Goodreads asked Kathryn Joyce:

How do you deal with writer’s block?

Kathryn Joyce I have a number of ways to try to deal with the dreaded block. One is to go for a walk - sometimes a long one. Another is to sit in a café and write a character sketch or two - which I sometimes use. Or I take a simple object, possibly something from my desk, and focusing on the five senses, I describe the object. Here's a recent scribble:

It isn’t a ball, not exactly. Being a used squeeze-ball one would expect a bit of leniency. It’s roundish; a tennis ball sized poorly replicated baseball shape and colour – not leather red or tan; I guess you’d call it flame - with black lines marking imaginary baseball seams and not-straight stitching failing to hide the real ones. It contrasts poorly with its paradigm so that one ponders how the design ever came about. I use it to relieve arthritis in my hands, which isn’t very exciting, and if there isn’t any pain I might forget to use it if I didn’t like the smooth, soft, breeze-cooled-skin feel of it. The Chinese designer must have had a bad day – or a brain-storm - when s/he dreamed it up. Factoring in the cost of all the hands that have touched it, from concept to design to materials to manufacture to packaging to distribution to transport to shop to shelf to till to me at only a £1, no-one can have got as much from it as I have..

If that doesn't kick-start the creative juices, I'm really stuck!

flag