Momentous and Mundane: Spending Time with Writer’s Block

By Callie J. Smith

I dread writer’s block. Unfortunately, my most recent novel, The Joy of a Field, left me spending more time with writer’s block than either of the other novels in my Sacred Grounds trilogy. 

I kept imagining the block creeping out from some opaque corner of my mind where it lived, always asking, “Does this story matter enough to spend all this time writing it?” Some days the question killed my motivation.

It didn’t help that the novel took longer to write than either of the others in the series. Twice before finishing a first draft of Joy, I paused from the manuscript in order to take on other projects with more income-earning potential. Both times I returned to the manuscript after those pauses, I found myself asking the nagging question that I thought I’d already put to rest: was it a valuable enough story to warrant months and months of writing? 

The Joy of a Field differs enough from the first two novels in my Sacred Grounds trilogy that I’d been uncertain about it. The first novel, Kat’s Dreams, involves a thirty-something woman named Kat who’s figuring out how to respond to a #MeToo experience when the perpetrator is still, in spite of Kat’s complaints, not being held accountable. In the second novel, Suddenly Color, Kat and her mother are fumbling through mental health issues that their family members have been refusing to acknowledge. Both of these stories felt like crucial ones for me to tell. I don’t believe our society tells such stories often enough, and so the telling mattered to me.

But a story of holiday stress? Not so much.

And The Joy of a Field is a story of holiday stress. Kat is trying to enjoy her winter season while facing family and workplace pressures that aren’t contributing to anyone’s joyfulness. Holiday stress may be a common enough experience, but as I described the story to others, I kept thinking that it seemed a little … mundane. Which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. I worried, though, that the story wouldn’t carry the same weight or value as the two earlier novels. The worry kept calling to my writer’s block, drawing it out from wherever it lived, tucked away in some corner of my mind. 

I tried to persevere in spite of it. I made myself spend at least half an hour at my desk before breaking from any given writing session. Sometimes, my personal experience with holiday stress let me connect again with Kat. In those times, writing through her family’s bickering and workplace dynamics felt cathartic. Other times, I only had the basic goal of finishing what I’d started to carry me forward. 

Then came the kitchen scene. 

It’s a place in The Joy of a Field where Kat has just fought with her mother’s house guest, an overbearing aunt, and stormed out to the next room, trying to calm down. As she vents to herself in the kitchen, she considers the possibility of making herself a second cup of coffee. To her, it’s a dilemma.

Non-coffee drinkers may laugh at that, but coffee-lover Kat (she’s a barista, after all) had spent months earlier that year weaning herself off all caffeine save her single cup of dark roast from a French press each morning. She’d been figuring out how to deal with symptoms of an intensifying mood disorder and had strictly reduced her coffee intake. 

And yet, that winter, Kat had been feeling better. She’d even gotten her symptoms under relative control. Would she now allow herself the comfort – and yes, the crutch – of holding a second cup of coffee in her hands when going back to deal with her mother’s aunt? The “little” question carried all the weight of someone trying to manage daily life when managing hasn’t always felt like a given for her.

That, I realized, was the reason I kept wanting to write this kind of story. I wanted kitchen scenes. I wanted to see Kat, who’d clawed her way through a #MeToo experience and faced head-on the managing of a mood disorder, as she carried all that wounding and wisdom with her in the long, slow process of coming to thrive again. Including impossible holiday schedules and overbearing aunts. Mundane by its very nature, that everyday glimpse into a person coming alive again felt momentous to me. It was the meaning I hadn’t identified yet. My writer’s block knew I hadn’t found it yet and had been taunting all along.

Until the kitchen scene.

Then I found the flow that carried me through to completion. As for Kat, she did make her second cup of coffee. It helped.

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About the Author

Callie J. Smith is the author of the Sacred Grounds novels. Her essays have appeared in Abbey of the Arts, Bearings Online, Branches, The Christian Century, and A Kintsugi Life and received the 2025 Award of Merit (Best in Book) prize from The Polk Street Review and a 2025 third-place medal in the Gals Guide Anthology. Smith is a clergy person in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and a member of the Indiana Writers Center. She’s online at www.calliejsmith.net.  

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Website: www.calliejsmith.net 

About The Joy of a Field: https://calliejsmith.net/books/#joy 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Callie-J-Smith-Author/100087528534336/ 
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/calliejsmith/ 

THE JOY Of A FIELD

All Kat wanted was a simple holiday season of putting up decorations and enjoying her new significant other, Paul. That’s not the holiday she’s getting, though. Paul has surprised her by interviewing for a job six hours away, and a mystery art buyer is raising questions Kat isn’t sure she wants answered. When Paul’s parents show up for their visit, they bring a whole new set of troubles that threaten to push Kat and Paul to their limit. They’re doing their best to make it through a first Christmas together, but will the new year bring Kat and Paul the new beginnings they need?

Fans of the Sacred Grounds Novels will relish spending the holidays with The Joy of a Field, the third book in the series. This short novel takes a humorous but serious look at holiday stress. Discussion questions are included at the end for individual readers as well as study groups.

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