How to Begin Again When Your Writing Gets Stalled

Weekly Writing Boost #9: Start Where You Are

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Somehow, I never got around to writing

I was on vacation at the beach last week and I didn’t write. Not one word. Zippo, nada, zilch. I didn’t work on my novel, or write in my journal or get up first thing and write morning pages. Instead, I spent long afternoons sitting on the beach staring at the waves. (Alas, not much beach walking this time because I’m having knee surgery this fall and it was all I could do to get myself to the beach and back.) I read a brilliant novel I picked up at one of the two local books stores I love best on the Oregon Coast and drank wine and gin (little bit too much of that, alas). I ate good, albeit not necessarily healthy, food (lasagna, and hot dogs and chips) and I bought grandchildren candy and books. I had a rip roaring time. But none of it was spent writing.

The thing is, I like writing. Writing is what I do. It’s what I do for a living and it’s what I do for fun. And I do it because I like it. When I don’t do it, I feel antsy and out-of-sorts. And I had grand plans for last week. Our rental had a lovely deck with an ocean view and a picnic table that was perfect for parking laptop and self at. I planned to rise early, as I do, pull on a sweater or the shawl I finally finished knitting a couple months ago, and head outside and write. It would be the perfect vacation. I’d get an hour or so of writing in first thing, and then feel fresh and alive and ready to greet the day.

So yeah, as I’ve already told you, that didn’t happen.

Maybe, like me, you’ve been on vacation, spending so much time with friends and family that your brain is over-stuffed. Maybe your situation is the opposite—you’ve been working your tail off in the, gasp, dreaded J-O-B. Or maybe you simply got lost somewhere along the way.

Whatever the reason, perhaps you, too, have come to a place where you quit writing for a bit. And now you want to get back to it. But you don’t know how. Because when you go back to the page your brain goes blank and then since you are clearly not a writer, you get up and go pull weeds or clean out a closet or drink a glass of wine and mumble dejectedly.

What’s a writer to do when this happens?

I happen to have ideas.

As far as I’m concerned, when you’re trying to get back to the writing, the most important things are words on the page. Any words, some words, stupid words, brilliant words. Words. That’s all you need to concern yourself with. Because the point is to remind yourself that you can do this—it’s only putting words on the page.

So here’s what you’re going to do. You are going to pull out your writing tools of choice and start by describing where you are. That’s it. Look around you, wherever you are, and write what you see. Then what you smell, hear, feel. That should be enough to get you going. And if it’s not—you’ve written something. And proven to yourself that you can get words on the page.

You’ve done it once, you can do it again. (I only say this because when you’re in a writing slump it can feel like you are never, ever going to be able to write again.)

And I finally did it, too. We left our beach idyll a day early and traveled across the state to the high desert to attend a wedding. The following morning I finally pulled out my journal, desperate to write. Here’s what I put on the page.

Saturday, in Sisters—sitting on a couch leaning over and writing on a coffee table. Outside the motel room is a sort of park with pines—maybe lodgepole, some others, probably ponderosas. There is a plain balcony with two chairs and a table on it. So much to write about but start with right here, right now. The hum of the air conditioner, Steve pulling a coffee cup out of a plastic sleeve, out of the corner of my eye I see cars driving by. Blue sky, clouds.

Yes,I know this is vastly plebeian writing. But that doesn’t matter. It’s actually kind of the point. Get something, anything, down on the page. Because:

“A word after a word after a word is power.” ~ Margaret Atwood.

The Boost

Start Where You Are

Pull out your journal or your writer’s notebook or open a file on your computer or phone (though for times such as these I vastly prefer and recommend writing by hand) and start where you are. You can do this any way you want, but you might begin by noting the day, your location, where you are sitting, the weather, who you’re with, whatever, using sensory details. Look around—what do you see? Your coffee mug, a fir tree out the window, a glass of water, the remains of breakfast? Write those down. Starting from where you are, rooting yourself in place, creates a foundation from which you can let your words loose on the page.

This is usually enough of a jumpstart for me to keep going. But if that doesn’t happen and you want it to (you can start slow and let the above exercise be enough) you can also try:

The DaVinci Device

Choose an item that you wrote about and describe it in the following ways: objectively (just the facts, ma’am, no description, no emotion), metaphorically (likening it to another object, and abstractly (linking it to an intangible theme, idea, feeling, thought). One of my MFA mentors taught me this and she labeled it The DaVinci Device. (no idea why).

Here’s an example of an item on my desk.

Objective: The container is gold, with an open-work design on its sides and it is filled with sticky notes in a variety of colors; yellow, pale blue, green, white, that are spilling out.

Metaphorical: The gold container looks like a cage and the sticky notes like birds who long to fly free, their pages fluttering in the breeze.

Abstract: The container holds the dreams and fears and yearnings waiting for the writer to note them.

Okay clearly these are not brilliant in any way and that doesn’t matter. Because the point is they got my brain working. And this technique will get yours going, too. Remember, the brain likes novelty. And your brain will consider reaching for various ways to describe something in your line of sight new and novel and reward you with a stream of ideas. Or at least that’s the hope.

Make a list.

Make a list. I wrote about that here. Maybe you can’t quite get to the point of forming coherent sentences, but you can make a list easily enough. You can even start with a to-do list, then graduate to a list of why you can’t write, why you want to write, why you are a lousy writer (get that crap out on the page), why you are a fabulous writer. Make a list of what’s on the desk in front of you, what you see out the window, the clothes in your closet. Anything. Remember, the point is to get words, any words, on the page.

Hope these tips help you get back to the page. Even if you’re hard at it, they can be useful as well, for times when you get stuck. I’m all for anything that keeps the channels open.

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