About Joyce Boatright, EdD

Here are fifty preventive cures for writer’s block. They are listed in no particular order and, unfortunately, offer no guarantees.

Get in touch with your wittiest/wackiest friend and engage him/her in conversation for at least five minutes. This is to relax your mind, and most of the time, it works.
Brainstorm—that is, write down whatever comes to mind about the subject you are working on. It may not help you immediately, but it gives you ideas which lead to more ideas.
Sit down at your keyboard, look at your latest work just once, then start writing whatever pops into your head. Normally what happens is that within 30 minutes you’ll be getting on with your book/story/poem, or starting a new one.
Exercises. Writing exercises, that is. There is a cool Internet site that will give you a writing prompt every day. http://www.wakeupwriting.com/
Rip off someone else’s work—This is a technique writer Michael Wilson ripped off from the film Finding Forestter. He advices: Take the work of someone you admire and begin typing it out as if it were your own. Keep typing until you feel your own words start to emerge, then keep writing.
Goof-off—never underestimate the power of goofing off. Don’t do anything serious. Make paper airplanes out of scrap paper. Dance to bad disco songs of the ‘80s. Give yourself a few minutes to loosen up before sitting down to work.
Cheat—use writing ideas suggested by books such as What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter or Writing Down to the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.
Go for a walk—Stephen King swears by this one. Let your mind wander as your feet do, and don’t forget your notebook or tape recorder to capture those random thoughts.
Write something else. Go to a diner to write. Or the library. Or Starbucks. Or the park. Anywhere that is a change of scenery.
Play with a Full Deck. Take old business cards or index cards and write a writing prompt on the backs. It can be a key word, a starting line, a situation, etc. Shuffle the deck and draw. Now write to the prompt as a warm-up. Here are some of the topics in author Michael Wilson’s deck: Getting fat, She was tall, angular and bony, but not unattractive; 10 ways to kill someone with a doorknob; Begin with the words “There is something you should know…”
Work with one or more writers so that each of you creates a Full Deck. Exchange decks, so that you are using someone else’s deck for topics.
Read. Read something about your topic. Many times we just don’t know enough about our topic to get started. If you want to use racial conflict in a story, for example, type “racial profiling” in a search engine like Google. After reading through some of the hits, you should be inspired.
Read something unrelated to your topic. Read outside your comfort zone. As a writer, you need to expand your literary awareness and read diversely.
Don’t beat yourself over the head for writing badly. Writing can be full of false starts. That can be frustrating but that’s part of the business.
Have a purpose for writing and write every day.
Keep the data input (into yourself) as high as possible. You have to have a tremendous amount of input of all types in order to output in volume. One writer reveals in a writers’ poll: “I see 2-6 movies per week; read 2-3 books in as many days; read magazines; watch TV at least a couple of hours per day; listen to people; ask provocative questions and then listen; look for new things/new perspectives all the time.”
Go wherever people congregate. Suddenly, you’ll observe them and think of anything and everything to write about. It is in our nature to observe and critique others… great stuff comes from observation.
The best way to overcome writer’s block is to pretend it doesn’t exist. Much of the time writer’s block comes from our foolish attempt to try to edit each and every sentence for clarity, punctuation, and sensibility before it gets to our keyboards; therefore, we get “blocked.” The best thing to do is simply write, and in “as stream of consciousness” mode, you can ease yourself out because you will eventually, inevitably stop censoring yourself and simply get your ideas out on paper. You can clean up later.
Free write on the topic “I Remember.” Write fast and furiously and don’t stop to rewrite or rephrase. My grandmother used to say I could go swimming when I learned to swim. Of course I didn’t learn to swim a single stroke until I finally jumped in the water. Dive in and WRITE.
Eat junk food before going to sleep! Record your dreams.
Writer’s block doesn’t exist! That statement alone will help open the brain on days it would rather be closed. Writers have days when words flow and days when they don’t. On days when they do, write as quickly as your little fingers will fly across the keyboard. On days when words don’t seem to want to come out, write slowly, but still write. That’s the key.
Keep a writer’s notebook with all your ideas… everything that catches your eye. On days when you feel stuck, read through it. An idea, a character, a title, a scene—whatever—may jump out and get you started again.
Whenever you feel a lack of desire to write, spend time outdoors, listening to the quiet and regaining an internal silence that allows you to hear words again.
Work on other creative tasks… painting, cross-stitch, gardening, singing, dancing, cooking without a recipe, etc.
Go bicycling.
Listen to some really good music.
Write about why you shouldn’t have to write. With frustration vented, the creative juices should flow again.
Writer’s block is sometimes an excellent clue that the material you’re writing hasn’t jelled quite yet in your mind —the overall story-line is still forming (particularly true for non-fiction writers). Go back and look through your notes and research material and then re-read however much of your story that you have completed.
Read the last few paragraphs you finished the day before, turn off the lights (include your monitor light) and write in the dark.
Drink lots of coffee. The caffeine rush will propel you into a frenzy of writing.
Dancers don’t have dancer’s block; doctors don’t have doctor’s block. Forget writer’s block, you hypochondriac, and just do your job… WRITE.
Pretend this isn’t a real story you are working on. Pretend you are only rehearsing your story and it doesn’t matter what you write. Pretend no one will ever see what you have written, unless you want them to. You don’t even have to read what you have written if you don’t want to. Sometimes the rehearsal goes poorly and you know you need to practice some more. But sometimes the rehearsal will be grand. Remember that feeling and try to use it for the real story. Whatever that is.
You have to clear all the garbage from your mind—everything that is stifling the ideas you need to express. Sit down and do a mind-dump of all the clutter, write down everything in your mind so you can have it open to new ideas instead of thinking about the laundry or the cable bill or the fight you had with your (fill-in-the-blank). Now, don’t think—write.
Surf the ‘net. Imagine a reader asking you questions. When you have something to say, return to the writing.
Visit a bookstore. Don’t you think there is place for one book more?
Make a wheel with spokes coming off. At the center of the wheel write the name of your subject. On the spokes, list all the possible things you can mention about this subject. Look at the list. Do you want to discuss one aspect or create several to create an essay? If onky one, place that topic at the center of the wheel and create spokes using that topic alone. See how completely you can develop your topic just by using these key words.
Buy one of those magnetic poetry thingies and spend time goofing around with it.
Write something else: letters, haiku, sonnet.
Paint your room and see how hard THAT is. Now get back to writing.
Write something that doesn’t bore you.
Read favorite authors for inspiration.
Write really, really, really badly.
Write about the memorable people in your life.
Find a writing buddy and have a contest to see who can write the most words by the end of the hour/day/week/month.
Face your fears. Make a list of all your fears to generate writing ideas.
Have a routine. Write at the same time every day.
Write a certain number of words ever day.
Stop in the middle of a scene, so you will have something to finish the next time you sit down to write.
Lie. Writers are excellent liars. Make something up. Make it believable.
Research or think about topics that you are interested in for potential ideas. Make lists.