Cure for Writer's Block

26. Write a profile of someone who had a big influence on your life. You can do this in one of two ways: either write a paragraph on each important aspect of their character, or illustrate their character by describing an event in which the person played a pivotal role.

27. Write an account of an event to which you were a witness. Write it in both past and present tenses.

28. Write the close up of an activity. Then pull the camera back and see more of it. Describe it.

29. Describe with care the most ordinary items you can think of. Look at them as though they were strange and unusual. Conversely, describe extraordinary things--meteors, rockets, and so on-- in familiar language as just another stone ore piece of rolled sheet metal. This will help you learn to control your distance from the objects you describe. If you are too close, you may not see the shape; if you are too far, you may not see the details. Get into the habit of shifting the focus away from what would be your automatic focus, and you will see items in a fresh way. Practice the art of creating surprising details. Skip something obviously important and use something apparently unimportant.

30. If you live in a rural area or have visited the countryside, reflect on a time you were especially aware of the natural surroundings and felt at one with them. It may have been an hour lying underneath a tree, a day spent canoeing or hiking in the woods. It may have been a month in the country when time slowed down and you became intimately aware of the life around you. Write about it.

31. If you live in an urban area or have spent time in a city, describe a street fair or neighbourhood celebration, or a time you roamed city streets absorbing sights and sounds.

32. Write an account of a process. Perhaps the process is a skill you have such as sewing or painting. Perhaps it is a process you observed over a period of time, such as the construction of a skyscraper or the erosion of a hill.

33. Take a story that you've already written, reread it, and then visualize it part by part. As you visualize a part, write it down. Repeat the process until you've satisfied yourself that you've achieved the right level of detail, and then read the first and last versions to someone. Ask for reactions.

34. Experiment with writing at different times of day to find which works best for you. Practice writing for longer and longer periods. Experiment with different suggested ways of coping with writer's block.

35. Exchange work with a friend, and see how many irrelevant words you can cut from each other's works. How many clichés or hackneyed phrases can you identify?

36. If you are working on a novel or memoir, attempt to identify irrelevant episodes or redundancies.

37. Take something you've written - story, essay, poem- and identify those places where you have used the passive voice. Substitute active voice in every instance. Does it strengthen the writing, or does it subvert its meaning? Look at the same work and see where you can substitute stronger words for those you have.

38. Take a story you've written and change the person of narration. Does it work better in first or third person?

39. Take a story you've written or a story in Public Domain and heighten the tone and mood by exaggerating passages.

40. Take a newspaper editorial and put it in the mouth of a low status character. How would that person express his or her views? Would they use different words? How might they pronounce some of those words? Exaggerate in this exercise.

41. Take a page from a favourite story with narration and dialogue written in standard English. Rewrite it from the point of view of someone who speaks with an accent or in a dialect, preferably someone from your own locale or region. Spell some of the words phonetically.

42. Complete any open-ended sentence in as many ways as you can. Some examples of open-ended sentences are: I wonder how..., Too many people..., I just learned..., Television is..., One place I enjoy..., The good thing about...

43. Make a character visible through her surroundings. If she loves plants and cats and hates people, her house might assume certain traits. Sketch the house, listing the sights, smells, and sounds. Afterwards, read the sketch. Do you give precise details? Rather than "the place smelled stuffy," do you show the stuffiness?

44. On 5 half-pages, describe someone's hands so that we get an idea that he or she is (a) nervous, (b) artistic, (c) rich (d) poor, (e) ill. This exercise will broaden the range of physical details you use when describing characters. Since what you can accomplish by describing noses and eyes may be too much strain on these organs, it's good to let the whole body do the work of developing the character. Just think of the skills you have in your fingers. Pay attention to appearance and motion. Are the hands expressing impulses? Can we see all you say? Rather than saying the hands are nervous (graceful, sensual, determined and so on-- adjectives that can rarely be visualized), do you give us a picture of a forefinger digging its bitten nail into the side of the thumb? It's all right to say that hands are nervous, but show that too.

45. Critique. Take a random story and write down your views about it. This may be about the theme, characters, atmosphere, descriptions, vocabulary, just about anything.

46. Have a friend give you three random words, then use those words in any way, shape, or form. Write a vignette. A poem. A novel. Use the past participle of the word. Use the poetic concept that means nothing to anyone but yourself. Go nuts. The idea is to shake loose parts of your brain you weren't even considering using for fiction, without the pressure of coming up with a premise or concept, and it can produce some surprising results.

47. Start a spontaneous and free-form dialogue between your conscious self ("I") and your unconscious creative self. Give your creative self a separate identity, even a name or let the name come out of the dialogue. You can do the dialogue any way that's free-flowing and comfortable -- writing, tape recording, on the computer -- but you want to express it some way and also have a record of it afterward. After you've finished your dialogue, sit down and describe the personalities of the two speakers and the tone of the conversation. Two friends chatting? Mortal enemies baring teeth? You get the idea.

48. Freewrite. Choose one sentence in a paragraph and write a paragraph about it. Then choose one sentence from that paragraph and do it again.

49. People who tell you that physical exercise is important for mental activity are telling the truth. If nothing's happening on the computer screen or paper, take a walk around the block. Hit the treadmill or tennis courts or drive to the gym. But take your notebook with you. Fresh blood will be flowing through your brain and jogging might just jog something loose in your head.

50. Flip through a magazine. Cut out pictures, headlines, even certain blocks of text. Now write a short story based on your clippings.

Now that you have so many ways to get rid of the dreaded Writer’s Block, just kiss the damn thing goodbye and happy writing!

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Author's note: I would love to hear your comments about this piece. Did it help you? Anything you might add to make it better? I'm also interested in any personal incidents you might like to share which helped you with the block. Please do write. :)