Ways to Combat Writer's Block

So you have writer's block. It's okay... almost every writer has been there, whether they write fiction or nonfiction. They're in the mood to write, they have the need to write... but they have no idea what to write about. Brainstorm all you want, sometimes the ideas just refuse to come. What can you do if this happens to you? Is it time to just give up on the idea of writing for the moment? Certainly not.

When trying to find an idea for your writing, especially if you're writing fiction or poetry, it's important to keep in mind that ideas can come from anywhere. A funny bumper sticker on an old Toyota might give you a great idea for a short story on the creation of the phrase, or a spotted dog that you see in the park might spark an image of a sci-fi epic starring a dalmation-esque humanoid. The associative leaps that you can make don't have to be limited by anything other than your imagination and sometimes all that your imagination needs is a little challenge.

The first thing that you can do is try to come up with ideas that have nothing to do with writing. They don't always have to make sense in fact, the ones that don't can make your imagination work harder than the ones that do. For example, try to figure out what sound the color orange makes, or what falling smells like, or maybe even what is the opposite of shrimp cocktail. It may seem like an odd exercise, but you'd be surprised where your mind will take you when faced with an illogical contemplation.

Sometimes, contemplation such as this will lead you to think about other things... things that could be the beginning of a story idea. Maybe the "what falling smells like" idea leads you to picture a man who's falling to his death, calmly trying to place a smell that he's picked up. Maybe you take the "shrimp cocktail" scenario to the far reaches of imagination and wind up writing about a single tuna about to be caught in a net. If you're having trouble brainstorming ideas, use completely out-of-the-loop scenarios to seed the clouds.