Writer's Block? Get a Creative Hobby!

By John K. Patterson

Writing is an act of creation. Letters and punctuation are weaved together to make worlds and people that weren't there before. We humans find joy in creating something. That's part of why writer's block is such a painful, frustrating thing.

Most of the time, we are told that the only cure for writer's block is to force ourselves to write something, even if it's gibberish. It always seemed to me like this would just drag out the editing process. That's what happened with my writing. The harder I forced myself to write past writer's block, the worse it seemed to get, and the less I enjoyed it. Inspiration and ideas fled from my presence, then stuck signs saying "Leper Colony" around me in a ten mile radius.

But then something changed. In September of last year, I started to paint. Those ideas have begun to return. I'm still not back up to my former speed, but there's definite signs of change. Positive change.

Copyright John K. Patterson

Thus began a long climb back up the mountainside. And if you're wondering: yes, I painted this.

If the encouragement to "write yourself into the ground" is leaving you six feet under, I'd like to suggest an alternative. Another cure for writer's block may lie in picking up a different creative hobby. What sort of hobby is totally up to you, as long as it requires some strategy and improvisation (creativity) from you. Photography, chess, playing the harmonica, embroidery, sketching, painting, swing dancing, clay sculpture, you name it.

It sounds counter-intuitive, since you're still not writing. However, what really counts isn't necessarily the number of hours you spend slaving away over a hot keyboard, but the quality of your work. Most writers tend to write better (and shrink their editing time) when they're enthusiastic about their writing.

So here are six reasons why picking up another creative hobby may help blocked writers get back on track.

1. Sometimes your brain just needs a break from writing, but still craves the joy of creating something. Take care of your brain and feed that craving.

2. It gives a chance for unexpected ideas to pop up. You never know when an unusual idea might whack you upside the head. For instance, you could make a pencil sketch of a red-tailed hawk in your backyard, and get the idea that your mystery's murderer is a falconer who kills her victims by tipping the bird's talons with poison and training it to attack them. Whatever works, right?

3. You are focusing your thoughts and actions toward something constructive, rather than going on a Netflix binge and beating yourself up for not finishing your novel. I've been there (sometimes I still am), and it's not pretty.

4. Your chosen hobby will likely give you something that takes less time to finish than a novel or short story. This means you can get a sense of gratification for finishing something sooner. Which, of course, motivates you. My own hobby of painting gives me a finished work in a few hours, and helps my novels and stories seem more manageable.

5. In a mental sense, it will make you more versatile. When you sit down to write, you'll be more agile in picking apart your story to see what works and what needs fixing.

6. Finally, this is a great opportunity for research. Do you have a character who likes to make stained glass? Take a class and learn the process. Is he a blacksmith? Time to head to the forge. If he likes to build model airplanes, head to the arts and crafts store and pick up a P-51 model kit. You and your characters can learn your hobbies together, in a sense.

Remember, this is merely a suggestion, and I welcome any feedback. It may not work for every blocked writer. But it seemed to help me with my storytelling. If you already have a creative hobby and you're still blocked, try a different hobby for a while and see if your writer's block starts to disappear. 

May you find success and joy in all of your creative endeavors!

Post Note from Writing From the Peak: John K. Patterson was featured in the April 2014 New Falcon Herald concerning his meshing of writing and art. You can read it HERE.

About the Author: John K. Patterson is an artist and sci-fi/fantasy author. His short stories "Escaping," "Refugee," and "Salt Flats" are available on Amazon Kindle, and he is writing a four-book epic fantasy series called The Wolfglen Legacy. Since 2007, he has volunteered for the Pikes Peak Library District as leader of the Scribes and Bards writers workshop. His addictions include painting, dinosaurs, nature, and coffee. More of his writing and art can be found at johnkpatterson.wordpress.com.

Writerly Cravings

By DeAnna Knippling


I’m not sure where to begin with this idea I have. It’s one of those ideas that doesn’t really seem to have a beginning; one of those ideas that seems to have been hanging around for ages and ages, waiting for me to notice it. But let me tell you what the idea is.

I don’t get writer’s block; I have unsatisfied writerly cravings.

When I don’t feed the cravings, when I don’t pay attention to them, I’m restless and frustrated and I hate writing and it’s hard. I fight perfectly good ideas, because they don’t fill that craving. I abandon perfectly good books I’m reading, because I don’t want to read. I type six words and delete them, write them in different orders, and delete them again.

I do housework. Lots of it.

It’s never the same thing twice. Sometimes I need a book on writing. Recently, I read Dave Farland’s Million Dollar Outlines. There was something there I needed, although I’m not entirely sure what. Picked up a copy of Donald Westlake’s Bank Job and read it, then studied it. He has perfect comedic timing, and an amazing sense of POV. The other day, I suddenly hated everything I had to read (it’s like walking into your closet and having nothing to wear); then, yesterday, I found a copy of Sherman Alexie’s short story collection, Blasphemy, and got to:

For a half-assed Indian, Junior talked full-on spiritual. Yeah, he was a born-again Indian. At the age of twenty-five, he war-danced for the first time. Around the same day he started dealing drugs.

I’m traditional, Junior said. 

I bought it, stupidly, because it’s probably at the library, but it was what I craved, so I got it. I mean, I tried to put the book down. But it kept ending up under my arm, as though it were haunting me.

Sometimes I crave a walk out by Starsmore. I think that place is special to me because the day the last Harry Potter came out, I bought it first thing in the morning, drove up to the Starsmore Discovery Center parking lot, and read the entire thing with only the benefit of a protein shake and a bag of dill pickle-flavored potato chips to sustain me.

Sometimes only art museums will do.

Or taking a shower.

Or cooking.

Or loving.

And so on. The thing is, I was never trained to look at the process of feeding my inner creativity. Religion was just supposed to take care of everything “inner” for me; I didn’t think I was supposed to have to do anything about it, even after I stopped showing up to church. I thought books that encouraged you to do a bunch of woo-woo soul-building things to help your creativity were...just plain woo-woo.

But there it is: I’m happier following my woo-woo, stuck less often, and more adaptable, less intimidated by the new. I write out journal entries, I follow strange research threads, I ask people for recommendations. I walk labyrinths, I feel out places to meditate and ways to ask questions that I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the answers to, or where they come from. I’m reading anthropology books and post-apocalyptic books and listening to Lady Gaga and Korn. I don’t have to know why, I guess.

I just need to trust that I’ll find my way to what I need, as long as I keep looking.


About the Author: DeAnna Knippling started freelancing in May 2011 and wouldn’t be able to do it without her wonderful family and friends, especially her husband. In fact, she owes a lot to Pikes Peak Writers for helping her be a better writer, especially through the Write Brains, both in the lectures and in meeting lots of other writers.

Her reason for writing is to entertain by celebrating her family’s tradition of dry yet merry wit, and to help ease the suffering of lack of self-confidence, having suffered it many years herself. She also likes to poke around and ask difficult questions, because she hates it when people assume something must be so.

For more kicks in the writerly pants, see her blog at www.deannaknippling.com or her ebook How to Fail & Keep on Writing, available at Smashwords, B&N, Amazon, and OmniLit.

Overcoming Writer's Block

By Linda Rohrbough

Like any published writer, I get a lot of questions about overcoming writer’s block. There are always the basics, like have a plan. For me that means I need to know the beginning, middle, and the end. Plus I need some definition of who the main characters are, what their strengths are, and what they’re afraid of.

But the bottom line is at some point I have to sit down and crank out the book. I can’t do it in a day or even a few days. I need to build the book like a bricklayer builds a wall. Writer’s block tends to stall that process. Here are some tips that have helped me overcome those days when I feel I’m blocked, along with a few parting thoughts about writer’s block.

Stay In Touch With The Work: There are days when I cannot spend the time I’d like working on the manuscript. But I try to make sure I look at the material, to keep it fresh in my mind. If I allow myself too much time away from the work, I have to spend time reviewing what I’ve already done so I can figure out where I was. It’s easier and more productive to stay in touch. This has the added benefit of allowing me to mull over the manuscript while I’m doing other things. I often solve problems in the manuscript that way.

Expect That Creating Can Involve Discomfort: I’ve found creating a book can involve discomfort on two levels. First, there’s often a grieving process involved. Eric Maisel introduced me to this concept in his book Fearless Creating. I often find myself upset after I write because what’s in my head is so much better than what I’m able to get on the page. I waltz through the stages of grieving (not necessarily in order): denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance. However, when I come back to the work later, I often find myself thinking, “That wasn’t half bad. What was I so upset about?” Plus, I realized no one but me saw what was in my head. So if what I wrote did the job, that’s all that matters.

The second uncomfortable part of the creating process is the discomfort from doing something I haven’t done before. I got this from John Maxwell’s book Failing Forward. Once I understood I should expect to be uncomfortable (especially if I’m creating a new pattern of behavior, like writing at a certain time on a regular basis) I can accept it and do the work anyway.

Don’t Get Caught Up In Perfectionism: Another thing I learned from Eric Maisel is it’s not reasonable to expect performance at one-hundred percent capacity every time I sit down to work. I love those days when I’m firing on all cylinders and the words are coming almost faster than I can get them down. But I can still be productive working at a lower efficiency rate. I know I wouldn’t expect anyone else to be at peak efficiency all the time. Expecting peak productivity from myself is a clue this is killer perfectionism. I do the best I can. Hopefully, my best will get better. But if it doesn’t, I am learning to be okay with that.

Keep a “Worry List” Notepad File: The only way I can sleep at night when working on a book is to use Notepad, found in the Windows Accessories group, to create a text file on my desktop where I keep notes. If something starts bothering me, I pause, switch to the desktop, and double-click on that file. I hit F5 to put in the time and date, and write a note to myself. Did I mention when I introduced that character that she has a habit of blowing her hair back? Did I remember to move the scene where he finds out she’s not coming back? I put in just enough information so I’ll know later what I meant. Then I close the file, take a deep breath, and keep on working.

At the end of the book, I review that file. I’ve found I worry about the same thing a lot. There may be fifty entries on the same subject, each worded a little differently. I’d say eighty percent of the entries are either things I’ve taken care of or items I don’t care about any more. Fifteen percent of the entries I find myself checking on, but they also turn out to be non-issues. Only five percent are entries I need to do something about. But the beauty of having that file is when I wake up worried about an issue on the book, I can remind myself I wrote it down, so I can go back to sleep.

Is Writer’s Block Silly? Some say the whole concept of writer’s block is just silly. There’s no such thing as writer’s block just like there’s no such thing as “trucker’s block” for long haul truckers. They just get in the truck and drive, no matter how they feel.

I think there’s some truth to this, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. I’ve mulled over keeping a writing journal where I record my feelings about the work as well as what I was working on each day. Because one of the things I find fascinating is that I can’t tell at the end of the project what I wrote when I was having a good day, and what I wrote when it was one of “those” days.

My suspicion is that when I feel the most ordinary and uninteresting, the work ends up being about the same caliber as when I’m feeling like a genius (which isn’t often, believe me). But, as I said, I have no solid proof of this. I’ve surprised myself a couple of times when I picked up something I knew I wrote when I was feeling as bright as an old dust rag, and it was much better than I remembered. When that happens, my first thought is my editor made me look good. (Editors do that, you know.) Only when I check, as often as not, those were my words, exactly as I sent them in.

Maybe I don’t want solid proof. I’m miserable when I realize I’m not writing. So I’d hate to find out I need to feel like a genius, when most of the time I feel pretty doggone ordinary.

About the Author: Linda Rohrbough has been writing since 1989, and has more than 5,000 articles and seven books to her credit along with national awards for her fiction and non-fiction. New York Times #1 bestselling author Debbie Macomber said about Linda’s new novel: "This is fast-paced, thrilling, edge-of-the-seat reading. The Prophetess One: At Risk had me flipping the pages and holding my breath." The Prophetess One: At Risk recently won three national awards: the 2012 International Book Award, the 2011 Global eBook Award and the 2011 Millennium Star Publishing Award. An iPhone App of her popular “Pitch Your Book” workshop is available in the Apple iTunes store. Visit her website: www.LindaRohrbough.com.