When You're Stuck

Writing has been like the proverbial pulling teeth metaphor lately. I sit at my desk and try to compose something brilliant, but alas, nothing but meaningless gibberish spews onto the page.

Last night, however, I decided to try something different. I'm not sure where I read this idea, but it suggested that if the writing isn't going well, doing some other creative task might just do the trick to get you "unstuck."

In essence, we need to fill the creative well.

So! I figured I would give it a try.

My daughter wanted to do an activity together last night and she chose drawing. We got our paper and pencils and How to Draw Scooby Doo book out and set to work on the kitchen table.

I drew a pretty darn good picture of Scooby Doo, if I do say so myself, and had great fun doing it. My daughter, who is a fabulous artist, drew a much more complicated picture of the sleuthing dog, and stroked my ego by telling me, "See, Mom? You CAN draw!"

When I went up to my office an hour or so later, I turned on the laptop, opened my Word doc.,  and started typing. It was slow going at first as I tried to feel my way back into the story. It took me a few hundred words to get going again, but then something "clicked" inside my brain...and I was off!

I wrote over 2,000 words last night and had to make myself stop so I could get to bed. I'd call that a successful writing session.

My advice? Next time you're stuck, do something else creative that doesn't involve writing. Draw a picture. Sew something. Paint. Scrapbook. Arrange a bouquet of wildflowers. You might be surprised at how well your writing takes off!