I was hit with a flash of inspiration and started my next short story. The premise was great, the first line was awesome . . . and then nothing. Five hundred words or so and I hit a block. I tried to change things up like last time and write in a notebook . . . still nothing.
It occurred to me that the anthology that this story is being written for happens to be the same as a song title. And, I just happen to have that CD. On a whim, I popped the CD in and blammo! A flood of ideas! None of them have anything to do with the song, so I don't know where they're coming from--but who cares! The story is practically writing itself.
I wish I'd tried this stuff a couple of years ago when I hit a block so bad that I pretty much gave up writing.
Which brings me to my other "writer's block" cure: you'll notice I don't post every day. That's because my last cure for writer's block was to change things up dramatically and I took a job at a large retailer working the overnight shift. It worked . . . sort of. The job gave me the human contact and socialization I was missing (and new characters and situations for inspiration), but it was sucking up so much of my time that I still couldn't write. I was always either sleeping or working. I dropped to part time a few months ago, and that seems to be the perfect balance.
As a matter of fact, one of the short stories I'm currently working on relies heavily on my experience working for the large retailer (with a heavy dose of spec-fic thrown in, of course). Now we'll just have to see if anyone wants to publish it!
