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Birdie's Quill

Birdie

Bypassing Writer’s Block

I shared my latest news. Another article accepted. “One of my writing goals this year is to submit at least one article, query or story every month,” I said. My writer friend asked if these submissions were newly written or rewrites of previous works. “Most are new, although I do watch for markets that accept reprints.”

“I don’t have that many ideas,” my friend said.

“The ideas are there, but you have to look for them.” As the words left my lips, I snatched the idea for this month’s column, "Bypassing Writer’s Block."

Let’s briefly reflect on the definition of writer’s block. “A usually temporary psychological inability to begin or continue work on a piece of writing.” Note the key word temporary. Training your muse to hunt for ideas helps bypass this temporary condition.

Interests
Consider your interests? For the sake of this article, we’ll look at one of mine. I enjoy animals. I’ve owned a cat, guinea pigs, hamsters, dogs, even raised a raccoon from an infant, and today am the proud owner of seven birds. This one interest overflows with possible ideas for stories and articles. It’s a popular topic many people relate to and a market wide open with opportunities.

For example, I once thought of birds like fish, pretty things without personality that sat out of reach inside a cage. What changed my mind?

Experience
Ben Franklin said, “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing.”

Life experiences color who you are. Fourteen years ago, my daughter and her husband moved cross-country from California to Florida and lived with us for a year. They brought along a little Pug named Badger and their Red Lord Amazon, Scooter. At that time, we had recently put our 13½-year-old dog down and owned one guinea pig.

Scooter, a green parrot with red on his face, laughed, talked and found his way over to the guinea pig’s aquarium. He climbed onto the edge peering into the cage, studying the longhaired critter with curiosity. One evening I heard an unusual ruckus from that corner of the room and found Scooter chasing the guinea pig around in circles until he caught a mouthful of Angora guinea pig hair. Mission accomplished; the parrot stopped and laughed. Seeing Scooter stare up from inside the cage with a hairs dangling from his beak made me laugh too. The two animals became friends.

Living with Scooter wooed my heart to consider owning a bird. He’d ask what I was doing, and along with his vocabulary, used gymnastic abilities to draw me over to his tree to pay attention to him. Birds do have personality! Sometimes, when the mood strikes, they even cuddle. The experience of living with Scooter changed my mindset.

Your unique interests open doors to all kinds of ideas. The trick is to write about them. Willingness to be transparent enough to open a window into your life is a necessary ingredient. People read interesting, “real” articles and stories. When you open the window into your life and write from experience, keep it real.

Conversations
Conversations impart a flood of possibilities offering detours around writer’s block. Talking with others moves from your realm of interests and experiences and takes you onto new, fertile creative soil.

After sharing the news of my most recent acceptance letter, my friend and I continued our conversation. Her excitement about steps she had learned to save time when editing bled through the phone line. The new information she shared would save me valuable time as a writer. After about five minutes of listening to her detailed explanation I said, “You should write an article about it.” She loved the idea, and when I spoke to her the following day she had a good start on her article. From that one conversation, I walked away with an idea for this month’s Birdie’s Quill and she with an article idea to help other writers.

Talking with people also enriches fictional writing. Many interesting fictional characters are a composite of real life people. If you find someone fascinating, jot down the reasons why. Keep an idea file.

I worked on an island off the Southwest cost of Florida for years. As a transplanted Midwesterner, I absorbed all kinds of new information. The sleepy little fishing village gradually transformed into a home for millionaires and multi-millionaires, yet amid the luxury and opulence, the people I enjoyed most were fishing folk that lived there for generations.

Instead of the fresh water fishing I knew from Illinois, I learned about salt-water fishing. I enjoyed fishing the flats, but deep-sea fishing is really popular. I’d never heard of a Tarpon (also known as a Silverking), and charters to snag these silvery-scaled prizes was big business. Listening to the fascinating history of how people Tarpon fished at the end of the 19th century captured my imagination. A steamboat dragged a daisy chain of rowboats into the pass. Once out there, they scattered across the deep waters of Charlotte Harbor. When they hooked one of these giant fish, the captain struggled to row to shore so the fish could be landed. These entertaining facts inspired my fictional story Dance of the Silverking.

Classes
Take a class. Even non-writing classes inspire new ideas. A friend of mine signed up for a class teaching Native American pottery techniques. It included a field trip to dig up the clay that would be used. Now there’s an idea for an article. It also provides fodder from which to draw when writing fiction. New knowledge fertilizes the imagination as it combines with experience.

After being out of school for twenty years, I took a sociology course at the local college. Learning about city life hundreds of years ago not only fascinated me then, but historical information I learned can be used to add realism to my fictional writing. Take a historical fact and build a story around it.

For example, back then travelers did not have the luxury of driving along the city streets to find a choice hotel. Strangers could knock on your door and expect a meal and perhaps a place to spend the night. When they sat down at the dinner table, the knife resting beside the plate offered subtle information making the intimate interchange with an outsider less awkward. If the knife blade faced the dinner plate, the traveler knew they were welcome to spend the night, but if it turned away from the plate they knew without a verbal exchange that they were not welcomed to stay. They’d finish the meal and leave. An entire story can develop around one fact.

Writer’s Groups
Interacting with other writers strengthens your abilities as a writer, and cultivates new ideas. Listening to the works of other writers, the process they follow when writing, and sometimes even the inspiration behind the story or article opens avenues worth exploration within your muse while critiques and feedback help hone your text and skills.

What If?
In my book Pumping Your Muse you’ll find what I call flip side exercises. They prod thoughts and imagination along paths not naturally followed in the reasoning process. For example, if your scene takes place in a primitive city around the dinner table with the knife facing the plate, flip that detail and ask what would happen if the knife blade tells the stranger they must leave. Within any scene, flipping details opens the path to a new story.

Study Markets
Regularly study writer’s markets. This practice keeps your finger on the pulse of what is happening in the publishing world. If you take time to look over guidelines and specific needs of various publications, you may uncover a story you hadn’t considered writing.

For instance, I came across a bird watching magazine that has a section where you can ask an expert a question. Although I hadn’t considered writing for the magazine, I’ve been looking for an expert regarding one of our local birds after it bonked me in the head a couple of times. I wanted to write an article, but had come to a dead end when looking for an expert to add credibility to my experience. Studying markets opened the door to pursue the article I had decided to shelf.

Various newsletters and ezines for writers present markets on a regular basis. Funds For Writers is a great place to start if you’re looking for markets (as well as other helpful information specific to writers and writing). You’ll find this site listed among Writer's Digest’s 101 Best Web Sites for Writers for the last six years. They offer four newsletters that reach about 18,000 readers. The main newsletter FundsforWriters reaches 11,000. “We're considered the grant specialist of the writing resources online,” founder Hope Clark says, “And we have a grand ebook library.” Her book, The Shy Writer, can be found at www.epress-online.com.

Conclusion
If you find yourself sitting at the computer staring at a blank screen, stop forcing the issue. Change to another project for a half an hour or so. If you don’t have another project, consider your interests, experience, make a phone call or go out to lunch with a friend to engage in conversation. Life is full of things to write about. The trick is to tune in to the possibilities and bypass writer’s block.


About the Author
Author and freelance writer, Donna Sundblad, resides in Georgia with her husband, Rick. Her creative writing book, Pumping Your Muse, is available in paper or ebook format. Check her website for more information at www.theinkslinger.net. Donna also edits for and co-owns Team Spirit Critique and Editing, LLC.