1. Read during the rut. Check out books in batches from the library, ten at a time minimum. You’re paying taxes for this service so put your local library to good use. Did you know you can place almost any book on hold? Even if your library doesn’t have it, they’ll normally grab it from a neighboring one.
Use Hoopla or Libby if you’re more of an audiobook type. Log in with your library card and find a British narrator with a tranquilizing voice to tell you a grand story. I use Goodreads and Storygraph to find books I might like based on my reading habits. Don’t give some lame excuse that you “don’t have time to read.” Delete that Netflix subscription and start turning those pages. At the end of the world when you need to start a fire just to survive, you will be happy to have some physical media that is flammable.
2. Carry a mini notebook with you everywhere you go. You know, those little composition notebooks that can fit in your pocket. My husband calls them “ninja notebooks.” Stop with the notes app on the phone. Too many apps, too many distractions, too many agendas, grocery lists, and reminders to do something unrelated to writing.
Do you care to know how Toni Morrison wrote each of her books? With a No. 2 pencil and a yellow legal notepad. Your brain has to smell the bones of trees to get those creative juices going. I didn’t design the blueprint for neural connectivity, God did. Now you know.
3. Write garbage. Have you ever heard of “stream of consciousness?” Or as I like to call it, river of ugly. Write a story, make it bad. One with no beginning, middle, or end. One with no rhyme or reason. Stop thinking so much. Do you think about whether you're holding the toothbrush correctly when you wake up every morning? No, you just do it.
Sometimes, there’s nothing going on in your head, and that’s okay. I am of the firm belief that writers are born, not created. Molded, yes, but it takes a particular type of person to essentially dedicate your time to “talking to yourself” on a page and calling it “art.”
Think about a janky printer. First, you print a few pages and they’re the wrong color, the ink is volatile, and you throw those pages out. The next batch after that? Well, you could get a frame and hang them up in the living room. Perfection! Sometimes, you just have to take out the garbage first. Writing is no different.
4. Have a proper adventure. Maybe life has gotten dull and boring. Maybe you’re trying to draw inspiration from an empty fountain when all you’ve read lately is the grocery list. Perhaps, you need to arise from your boring desk and go have an adventure.
Do something courageous. Go for a walk. Save a squirrel from oncoming traffic. Write its will when you get home. Write the story of the squirrel’s great great grandfather who took this path every day when it used to be painted with acorns and oak trees as tall as mountains. Before its descendants’ brain synapses could evolve from the memory of this utopia, it became a manmade road. There are so many stories happening under your feet. Write them.
5. Write a letter to a friend or a thank you card to a stranger. It’s much less pressure to partake in this activity since you will most likely be writing for an audience of one. Think of the last few people who did something kind for you. Think of a friend or relative you miss. Write a card, write an email, and make it poetry. Compare thee to a summer’s day or a winter’s blizzard.
This is the last time I bring up the darn grocery list, but I have a good analogy brewing here on the cusp of my mind. What if you went to the gym every day, worked out hard, but you never went for a walk? Your only exercise in this life was lifting weights, but you never stopped in the forest and touched the bark of a sycamore tree.
See what happened? You tried to write a novel without even taking a walk around the block first. The last thing you wrote was a grocery list; of course you’re having writer’s block. There are so many ways we can integrate our God-given creativity into everyday life. Next time, don’t be quick to tell someone you love them, miss them, or are thinking about them. Write it down.
