Bell Bridge Books

Writer’s Unblock

By Eve Gaddy

I was thinking about what to blog about and nothing was coming to me.  That made me think of something I’ve faced many times in my writing career.  I know some writers who don’t believe there is any such thing as writer’s block.  All I can say is be happy you haven’t experienced it because I’m here to tell you, writer’s block is real.  And it’s not fun.

There are many reasons for writer’s block and I’ve experienced a number of them.  Burnout, death of family or friends, health issues, moving, divorce, family issues, all of the above.  I’m sure there are many more.  Most of the time I wanted to write but just couldn’t for various reasons.  My last bout with it I was convinced I’d retired.  In fact, I didn’t write at all (other than emailJ) for a long time.  I didn’t think I’d ever write again.  When I finally did start again, it was a book that was a departure for me from what I’d been writing for so long.  Maybe I just needed to write something completely different.  A book for me, one that I didn’t worry about selling but just wrote it the way it needed to be written.  A book of the heart.

Many times I think the problem underlying writer’s block is burnout.  Some of us tend to be a bit obsessive (what, me obsessive?).  We might concentrate so much on writing we don’t do much else.  And eventually we burn out.  I felt as if my creativity had absolutely dried up.  So I decided I’d go back to the creative things I used to do before I started writing. 

I took up needlework again.  I used to do a lot of needlepoint but quit soon after I first published.  I stopped with just a small amount left of a very complex project, a landscape of the Seine River.  I’d always wanted to finish it because it was gorgeous.  So I picked it up again and finished.  Since then I have needlepointed numerous Christmas stockings, some of them working from a counted cross stitch pattern translated to needlepoint.  I’ve also made some Christmas ornaments and various other things in the past few years. 

I still couldn’t write.  So I took up another craft I’d given up.  In fact, I hadn’t done it since high school.  My daughter found out she was having twin girls.  What better time to pick up knitting again?  I knitted all sorts of things, including a number of baby blankets.  Since then I’ve knitted many different things, ranging from afghans to socks.  Now I alternate working on needlepoint or knitting and usually have several different projects going.  I could never do that with writing.  I have to totally immerse myself in a book until I finish it.  I don’t have to do that with needlework and it’s fun. 

For me, needlework lets me be creative, but in a different way from writing.  I have to think, but again, in a different way than writing.  But somehow that sort of creativity allows my writer’s brain to start working again.  Sometimes the solutions to problems I’m having with my current manuscript come to me when I’m doing needlework. 

There are a lot of ways to jump start your creativity.  These are just some things that helped me, and that I enjoy a lot.  Have you ever had writer’s block?  If you have, what did you do to help you get started again?  What are your tricks for dealing with it?

“My name is Cheryl, and I am a writer.”
I sometimes wonder how that happened. I always knew I wanted to write—when I was a junior in high school, I ditched the physics class, which everyone seemed to think I should take, for the Typing I class, which everyone seemed to think I should not take. But I knew even then that I’d need the typing thing for the writing thing, and so I was determined to get it.

One of the things I didn’t know I needed was a “well.”  I had a well, of course—all writers do. It’s the place where the good, the bad, the ugly and the interesting things we experience and observe and learn during our lifetime are tucked away for later use. I consciously started mine when I was eleven—after a school field trip to the site of the Confederate Prison in Salisbury. I stood looking at the unmarked graves and I knew two things:  a) I wanted to write about this and b) I didn’t know how. Or what. Or when.  So I began collecting tidbits of information and shoving them down the well. I didn’t make notes; I absorbed them, kept them, remembered them from time to time, until the day finally came when I needed them. A lot of those tidbits became THE PRISONER and THE BRIDE FAIR.

The same is true of PROMISE ME A RAINBOW. Much of the “texture” (as I like to think of it) came directly from “the well,” things like cedar Christmas trees, and hot chocolate topped with vanilla ice cream, and Blue Willow mugs and the Blue Willow legend, and what it’s like to ride a city bus when you’re a little kid, and what it’s like to work with pregnant teenagers, and what a joy it is to be able to tell a woman who believed she couldn’t conceive that she’s finally, finally pregnant.

Things from the “well” are what make a story live and breathe. There are all kinds of things floating around down there. Some I shouldn’t use. Some, I’ll never use. Some, I only think I’ll never use. One thing I’ve learned over lo, these many writing years, is that you never know when something you’ve saved is going to take hold.

In case you might be wondering what other kinds of things are in the well, here are a few:

My family’s claim to fame:

My Uncle Joe once punched Gene Autry in the nose, and no, it wasn’t in a movie.

My family’s claim to shame:

My great aunt (who shall be nameless) was excommunicated from her church because TPTB ordered her to quit smoking forthwith, and she said no. (I imagine she said a lot more than that, but I wasn’t allowed to know that part.)

My claim to fame:

The late actor, Sidney Blackmer (ROSEMARY’S BABY), was my patient several times, both when I was a student nurse and later when I worked for a medical practice. He would sweep into the doctors’ office wearing what looked like an opera cape, and a fedora with a turned down brim. He always carried a cane, and he was escorted by his off-leash Dobermans—and believe me, those Dobies went anywhere they wanted to.

My first crush:

Roy Rogers. I’m still not over him.

My first job:

A candy-striper at the local hospital. I was paid with credit at the hospital sandwich shop, enough for a grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke. And I was happy to get it. (What? I like grilled cheese sandwiches and Coke.)

My experience with happenstance:

When I was three, the head of the children’s department in the Belk-Harry department store gave me a little red piano, a prop from one of the display cases—because she could see I loved it, and she was that kind of person. When I was twenty-three and a night nurse, I was taking care of a violent stroke patient, a woman no one else wanted to take care of.  I saw a man standing just outside the doorway. I asked if he was family. He said no, but he’d known her a long time, and he could hardly bear to see her like that. She was, he said, the head of the children’s department at Belk-Harry’s for many years, and she was one of the kindest women he’d ever known. Me, too, I suddenly realized.

And with that, I’m going to stop. I’m sure I intended to make a seriously profound point of some kind when I started this blog, only now I don’t know what it was—which of course, is something else I’ll just have to put in the well—in the forgetful section.

‘Til next time…

Cheryl Reavis