Free The Words

If like me, you’ve spent some time looking at a blank page, hoping for, WILLING some inspiration into being, have a look at the ten tools below, designed to fire up the dormant creative juices. Some, I’ve made up and some I’ve read about, as being beneficial to other writers caught in that awfully scary place, where words fear to tread.

1. If you can, visit a real graveyard, preferably an old one and using the oldest inscription you can find on a grave, construct a first person, present tense point of view paragraph about the person during the time they lived. If you can’t visit a real graveyard – close your eyes and imagine the words that would appear on an imaginary gravestone.

2. Sit in a room, with the window open as wide as it can. Listen. Just listen. Switch off your other senses. After five minutes, write a paragraph about the sound that resonated most with you during that time.

3. Take the opening paragraph from your most recently read and loved book. Change the POV and rewrite it, seeing if it frees anything – an idea, a character?

4. Using a favourite lyric e.g ‘Been down to the bottom of every bottle’ and write a third person past tense paragraph on a person who might have said those words.

5. Imagine your favourite male and female celebrities. Write a love scene – One page of dialogue only which must end on a cliff-hanger.

6. Light several candles and sit in a darkened room. List the first thirty words that come to you e.g. haunt, flicker, light, scared. Choose your favourite, most evocative word and write a flash fiction story of only fifty words. It must have a beginning, middle and end!

7. Conduct a Parky style interview with a pretend celebrity. Ask the questions you know no real host would dare to ask! Make the celeb’s responses honest and instinctive.

8. Examine a photograph - preferably one from a magazine and preferably one with unknown people in it. Write a list of the personality traits of the person you feel to be the main character in the photograph. Now describe him/her physically, write down their birthday, birth sign, favourite food, the job they do. Enough at least for a short story!

9. Write a love letter. It must start with ‘My dearest...’ and end with ‘sending you all the love in my heart’. Other than that, let your fingers tap the talking.

10. Pick your favourite word in the dictionary. Mine is ‘serendipity’. Read and re-read the dictionary meaning. Look it up on Wikipedia. Google it. See if there’s a google image for it? Write one paragraph where your favourite word appears, either in script or in theme.


See now, I’m all inspired. I feel a tale coming on. One of a serendipitous meeting of an ex alcoholic D list celebrity falling for his dead lost love... Only it’s all in his head, see? Oh and it takes the form of love letters heading each chapter.

Been done before? No problem. Change the POV. Make it emails/texts/ Facebook status reports instead. OMG, imagine a ghost that can only communicate through Facebook! Love it!

As usual when I write posts that are aimed at helping - moving people along, I end out worrying for myself...

Ten Tips to Trounce Writer's Block

There's a school of thought that says there's no such thing as writer's block. It's an excuse put about by lazy wasters who spend more time dreaming of glitzy literary parties than doing any actual work. But whether or not you subscribe to this view, there's no denying the fact that writing has its bad patches. Sometimes it's extremely difficult indeed. Sometimes it's hard to write anything at all; sometimes it's impossible to believe that what you've written is any good.

Today I'm listing my favourite strategies for getting going again when the going has got tough. You probably have lots more ideas I haven't thought of - if so, please add them in the comments and let's build up a resource that has something for everyone.

1. Fool your brain
I read somewhere [citation needed] that smiling releases endorphins, so by making yourself smile, you trick your brain into feeling happier. Similarly, you can convince said brain that you're writing. I do this by copying out something I have already written. The act of scribbling makes it easier to carry on beyond the end of the scene, and before I know it, I'm writing something new.

2. Do the fun bit
Skip ahead to an easy scene, or one that's been occupying your mind so much that you can't get on with anything else until you've written it.

3. Tell the dog
Explain verbally what you're trying to achieve. Tell a pet, a tree, a cuddly toy, a tape recorder, or if you're very brave, a writer friend. Articulating the idea brings it into focus, and even if the dog just snuggles deeper into his basket in the hope you'll go away, you have made a statement of intent – once you've said it, you have to get on with it.

4. A change of scene
Try writing somewhere different – in the garden, on a park bench, in a café or library. Or try longhand when you normally use a computer, or vice versa. Break the habit of sitting in the same place staring at the same blank page.

5. Get off your backside
The word “exercise” strikes fear into the heart of those of us who remember shivering on a sleet-swept hockey pitch while a “teacher” with the world view of a Tyrannosaurus Rex (but a smaller brain) screamed “MOOOOOVE!” But it doesn't have to be like that. Exercise includes nice stuff like walking and gardening. Ignore the fact that lots of hugely talented famous writers were drunken slobs – exercise really does renew your mental and physical energy. Honest.
I am trying to convince myself of this more than I'm trying to convince you.

6. Shoot the crap-censor
Writer's block isn't just the blank-page phenomenon – sometimes it means looking back over every sentence with a despairingly critical eye. It all seems so, so dire that you never make any progress. Don't worry, just lower your standards. In fact, don't have any standards at all. Hell, you can even use adverbs if you like. Just bung any old crap on the page. [Caroline makes a superhuman effort to resist the temptation to add “It works for Dan Brown.”]

7. Don't be yourself
If you are not motivated and inspired, act the part of someone who is. Pretend to be a focused, well-organised, supremely talented writer, and get her/him to do the work.

8. Clock on
In a normal job, you must show up and get on with it whether you like it or not. Treat writing the same way for a while - turn up, slog through it, then go home. Others might view your writing as a self-indulgent arty-farty little hobby, and it's difficult not to internalise this attitude and feel that, because you're not guaranteed to make money, it isn't real work. Tell your inner guilt to take a hike, because it is important and it does deserve the time.

9. Tiny goals
Set a minuscule target – to write 100 words, or to edit one page. Every step is an achievement and is far better than neglecting your writing on the basis that you haven't really got time to get into it - with the result that the small amount of time you do have is aimlessly spent watching YouTube vids of funny cats.

10. Wait it out
Tides ebb and flow; so does the writing life. Motivation and inspiration need a rest sometimes – let them rest, and do something else while they take their time to regenerate. Treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen – if you don't agonise over them or lament their absence, chances are they'll come crawling back when you least expect them.





http://www.carolinerance.co.uk/





Photograph by Warley Rossi.

Beating The Block

OK, I admit it. Sitting here at the laptop to write my latest post for Strictly, I'm not exactly overflowing with ideas. Everything I think of seems to have been done already, with great wit, panache or flair, by one of my fellow bloggers. Every concept that comes to me seems weak, uninspiring and barely worth the trouble of putting finger to keypad. My stomach is twisting itself up into knots of frustration, my feet are indulging in some frenzied tapping, I'm muttering to myself like a crazed loon... yep, I've got Writer's Block.

We've all been there. That fateful feeling of wanting to write, but feeling as if we've forgotten how to. Unlike most things in the known universe, writing doesn't seem to be like riding a bike. If you fall off, there's no guarantee that you can hop back on in a few months and pedal away at breakneck speed. In fact, sometimes it can feel alarmingly as if you need to learn your craft, and regain your inspiration, all over again, and the longer you allow the block to set in, the more difficult it becomes to drag yourself out of it. So if all this is resonating with you, what can you do? Here's my five-step plan:

1) Allow yourself to mope. You're a sensitive soul - you're a writer, after all. If shedding tears of pain over your inability to create is your thing, let 'em flow. Let yourself appreciate how important this is to you, and why exactly it is that you want to get the knack back. Why does it matter? If you never wrote another word again, what would change? Once you've established why you want to fix the problem...

2) Forget about it. Get out of the house, go for a long walk, go to the cinema or to the shops - whatever method of active relaxation you choose. If you feel yourself starting to think about your writing, give yourself a mental slap. It's amazing how attractive something becomes when it's forbidden, so place a writing ban on yourself for a day, a week, a fortnight.. and fill your time with as many head-clearing distractions as you can without completely maxing out your credit card.

3) Rediscover your role models. Maybe slightly controversial for some - I know a few fellow writers who say that reading work by their idols simply depresses them. Myself, I see it in the spirit of healthy competition. And yes, I know that it's unlikely that Martin Amis or Maggie O'Farrell are going to be quaking in their boots at the thought of the next Rebecca Connell being unleashed on the market, but all the same... Read the books that made you want to become a writer, and remember why.

4) Set yourself a goal. Start small if you like - 500 words in a day, for instance. Without a bit of structure, and something concrete to aim for, I'm all too likely to lose motivation completely. Those of you who have done Nanowrimo - how many other times have you written 50,000 words in a month? Exactly - and yet ultimately, the only thing spurring you on was yourself.

5) Choose a day when you have little else on. Shut yourself in a room with a computer - or a notebook, if you prefer. I like to lock myself in for extra authenticity. Turn off the internet, unplug the television, and open up that Word file. Think about your work, but do not allow yourself to write anything for half an hour (you'd be surprised how quickly that gets boring, and how appealing the idea of writing becomes in comparison to sitting dumbly in front of a screen in a silent room). Then take a deep breath, and dive in...

Good luck! If anyone wants to add their own tips for overcoming writer's block in the comments section, I'm sure we could all use them. As for me, well, would you look at that? Looks like I don't have to come up with an idea for this post after all...