, In An Uncharted Country, is forthcoming in Fall 2009 from Press 53.

FROM SYRIE JAMES:

Writer’s block is usually a temporary, creative problem that originates within an author’s work itself.  When I find myself unsure of how to proceed with the novel or screenplay I’m writing, I find it’s almost always because I have not done enough research.  Maybe I am not familiar enough with the setting, time period, or location of my piece; maybe I don’t know my characters well enough; or maybe I have not thought through the plot in enough detail.

In any case, there’s a gap in my knowledge: something is missing.  It’s like a cart with only three wheels; it’s difficult to move forward until you find and install that fourth wheel.  So I take some time out and do some more research, or add more detail to my character outlines, or take a long walk and carefully think through the scene or outline I’m about to write.  Suddenly, the pieces begin to fall into place, I know exactly what I want to do, and I can’t wait to get back to my writing!

Syrie James is the author of the best-selling novel  The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen.   Syrie’s next novel, The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, will go on sale 6/30/09.  Visit www.syriejames.com.

FROM GILLIAN BAGWELL:
Sometimes when I find myself dreading the writing, for whatever reason, I just tell myself that I will sit and write for 15 or 20 minutes, and then I can stop.  Almost always, once I’m writing, I become engaged, and before I know it, it’s two hours later.  Sometimes I find that I’m dragging my feet because I’m feeling overwhelmed by a particular piece I have to write or rewrite.  Then I look for stuff that seems easier that also needs to be done. 

For instance, maybe I can go through and make all the little corrections that I noted.  In both of these instances, I end up accomplishing something – usually more than I thought I would when I sat down – when I didn’t think I could make myself get anything done.

Gillian Bagwell is working on final revisions to her historical novel The Darling Strumpet of the Crowd, based on the life of Nell Gwynn, seventeenth century actress and long-time mistress of Charles II.

FROM CARSON PIERPONT:

One technique that I use for writer’s block is to step into the scene myself. I freeze time, put it on pause, and picture myself stepping into the scene as though I’m stepping onto a set of props and dummies. Then I investigate. I walk around observing the characters and the setting as though I’m thinking about purchasing it. I am free to get as close as I like. I walk up to this character. What does he have in his coat pocket I wonder? A note! A laminated note! Who walks around with a laminated note? I think this technique is helpful in getting your senses involved and in discovering things to write about. 

Carson Pierpont is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest who writes and worries about what he writes and when he’s not writing he’s worrying about not writing. 

 FROM C. L. HOLLAND:

Usually I don’t get writer’s block, I get “writer’s meh”. It’s not a block so much as it ties in with depression, so that while I want to write I can’t get past the apathy. There are a couple of ways I deal with it. The first is just to accept it and ride it out. It happens. Another is to deal with the depression by doing something I enjoy that isn’t writing – and to let myself have fun doing it. Finally, if I’m feeling bad because I can’t get my writing fix, I’ll write something so far out of my comfort zone that it’s a whole new challenge. Last time I switched to sci-fi, and now I have a whole new world and set of characters to play with.

C.L. Holland is a British Fantasy writer who was a winner of Writers of the Future for 2008. Her works have appeared, or are due to appear, in Every Day Fiction, Kaleidotrope, Hadley Rille Books’ Ruins Metropolis anthology, The Lorelei Signal, and Bards and Sages Quarterly.  Click here to read “Beyond the Gate. ”

I have to agree with what several of my colleagues have already asserted – writer’s block is just in your head. I find that it’s more of a motivation problem than a lack of ideas. Writing is hard, and sometimes it really is more fun to stare at a blank screen than try to figure out the best way to open that story that’s been burning up your brain all day.

The cure I like best is to read a story (or watch a movie/television show) that you think is really great. Something that really exemplifies the medium. Something that invigorates, inspires, and reminds you why you’re bothering with all this thankless work to begin with. Maybe there’s even a solution in there that you can use to get a story back on track.

It might also work to check out something that’s complete rubbish. You know you can do better than that, and that hack made a million dollars. So get back to work.

Alexander Burns lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He writes because he doesn’t have a basement in which build robots or time machines. His work has appeared at Every Day Fiction and A Thousand Faces.

Editor’s Note: Sarah Hilary submitted this post and suggested that other writers might want to add a few thoughts.  So here is Sarah’s tip and several others.   We have more tomorrow and Wednesday too!

FROM SARAH HILLARY:

Blocked re plotting? Unable to connect the dots in your own mind?

Take time out and try doing a jigsaw. Seriously.

I think it must because you’re exercising the same muscles and synapses but without pushing too hard on the story angle. Your brain is tricked into thinking all it needs to do is find the straight edges and voila! Before you know it, you’ve located the missing pieces of the fiction puzzle. I was never a fan of jigsaws, as a child or an adult, but now I’m on the lookout for good ones, the doing of which I’ll slot into my writing schedule. Try it and see for yourself. It really works! 

Sarah Hilary’s story, Two Minute Silence, published by Smokelong Quarterly, made it to the Long Shortlist for The Wigleaf Top 50.

FROM KERRY MADDEN:

Being blocked…I usually reread Brenda Ueland’s IF YOU WANT TO WRITE. I always find something new in it that gives me hope and courage. Carl Sandburg called it his favorite book on writing, and I believe it was first published in 1937 and is still in print. She said to take long meandering walks with no clear destination in order to help free your mind up from the clutter. I try to do this. I also trick myself out of of the great thud of “Writer’s Block” by writing longhand in a different place where there is less chance of distraction.

Or I warm up by writing a letter, and then I open the “New Novel File” just to edit the first page of the book I’m working on. If that goes okay, maybe I’ll write a few lines of dialogue in a new scene to see if a scene is even possible. Are the characters talking to each other? Then with the dialogue, I consider a gesture or two a character might have and some action in the scene. If I keep chipping away bit by bit and if I’m lucky, I usually have a rough scene where there was none. Then I can breathe and fall into the story and really write…and if all that fails, I go to the movies alone and escape into somebody else’s story for a while. Then I walk…and start all over again.

In 2009, Viking published Up Close: Harper Lee, Kerry Madden’s biography of the author of  To Kill a Mockingbird .  Kerry blogs at http://mountainmist.livejournal.com/.

FROM K. C. BALL:

When people tell me they are facing writer’s block, I accept the statement as fact, but it is something I can’t internalize.  It’s an affliction I have never suffered.

Perhaps that is because my most intense and lasting writing lessons were as a newspaper reporter.  Sitting at a typewriter (later a computer monitor), clock ticking and editors shouting for copy, there is no time for writer’s block.  If there is, you don’t last long on the job.

If you even stopped for a moment to think, someone would be shouting, “Write! Write! If it’s no good, I’ll cut it or rewrite it.  Just give me copy!”

So that’s the best and only advice I can offer to combat writer’s block.  It doesn’t matter if the first paragraph, the first page, the first chapter is no good.  If you keep producing copy, at some point in the process you will settle into the groove and what follows will be good.

Just write!

K. C. Ball has been published in Every Day Fiction, Boston Literary Review, Moon-Drenched Tales, and Fear and Trembling.   She blogs at http://kcball.wordpress.com/.

FROM A.H. REAM:

I don’t believe in writer’s block. I think writer’s block happens when you expect final draft quality out of your first draft effort. Giving yourself the freedom to write bad first drafts cures everything.

A.H. Ream can be found in the anthology Landmarked for Murder. In the meantime, rewrites for her first novel are due to her agent in a few days, which is why she’s no longer showering or answering the phone. www.journalscape.com/ahream

FROM MICHAEL MALLORY:

I may be something of a rarity among writers in that I do not believe in writer’s block.  I equate it to the phenomenon of ghost activity: it only exists if you believe it exists. Having said that, though, I admit to those days the words just don’t flow, or my thought processes in terms of continuing my story become clogged like an old drain.

On those days I use the magician’s trick of misdirection, but instead of flourishing with my left hand while I hide the quarter with my right, I misdirect my mind by doing other work usually related to writing (editing, general research, checking my submissions log, correspondence, etc.) until the clog clears. The ultimate misdirection trick is to have two projects going at once. To some this may seem counterintuitive—if one cannot get one story going, how could one get two?—but it is easier than it sounds (and starting books is always easier than breezing through that 100-to-125 page minefield).

When I feel like I am stuck on one story or book, I immediately turn my attention to the other. Before long, I find myself wanting to finish it so I can get back to the other story, and vice versa. This technique keeps me working productively on something at any given time, with the frequent result of having two completed works at once.

Michael Mallory is a Los Angeles-based writer and journalist.  Visit him at www. michaelmallory.com

FROM KATHLEEN PICHE:

Kathleen Piché has published several short stories, articles and essays. She is currently editing her first detective novel, The Last Illusion, about a psychiatric social worker who tries to find out who is killing her patients.