{"id":1369,"date":"2023-04-13T13:46:47","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T12:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/?p=1369"},"modified":"2023-04-13T17:01:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T16:01:37","slug":"unstop-that-writers-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/unstop-that-writers-block\/","title":{"rendered":"Unstop that writer’s block"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Focusing on an object and allowing your mind to free-wheel and make associations can be a useful and productive exercise<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

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Ever sat in front of a blank page or screen and felt like your brain was just as empty? There are ways of breaking free of that state and allowing ideas to flood your mind<\/h3>\n

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Everybody, at some time, will have to produce a piece of writing by a deadline (I actually first wrote \u201cdreadline\u201d by accident, corrected it, then realised what a revealing Freudian slip that was) and won\u2019t have a clue what to write. This is so common that it has its own terminology, and the lead paragraph could have started like this:<\/p>\n

Everybody, at some time, will have experienced writer\u2019s block.<\/p>\n

And maybe it should have \u2013 brevity, as they say, is the soul of wit. But I could probably put that line above into a search engine and get hundreds of articles that start with it. And you\u2019d want to avoid parroting clich\u00e9s, too.<\/p>\n

When I was working for a daily newspaper, where deadlines are excruciatingly tight, relentless and non-negotiable, I sometimes (frequently) got stuck. If things were very bad, I\u2019d leave my desk and take a walk around the block. This would take about 15 minutes, and when I returned, more often than not, the way forward was so blindingly obvious that I was mystified as to why I didn\u2019t see it before. To brazenly seize another clich\u00e9: a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.<\/p>\n

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Nothing in your world is entirely neutral, and objects can project the power of myriad associations and stories of intricacy and depth<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Creative writing isn\u2019t much different. If you\u2019re blocked, take a break, take a walk, play some music, doodle, emulate Proust and contemplate the madeleine (or biscuit) dipped in your cup of tea. If you\u2019re still stuck after that, here\u2019s a useful exercise not a million miles away from that Proustian hallucination.<\/p>\n

Focus on some object. Any object. It doesn\u2019t matter what it is, as long as it\u2019s there in front of you. Stare at a pencil on your desk, or a pen, or your cup, or the crack in the wall. You can go further afield, leave your desk, pick up an orange in the kitchen, or a plate, or a half-eaten sandwich. A used tissue, a rubbish bin, a stray leaf, a hairbrush, a key fob. You\u2019ll have got the idea \u2013 anything, it doesn\u2019t matter what.<\/p>\n

Stare at this thing and let your mind wander. Whether it\u2019s yours or someone else\u2019s, familiar or strange, dwell on the thing and let your mind go. Don\u2019t try to push into some kind of relationship with it, but just absorb its presence and whatever qualities make it what it is. You will soon notice that your mind is going places with this object, drawing parallels, conjuring up memories, creating hypothetical situations with it. You might be responding to these emotionally. Write these impressions down as they come to you.<\/p>\n

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Just a pencil? It\u2019s very pointed, could be a weapon (I did in fact get stabbed with a pencil once, how ironic). Or for many, a wand of creativity. Or the thing that your friend slid on, fell and broke her arm<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Let\u2019s take an example. To the left of me, here at my desk, I can see (amongst all kinds of other debris I should put away\/throw away but just don\u2019t because clutter clusters around me like I\u2019m magnetic) a selfie stick. It\u2019s black and kind of bulky because it also doubles as a smartphone tripod for taking pictures. It makes me feel a little embarrassed because I don\u2019t want to be the kind of person who uses, let alone owns, a selfie stick. It contains a small remote shutter release that no longer works, which annoys me. I\u2019m remembering the last picture I took with it, when I realised the remote shutter release didn\u2019t work anymore: a family snap at Christmas \u2013 taken with the delayed release as the remote no longer worked. I remember the Christmas holiday and the Christmas atmosphere and the glow all around it. A bit more mindless \u2013 or rather mindful \u2013 daydreaming, and I\u2019ve got an anecdote, or a story, or a memoir.<\/p>\n

We can use another example, something totally unfamiliar. Standing at a corner, I see a baby\u2019s lost sock. It\u2019s tiny; I could just about get two fingers into it. It looks machine-knitted with blue and green stripes, and a green heel and toe cap. The baby that lost it, could be either a boy or a girl, might have been struggling with it, nudging its feet against each other, or maybe the sock was too big or too small and just came off. Maybe the child was playing with its feet, or sucking on the toe. Let\u2019s give the child a name: Robin. Why not, we can do anything we like with this. Perhaps Robin\u2019s parent \u2013 Pat? \u2013 was busy texting and didn\u2019t notice that the sock had come off, or was having an animated chat with another parent and neither of them was really paying attention to the kids in their prams, or the Pat was having a hard day and occupied inside their mind with something else. Maybe Robin didn\u2019t like wearing the socks and managed to pull the one off and was working on the other one before Pat noticed what was going on, but the discarded sock was too far away for Pat to find. Or Pat was in a hurry to get to an appointment and couldn\u2019t go\u00a0back looking for it. Or Robin had so many socks that it didn\u2019t matter if one went missing. Perhaps the sock was a gift from hated Aunt Sophie, or brother-in-law, and was better having disappeared. Maybe Pat was frustrated at being a parent and it was the seventh sock that Robin had managed to dispose of in a week and they were thinking, fine, just freeze then. Or Pat was convulsed with guilt and felt like a bad parent because they never noticed that the socks went missing, and didn\u2019t have the money to pay the heating bill, never mind keep baby Robin in new socks.<\/p>\n

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Something as unrelated as a cable can become a snake preparing to strike, or a tangle of pasta, or …<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

You get the idea. Once you\u2019ve got your mind moving, it\u2019s not hard to change gear, or change track, and concentrate on what you were working on before that block stopped you. Block? What block? Is it a baby block with letters on it? Or a line of traffic cones? Or somebody in front of you waving a flag, or fallen tree, or an abandoned car in the middle of the street?<\/p>\n

Whatever it is, it\u2019s behind you now.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever sat in front of a blank page or screen and felt like your brain was just as empty? There are ways of breaking free of that state and allowing ideas to flood your mind   Everybody, at some time, will have to produce a piece of writing by a deadline (I actually first wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1386,"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions\/1386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}