For the last fifteen years or so I have had a hard time with my writing. While I have been able to do a little bit of writing I feel like for the most part I have had writer’s block. I say this because when I sit down to do some writing nothing comes, or if it does I feel like it is just me forcing myself to write.
The last eight years have been rough to find the time to try and write since I have been raising my children and focusing on their needs more than being able to do the things that I may want to do all the time. The first of those eight years I just had my first son, and I was still working. Two years after he was born we moved our family to another state and while I was no longer working I did become pregnant with our second and third children and I was mainly just drained all the time. Since then I have been focusing on raising my children, a few times off and on, on my own while my husband was working in another part of the state.
While I am trying to find the part of me that use to write, I am still having a hard time coming up with things to write about. I hope that this blog would help me to be able to bring back the creative writing I have missed all these years, but so far I have not been successful.
The few things that I have written I feel have been very low grade and as I have mentioned before I felt like I was forcing myself to write something just to write. I have felt so bad about the quality of writing that I have not gone back and taken a look or edit of the works that I have done. As I have been thinking about this post I have come to realize that while it may not have been as good as I thought it should be, I probably gave up on it too soon and may need to go through and try to do a rewrite of some of it.
I have a friend who mentioned to me that sometimes when you are trying to do something creative and are running into blocks like this you sometimes need to take a step into doing a different kind of art form to bring out your creativity. I felt that she had a very good point because throughout all the moves we have gone through over the last six years there have been times when we did not have a lot of extra money and so there was no way to get supplies to do some of the things that I like to do that are creative.
To try and get to my creative side I have been doing some art journal and trying to express myself in another art form. I have also been watching videos on drawing and trying to work on that form of art as well. Another thing that I have been doing is just taking the time to relax and color with my children. I also got a Cricut machine for my birthday and now I can cut out a lot of different shapes and pictures in order to do some more scrapbook work and card making.
While so far I have still not been successful in bringing back my writing I have been using all of the different tools I have asked for over the years to help me get back to writing. I have read books on writing, I have used writing prompts to get a flow going, and while I have abandon most of the prompts after a few pages of writing it has been of little help.
One of the places I have found writing prompts has been a collection called The Writer’s Toolbox. I have used this for probably the last seven years or so and very time I feel stuck I know that this will give me some help.
Another thing I have done is try to join some online groups in the writing community. I have tried a few times to participate in what is National Novel Writing Month which is held in November of every year. While I have never been able to go to go to any of the meet-ups to work on my writing during that month I have been able to write some parts of a story.
Again a lot of the things that are keeping me from being too successful is the fact that I have four children at home, three of which are under the age of five. I know that as they get older and can do more things for their selves I will be able to find the time to do more creative writing.
I have notice that one of the things that has caused me to have issues with writing is that over the years everyone has talked about how computers are supposed to take the place of paper in so many aspects of everyday life. While that is a great way to make sure that not a lot of trees are killed for the use of writing I just have a problem with always typing and feel much more at ease with a paper and pen or pencil. Some may see this as old fashioned, but to me it is the best way to write. I also much prefer to have a book in hand then to read one off of a screen like with an eBook.
I do remember that a few years ago I read a few books on writing. One was by Orson Scott Card called How to Write Science Fiction And Fantasy. The other one was by Stephen King called On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. I found both of these books helpful, but I also strongly remember King saying in his book “If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others, read a lot and write a lot.” In this aspect I have also been trying to get back into my reading. While I mentioned in another post, which you can find here, I have had a hard time finding time to read with all of my little ones. With both of these books that I read they both had a few books that they recommended to be good books and I wrote them down in hopes of reading them some day.
So while you find that you are in a slump with your writing as I have you can always try to do a new creative activity in hopes of bringing back the writing to your life. While I have not seen a vast improvement yet I know that it is too soon to give up on being creative in other ways in order to bring back my writing practices and so I will continue to explore other avenues of creativity as well as the writing aspects in my life.
Writing has been a part of my life for so long that I do not know what I would do without it and I am having a hard time with not being successful in my writing attempts. I know that if I just continue to write and practice other forms of art then eventually I will be able to bring things back to where I had them before.
If you have any suggestions on things that I have not mentioned to try and break this writer’s block I would gladly take them. We all need to help one another through tough times when it comes to writing. If you cannot find a good support for your writing team how can you ever expect to be able to put out a great product. I will be returning to some of the works I have done these last fifteen years and see what I can do with them, while also trying all the things I can to get this creativity to flow through me again.
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