Practical (and Fun) Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block by Elizabeth Stix

Struggling with writer’s block? You’re not alone. Elizabeth Stix, author of the short story collection THINGS I WANT BACK FROM YOU (June 14, 2024, Black Lawrence Press) shares practical and fun tips in this article.

By Elizabeth Stix

We’ve all had days when we show up at the computer and can’t think of anything to say. What is going on? What is writer’s block?  

Writer’s block is resistance. The key to overcoming it is figuring out what you are resisting. When you feel blocked, you’re butting up against one of two things:

1. An actual problem with the work at hand.

Is there a section or a scene that you don’t know how to resolve? Try approaching it in a different way. Make a list of thirty possible ways the scene could unfold. Really. Thirty outcomes seems outlandish, excessive.

But the truth is, you will run out of ideas at number four, write six ridiculous possibilities to get to number ten, and then come up with three ideas you kind of like. Then two more crazy ones, and lo and behold, number fourteen shows some promise. Only when you’re forced to go beyond what you think is your threshold will you discover what is on the other side.

2. Maybe the problem is not in the text. Maybe the problem you are resisting is a belief. Perhaps there’s a voice in your head saying, “Stop now. It won’t be good enough.” Or “Our family isn’t creative. We don’t do this kind of thing.”

These limiting beliefs can be sticky and stubborn. You can recognize it, journal about it, and do your best to release it. Or (probably easier), simply tell yourself that for fifteen minutes, you’re going to be stronger than the belief. Push it aside and write anyway. You can always pick it back up when you’re done – but by then you’ll have gotten started. (And with time and practice, those old voices will quiet down.)

Another great way to overcome writer’s block is to use writing prompts. Set a ten-minute timer and use a prompt to freewrite. Timed exercises are great for overcoming writer’s block because they put your internal editor on mute. You simply don’t have time to analyze or thought-spiral.

When the timer starts, you begin writing. When the timer stops, so do you. And even if what you create is less than perfect, the critical voices in your head can’t beat you up for it – it was just a ten-minute exercise. More often than you might expect, with those inner voices silenced, you’ll be pleased by what you come up with. If you like it, keep going. Or, put it in a file called “Story Starts” and use it as a writing prompt later.

Here are some prompts to get you started. Pick one, set a ten-minute timer, and give it a go.

• Open any book. Point your finger anywhere. This is your first sentence. Flip the page of another book and do the same. This is your last sentence. You have ten minutes to get from A to B.  Then: swap the order of the sentences and do it again.

 

• Pick three elements and include them in a ten-minute piece. Combine an action, a feeling, an event, a character, a word, or a texture. For example: Alligator boots, the aroma of baking bread, disappointment. Watery eyes, rush hour, lust. A hospital corridor, binder paper, salt. 

 

• Punctuation: Go through paragraphs of your favorite books and stories. Look at the punctuation. What is the author doing? Why were the choices made? How does it support what’s happening? Do short sentences build suspense, a sense of pressure or cacophony? Do long sentences contain big ideas? Why is there a pause there? What rhythm is created by the punctuation? Take a passage of your own now and change the punctuation. If each sentence is shorter by half, what impact does that have? What if you make each sentence twice as long? 

 

• Write twenty unconnected lines of dialogue on twenty scraps of paper and put them in a bag. Shake the bag and pull two out. Include both lines in your story.

 

• Cutting: Take a story you have written – one that you like, that you think is done. Now cut the word count by half.

 

And lastly, try not to take yourself too seriously. If you go around telling everyone you have writer’s block, by the end of the day you surely will. If you feel like just can’t write, stimulate your creative senses another way: read a book, take a walk, or listen to some music. Relax. And then get writing.

—

Bay Area native Elizabeth Stix writes and edits in Northern California. Her stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, Boulevard, The Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine, and elsewhere. Her work has been performed live at Selected Shorts in New York and the New Short Fiction Series in LA, and her story “Alice” was optioned by Sneaky Little Sister Films. In the early 2000s, she founded the vanguard lit zine The Big Ugly Review. Her stories have won the Katherine Manoogian Scholarship Prize and the Bay Guardian Fiction Prize and have been finalists or semi-finalists for the Disquiet Prize, Glimmer Train Fiction Open, Boulevard Emerging Writers Contest, Sherwood Anderson Prize, and others. When she’s not writing, she can be found staying up way too late doing the NYT Spelling Bee.

THINGS I WANT BACK FROM YOU

Elizabeth Stix’s debut story collection

Set in the fictional California town of San Encanto–a place where suburban angst coexists with the astonishing–a lonely wife finds her oppressive husband has become a dirigible who follows her from the sky, a neglected boy spends his summer unwinding a parasitic Guinea worm from his little sister’s belly, and an aspiring life coach attends a self-actualization seminar that goes wildly off the rails. In THINGS I WANT BACK FROM YOU, Elizabeth Stix’s hilarious and poignant debut of 20 linked stories, hopelessly flawed characters flail against their own insecurities, seeking one true moment of connection, and if they’re lucky, winning that rarest of gifts–a second chance.

“Funny and poignant, this collection will resonate with any reader who has felt trapped by something inexplicable, what Stix calls ‘the fishbowl of our circumstance.’ She takes on love, alienation, betrayal, and recriminations with wit and wisdom, and a generosity of spirit. Her tight cast of characters is frequently smothered by longing, doubt, and sometimes each other in a California landscape that shimmers with possibilities just out of reach. Elizabeth Stix is a true bard of modern life.”–Elizabeth Gonzalez James, author of The Bullet Swallower and Mona at Sea

“Elizabeth Stix’s THINGS I WANT BACK FROM YOU is charming and inventive. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the interlinked collection of stories–set in and around the Bay Area suburb of San Encanto–features achingly alive characters who yearn for connection. An enchanting debut.”–Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City

“With sharpness and ease, Elizabeth Stix shows us how the short story, above all literary forms, can deliver an explosion of meaning and feeling. Neighbors, co-workers, families and friends mess up and carry on in stories of poignancy and humor that disturb and delight. An affirmation of the absurdity of life and the steadying power of love.”–Kathryn Ma, author of The Chinese Groove

Black Lawrence Press 

Available June 14, 2024

BUY HERE

www.elizabethstix.com

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: How To and Tips