A Walk on the Other Side

As a writer, I confess I’m a creature of habit. Writing comes easiest when I’m in my usual writing “space”—a room tucked away from TV and other distractions. I put on some of my favorite music, Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra, Chris Botti, and Norah Jones, and the words flow. Well, they flow most of the time…

Spending the winter in Florida where I write on a laptop in the dining room/living room while first football and now March madness prevails, however, has resulted in a bit of a block. My muse, it seems, stayed at home. And of course, the lure of sunshine, beach, and pool has also been hard to resist.

Still, I tell myself that's no excuse and call to mind one of my favorite quotes: "Those who write are writers. Those who wait  are waiters," coined by science fiction and fantasy author A. Lee Martinez. Yet despite my get tough stance, I still come up blank. All my forced sitting in front of the white screen seems to make it worse.

In desperation, I read a lot of how-to-break-through writers block articles on the Internet. The great number of the suggestions tells me I'm not alone in my dilemma. I find a common thread in many of the prompts that tells me I need to recall the joy that I first experienced when I began writing. One way to do this according to my research is to try a different genre, to take a “walk” on the other side—the other side of your usual writing, that is. If fiction is what you normally do, try a poem or a memoir piece, or vice versa.

So I decide to take a break and enjoy writing purely for writing’s sake without pressure. Why not play with words, I thought, like a kid in a sandbox? I can still visualize my now adult daughters as children just letting the sand sift through their fingers. Their joy in the texture wasn't marred by any need to create something permanent or profound. Inspired by that image, I take pen in hand and let my hand take over. I pick poetry as my "blockbreaker" because poets seem to truly love and treasure words. One of the sites I found helpful is Instant Poetry Forms.

Here’s a bit of fun I had with just a wee bit of poetry. It’ll never be in an anthology, but it was fun to play with the words and definitely the antidote to my writer's block. It does need one last line in the second stanza, though. Any idea, fellow writers? Send them to me! But only if you can have fun playing in my poetic sandbox...

A Writer’s Lament

Ideas aplenty come

As I sit by poolside

Long fled before I go to bed

Before the Sun’s memory leaves my skin.

The shower’s hour brings grand ideas

While I soap and shampoo

Gone, oh why, before I’m dry?


I'd also love to hear your solutions for those dry spells in your creativity. And remember: