When You Lose Your Muse – Writer’s Block
It happens to every writer. There you are, scribbling or typing away happily, contentedly, when all of a sudden…WHAM! The ideas become clogged. The words stop flowing. Somewhere between your brain and your pen a door has been shut, locked, and its key tossed out…or so it seems. 
Plenty of paper, thousands of pens…no ideas. What do you do? Wander around aimlessly? Sleep the writer’s block off? Cry?
ABSOLUTELY NOT!
I’ll tell you what you do. Come closer, it’s a secret.
Keep writing.
Don’t force it, though. Take a break if you need to – go for a run and get some fresh air. If the weather is appropriate, take a notebook or laptop outside, and continue writing there. The main thing is, don’t give up. And stop stressing out. We all know how writers agonize over every word, so reluctant to let even one dry one escape; the thing is, when you have writer’s block, dry diction may be all you have, and, get this, that’s alright.
Cut loose your inhibitions and just write. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation do not matter (for now). Much of what you will write now might be useless – that is normal…save your worries for the editing.
The goal in “unblocking” is to thaw the brain, to loosen the mind and thought process. Conceptually, imagine an actual block of wood. Somewhere in the center of this block of wood is your creativity. Think of unblocking as carving away the wood that traps your creativity.
One way of ‘carving’ is called The List. This exercise was first suggested by author Ray Bradbury, in his book Zen In The Art Of Writing. All it is, is making a list of nouns preceded by the word ‘the’. Begin with a noun of your choice and then just keep listing them, without thinking about which will come next.
For example, here is my list, beginning with “The window”:
The window. The door. The doorknob. The bed knob. The broomstick. The twig. The air. The frost. The rain. The cloud. The train. The steam. The forest. The snow. The lynx. The leaves. The tracks. The hunt. The chase. The bow. The arrow. The feather. The bird. The cold. The wind. The howl. The wolf. The predator. The prey.
How, you may ask, can one find inspiration in those words? These words are basically my train of thought, each one evoking a different set of memories. ‘The train’, for instance, conjures up an image of my mother travelling through Europe during the summer, short on money but happy and free. A story could easily develop from this, the tale of her adventures that summer.
You see how the nouns can bring up long forgotten memories. The best part about Listing is that one doesn’t know where one is headed. Any word could be next; the writing is frantic and frenzied and perfectly spontaneous.
So carve away, my friend! Do not lose hope in yourself, nor in the sacred art of writing. For the ideas will come to you – I promise.
Sources:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/567/01/
Zen In The Art Of Writing, Ray Bradbury, Bantam Books, 1990
