I have reached a sort of writers block where I want to write, but when I get to the paper nothing comes out. I feel like I’ve lost the inspiration I used to have. Any tips on what to do?—Melanie Lambrecht
Yes.
Get up.
Go outside.
You have nothing to write about because you’ve run out of experiences that stimulate your imagination. This happens to aspiring writers a whole lot more these days than it did in the old days before the Internet came along. I mean, what are they going to write about? Sitting on the computer all day? Reading random blogs that they forget two seconds later? Tweeting about having nothing to write about?
You’ve lost your connection to the physical world from which all storytelling comes. You’ve run out of the wonderful, real details of your senses that make up three-dimensional scenes, which are what fiction is.
So turn off the computer and go spend some good, rich, complex time out in the real world being alive. Wander the streets and neighborhoods. Wade through the fields and creeks. Put on your mudstompers and walk in the mud. Go downtown and watch people, ride a bus and eavesdrop, hang out in coffee shops and cafes doodling, sit on a park bench and breathe in the summer. This is the only summer of 2011 you’re ever going to get.
Buy a notepad and cheap, useful pen (I like black Pilots) and record life as it goes on around you (leave the computer at home!)—everything you see and hear and taste and feel and smell. It’s a vast, vast world. You’ve got five senses. Use them.
Far too much is made these days of producing written works. But what are you going to write if you don’t have a life to write about? Or if you don’t have time to pay attention to that life as you live it? If you’re constantly being pressured to make wordcounts, to write stories, novels, only things you can sell?
Forget all that stuff—you’ll have plenty of time to turn material into stories once you’ve practiced until you’re an expert at finding and appreciating and recording material.
Go pay attention. To this moment. And the next, and the next, and the next.
In great, fabulous, meticulous detail—write that.
“The freshest and
most relevant advice
you’ll find.”
—Helen Gallagher,
Seattle P-I
The Art & Craft of Story