11.11.98 What can you do when you have writer's block?

What do you do when you have Writer's Block?         Put something down. Anything. Make it small. Make it intimate. Make it something you'd want to tell a close friend about.         Take a walk.         Have a cup of coffee.         Run.         Write a letter to your mother.         Read something wonderful someone else wrote.         Ask an editor to chat with you about it.         Start in the middle or write just a piece of it.         Give up for awhile and do something different.         Take a walk.         Make an outline.         Find somebody who likes you and tell them the story. Then go back and write what you said in roughly the way you said it.         If everything else fails, write the story clearly, and in an orderly fashion, as if you were writing a report to the CIA or for the President's Eyes Only. At least you will get text down. There may be something in the text which, in turn, will suggest a better way. Then again, there may not. At least you can move on.         Take your notes to bed. Read them just before you turn out the light. Leave a notebook and pencil by your bedside. You will wake up at 3 a.m. with a new approach that will be wonderful. (Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.)         Walk through a graveyard. Envision your name on a tombstone. Write.

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