BLOCK-BUSTERS THAT HELP BUST THROUGH CREATIVE BLOCKS

We all bash our heads on them, sometimes, don't we? Brick walls. Creative blocks.

Sometimes the block's as wrinkly and stubborn as the biggest elephant you can fit in the room.

Sometimes the block comes over all soft and squishy but it still ends up suffocating your flow like a massive pillow with odd feathers spilling out to make you sneeze with sheer frustration.

I don't so much get blocked with writing in general. Oh no. It's much more specific than that. It's only now in enforced ill-health retirement I'm getting down to penning the novels I've always dreamed of writing, those longer projects, that the dreaded block taps me smugly on my unsuspecting shoulder.

Indignant me growls: "But I love this story! I love writing it! So why am I more inclined to write my boring old shopping list than pick up where I left off with the first draft?"

Yes. I get blocked with whatever the main project is. All other writing becomes a tempting seductress of a sideline. I can procrastinate as much as I like,  writing other things, shorts, poems, comments, letters, emails, blogposts, serendipitous daily scribblings. Nothing wrong with any of that. Trouble is, the block's still there, waiting, where it was all along. Helping me avoid the risk of not getting the perfect word in the perfect sentence first time around. Not reaching 'The End'.

Once I realise what the block really is, I can face it. I can thumb my nose at it and get on with the job in hand. It isn't an anonymous block, you see. It's that little voice inside me that talks in the irritating critical accent only I can understand.

For me it's my perfectionism.

For me it's my fear of failure.

For me it's my wanting to keep my options open.

For me it's the ludicrous grammar nerdish inner pedant.

It's all manner of unhelpful things. Specific things. Specific lies. Once I've identified them and pinned them to the desk, they haven't the power to bully me into neglecting the very thing that brings me most joy, for one moment longer.

So I self-medicate these days for this common ailment of us crazy creatives.

There is help out there. Help that rings true because it comes from other writers who have been there. Like most of us, they've been there daily but won't quit!

Two books I find especially therapeutic for kicking the blocks into touch and tricking my inner critic into allowing me back to the page, I always keep at my elbow as I write these days. I think of them as my block-busters. My life-savers!

One was a present from a very dear writer friend who had found it helpful.

Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way Every Day; a Year of Creative Living."

The other was bought as a treat for myself after I read it in the bibliography to another of Cameron's books and simply couldn't resist the title:

Susan Shaughnessy's "Walking on Alligators: a book of meditations for writers."

Wherever I open them, there are bite-sized nuggets of good-humoured wisdom. Best thing is, they really help me get past my pesky personal writing-resistant sticking points. Perhaps the latter's my favourite writing encouragement book of all. My go-to lifesaver block-buster!

A page or two and I can laugh at my inner cowardly lion or elephant again. Laugh at it, cuddle it compassionately and more importantly, plunge back into writing the manuscript.

I wonder what your own personal blocks and block-busters are?

I'd really love to hear about them! (In the moments before we all head thankfully back to the unwritten page only we can write!)

Thanks for stopping by!

Writer's Block Buster: 'Play-date' with my heroine brings fresh insights and inspiration

You know the classic cartoon meme of the hapless character who runs off the cliff, but only falls when he looks down, causing suspended gravity to kick in, splattering him on the canyon floor?

Do you ever get to a point in your first draft when, like that character, you're running along at breakneck speed, creating your fiction with blissful abandon? Then, two thirds of the way through, as the plot becomes ever more clear to you, you grind to a halt, over-analyzing and second guessing yourself ? You itch to edit edit edit, change course, look down, and suddenly you're stymied and blocked, lying splattered with bruised wings on the canyon floor?

That's what happened to me last week while scooting gleefully through the first draft of my second novel "Kittiwake and Cloudhover." My feisty heroine Thirza and my wildlife whispering hero Bram from "Goatsucker Harvest" find themselves hurtling towards the dizzying cliffs of Flamborough on the Holderness Coast, summer 1856. Suddenly, I found myself temporarily stuck in the wet sand, caught in a bind between my writing and editing brains.

So, I was inspired to try to find my own solution. Maybe you'll find this approach helpful, too. Maybe you have your own self-restart buttons to press? I'd love to hear about them!

I let myself skip off for a quick off-piste "play date" with my heroine, letting Thirza tell me, in her own inimitable voice, how she saw the plot, the other characters, from start to finish.

It gave my querulous inner critic the night off. 8000 words later, I had some useful fresh plot twists, insights and inspiration. I'd also been able to "kill" some of my floppier "darlings" plus some of Thirza's turns of phrase cried out for inclusion in future drafts.

So, with a clearer road map, a renewed purpose, rested and refreshed, it's a joy to put my hands back on the tiller and steer for the end of the first draft again.

I'm excited for the day in the future when I can share more of these crazy, cliffhanging emotional adventures with you!

Thanks for reading and for all your support, amazing reviews, laughs, and for sharing my writing journey!