Writing: What to do When you are Stuck

Question: What do you do when you get stuck and aren’t sure how to go forward with your memoir?

Answer: When you feel stuck ask yourself what do I want to write about today? What scene can I actually see and have some emotional connection with? You do not have to write your story in order. You need to use your intuition as writers, if you feel stuck, skip it and move on to something you do want to write. You may find that you need to put a project aside for a few days or weeks and write small things like a dialogue you overheard, a phone conversation with a sister, a poem or review of a movie you just watched–anything that gets your creative juices flowing.

Often being stuck has something to do with judgement and too much thinking about what you’re writing. The goal is to take what is in your head and get it onto paper, don’t judge it just write. You can change it later, nobody has to read it, just think of it as a mind excercise.

It also helps to start collecting a binder or at least a list of significant moments in your life. That way when you are stuck you can go to that binder or list and pick something and do a free write on it and see what you come up with. It makes your writing feel more like play than work when you give yourself the freedom to go with what you really feel like writing. Make sure to put all these writings into the binder of significant  moments so you can refer to them or use them in a later piece of writing you might do.