For Want of Words
Emma Engelsman: For anyone who doesn’t know me, which is probably most of you, I am an avid creative writer. And as anyone who has done some creative writing can tell you, writer’s block can be the kiss of death to any piece. There’s probably nothing worse than getting twenty pages into a piece only to be left staring at that blinking cursor or the carefully spaced powder blue lines marching down the page.
In all the years I’ve been writing, I’ve heard a lot of different solutions to writer’s block. Some of which have worked for me, many of which have not. So for all those struggling writers who may be reading this, here’s a few of my favorite solutions.
- Keep writing. It doesn’t matter if whatever you end up with has anything to do with your story or not, getting those creative juices flowing is really the point of all of this.
- Prompts. Prompts are everywhere on the internet. You can find whole websites of prompts, though the ones I prefer come from Writer’s Digest Online. These can lead to their own full-fledged stories or even just drabbles. Obviously this all ties back to the “keep writing” point.
- A Personal Universe Deck (PUD). This is probably one of my favorite writing tools of all time. I learned about it from my high school creative writing teacher. Using this deck, you can pull out any amount of cards you want (I generally pull three or four) and you now have to use those cards in whatever you write.
A PUD deck is my preferred method but it is certainly not the only means of fending away that dreaded condition.
For those of you who prefer prompts here’s one for you: Write about a case of mistaken identity.
For those interested in creating their own PUD deck, feel free to contact me.
Emma Engelsman, Class of 2014