When you have writer’s block you go to the library and you browse all the shelves and check out as many books as you can carry, and then you take them home and hold them in your hands like a lover and read them from cover to cover. And you breathe in those books and let their dust settle in you like pollen until a seed sprouts, and from that seed will grow a beautiful blossoming idea. Then you water the other thousands of tiny seeds within you until they too bloom. And those flowers are your ideas, and those flowers will be your garden to sow when you write again.
When you have writer’s block you go for days without writing anything on purpose, and even though you so badly want to sit down at your desk and write out your heart, you keep it holed up tight inside your chest like a bird that wants to get out. And after a week you open up the hole, and you let the bird out along with the words. The ache that haunted you, the overwhelming desire to write that tormented you so intensely, can now be satisfied, and it’s that much sweeter because you waited. Waiting can bring forth some of the most brilliant works.
When you have writer’s block you study the faces of strangers and memorize their curves and planes and shadows. You sit behind them on the subway and look at the hollow of their shoulder and you think about how to transform all those minute extraordinary details into words. You watch these strangers as they walk with their heads down or with their hands in their pockets, and you notice these things. Then you put them on paper.
When you have writer’s block you go outside in the middle of the night and stare at the moon until your eyes burn, and you let its light soak you like rain until you’re so full of it you might burst. Then you pour that light out onto the paper, and next you prick holes in yourself so the light can escape and a fresh supply can find its way in.
When you have writer’s block you pore through the dictionary and find all the most beautiful words there are. Words you’ve never heard of, words that terrify you and astonish you, words that make you feel whole. And you use as many of them in your writing as you can.
When you have writer’s block you stop to remember how much you love writing, and how much it defines you. You don’t ever forget that.
And then the words will come.