Please help me welcome J L Murphey today.
I met Jo Murphey years ago at Southeastern Writers Workshop held each summer on St Simons Island at Epworth by the Sea. An entire week hanging around writers and attending workshops was a last!
Jo and I immediately became partners in crime and laughed at almost everything while we shared our love for writing and life in general. She agreed to share her feelings and suggestions about a topic familiar to most writers.
Welcome, Jo! I am so glad you are here with us!
Creativity Flow and the Block
I've heard many a writer complain about writer's block. This is common especially with the weather here warming up and the sun shining. Anyone with sense would rather be outdoors, because of this writers have a tendency to feel a lapse in creative juices flowing. One writer friend of mine thought she'd killed her brain cells dealing with her creativity. This was my response to her, but it works for just about any writer.
Ya didn't kilt yo' noggin'. It's jist takin' itself a wee little nap is all.
Translation needed, I've spent far to many hours in my southern fiction- You didn't kill your brain. It's just napping.
At times you brain needs a little break from creative overload-itis. Eventually, the well will run dry. You need to fall back and recharge your creative juices. Since the weather is nice, and it has been glorious here too, go outside and enjoy nature. Plant a garden, tend some flower beds, clip the hedges back.
Life is about balance. While at times, I can pound away at this keyboard for hours on end, barely eating and sleeping, and do nothing but write. But then there are the other times, when my stories stay minimized on my screen or stares at me just waiting...and waiting...and waiting. I've written five words in the past 24 hours. (Five-count 'em, thumb, index finger, birdie finger, ring finger, and pinky). It is hard to create a creative flash of genius. In fact, it's impossible. Sometimes, your brain hits a lull and as a writer you have to allow yourself this lull. Think about a river, it ebbs and flows. It is not constant. There are floods with snow melts, the every day flow, and then there is a drought where the water flow is a trickle. Creativity is the same way.
For me, I grab a handful of workshop or other author's chapters, a red pen, and head for the bathroom for a full fledged bubble bath. Something about a hot soak in the bath tub. It recharges my energies or makes me fall asleep which ever is needed most. Other times, I'll turn on the DVD player and watch favorite movies, which I know will spark something creative in me. Yet still other times, the juices will not flow (they can be stubborn in a logjam). I call this my writer's block moments. I will play scrabble, boggle, and few other word-mind games. Grab a friend and reenact a murder with water pistols in hotel hallways to see which way a body will fall. I know it sounds silly, but the idea is to lighten up. Eventually, normally within two days, the dam will break and an inkling of creativity will peek through and then... the "Ah-ha" moment, or the "What if I did this...," or the "I know how to fix this!"
The more you stress over the lack of creativity, the more you shoot yourself in the foot. Creativity can not survive in a vacuum. Which whether you realize it or not...sitting behind your desk staring at the computer screen creates a vacuum. Creativity can not flow against stress. If you are experiencing writer's block, you are stressing about it. Creativity needs to be nurtured and pampered like a newborn baby. It is not something you can force yourself to be. Be kind to yourself and your creative flow...take a break. It will come.
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