How to Alleviate Writer's Block #2
In FIVE easy bullet points, very personal to me.
Like all writers, I love language and words, but when the pressure is on, writer's block can strike, drying up the wells of inspiration at their source.
These are my tips, proven to work for me.
1. Cast aside (dramatically, with a thespian-type gesture) all your modern technology and hand-held gadgetry! Personally, I find staring at an unattractive lap-top screen, as it stares back at you defiantly from the desk, is not the best way to alleviate writer's block.
2. Pick up instead favourite pen and posh fat linen notebook, purchased as an indulgence at great expense - but with very little guilt because writers after all deserve one or two luxuries.
3. Change your location.Take the dog for a long country walk, somewhere different. If you don't have a dog, then just walk - but it's not as much fun.
4. I wrote my novel THE COLOUR OF BIRDS last summer in the graveyard of an abandoned chapel out in the countryside where no one goes. I sat on the step, my back leaning against the padlocked door, surrounded by mossy graves, and wrote my heart out. Then I stuffed the notebook back in my basket and cycled home again - refreshed. (THE COLOUR OF BIRDS isn't published yet. I'm still nursing it!)
(Point number 4 is just reinforcing point number 3 really, but you see where I am going with this!)
5.Drink one coffee in the morning, liberally spiced with honey - enough to make you pretty optimistic, but not a nervous jangling wreck by mid-afternoon. Coffee makes me very talkative, but instead of talking, channel all that stuff onto the page. Your family will thank you for it!
Like all writers, I love language and words, but when the pressure is on, writer's block can strike, drying up the wells of inspiration at their source.
These are my tips, proven to work for me.
1. Cast aside (dramatically, with a thespian-type gesture) all your modern technology and hand-held gadgetry! Personally, I find staring at an unattractive lap-top screen, as it stares back at you defiantly from the desk, is not the best way to alleviate writer's block.
2. Pick up instead favourite pen and posh fat linen notebook, purchased as an indulgence at great expense - but with very little guilt because writers after all deserve one or two luxuries.
3. Change your location.Take the dog for a long country walk, somewhere different. If you don't have a dog, then just walk - but it's not as much fun.
4. I wrote my novel THE COLOUR OF BIRDS last summer in the graveyard of an abandoned chapel out in the countryside where no one goes. I sat on the step, my back leaning against the padlocked door, surrounded by mossy graves, and wrote my heart out. Then I stuffed the notebook back in my basket and cycled home again - refreshed. (THE COLOUR OF BIRDS isn't published yet. I'm still nursing it!)
(Point number 4 is just reinforcing point number 3 really, but you see where I am going with this!)
5.Drink one coffee in the morning, liberally spiced with honey - enough to make you pretty optimistic, but not a nervous jangling wreck by mid-afternoon. Coffee makes me very talkative, but instead of talking, channel all that stuff onto the page. Your family will thank you for it!
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Life Through A Window
Alex Nye writes about life at the creative rock-face, offering tips and remedies along the way. She writes about the books she loves, where she reads them, what they mean to her, and she writes about
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