Joanne Rocklin

From my good friend Alexis O'Neill, author of the wonderful picture book THE RECESS QUEEN, and many others, proprietor of SchoolVisitExperts.com, and SCBWI leader extraordinaire. Her wisdom and humor are always right on!


"Grab your calendar. For each month, cross out one entire week. That is your “no fly zone.” No hair or doctor appointments. No food shopping. No writers meetings. No laundry. No sojourns to Starbucks. No email (well – maybe for half a day each day). Just one week a month. In your office. At your desk. Writing crap. I guarantee unblockage once a month for twelve months. If not, Ex-Lax might be required."

Hey, sometimes Writer's Block's just there, and no amount of tips will help, that day, that month, that very long year. Depressing. What helps is knowing that other writers, even the most fabulous ones, especially the most fabulous ones, understand that Writer's Block is a Real Thing. This knowledge may not help your Block at that moment, but it makes you feel better. Nothing's wrong with a little bit of feel better. Read Amy Goldman Koss's blog: http://amykossblogthang.blogspot.com

MAGIC STORYBUILDERS
Even though I write mostly realistic children's fiction, I do keep a "magic" structural formula in my mind as I write, especially when I revise. I call them my magic story-builders, and I actually use them as a writing exercise to help kids create their own stories. Here they are, and you can fill in your own story:

ONCE UPON A TIME
EVERY DAY
ONE DAY (the day that is different--see Tip 40!)
BECAUSE OF THAT
AND THEN
BUT
TO HIS (HER) SURPRISE
FROM THEN ON

Rudimentary, but very helpful. Kids love them because they work!

READ: Of course this is a general precept for life! However, when I am between projects, I REALLY read, almost constantly, especially children's literature. I immerse myself in words, themes, voices, humor, multiple settings, multiple genres, and let the words wash over me like a warm bath. It actually feels like that, especially because baths were part of my childhood, as was the feel and smell of the library on a rainy day, endless reading hours on our couch, and gobbling Oreos as I gobbled words (as many as I wanted, in those days...) The point of it all is to recapture the sheer wonder and fun of reading! This reading binge inspires me and translates, very, very often, into a writing project, as used to happen when I was a young person, wanting to extend the reading experience a bit longer.

SENSATIONAL!
Here's a great tip from Sheila Bender, prolific author of Creative Writing Demystified and the founder of Writing It Real, an online community for writers.
Thanks, Sheila!





"Writing happens in short amounts of time--just a lot of them strung together! But when we feel blocked, a quick way to get unblocked is to remember how much you can write in ten minutes. Try an exercise like this one:
Describe what you see from where you sit using words that appeal to the five senses: what do you see, hear, taste (or remember the taste of), touch and smell. The senses are always bringing us huge amounts of information we often don't stop to describe and include in our writing. If you are stuck on what a character is thinking or doing, do this exercise from their point of view. If you don't know what you want to write about, do the exercise and then imagine someone you can no longer speak with because of loss or growing distances has enter your view. What do you have to say to this person from this place you both are right now? They to you? And you can always do this exercise allowing your character to be the person who drifts in to the scene. You'll be unstuck and writing in no time. The trick to unblocking, I think, is to return to sensory information--when you are describing what the senses are bringing in ,you make associations and this unfreezes the writer within."