Words Angela M Cowan
It’s an afternoon in early summer and I’m standing at the front of the Brentwood Bay ferry, wind whipping my hair against my sunglasses while I watch a bee fly over the deck, impossibly far from shore. I haven’t written anything in weeks, caught up in travel and family visits and a to-do list long enough to wallpaper my house, and I’m feeling it: a low-lying frustration, a stuckness that clings like sap and gums up everything I try to write.
The boat grumbles toward the dock as a ferry worker behind me cheerfully whistles a few bars of Drunken Sailor, and I suddenly notice how the sunlight reflects off the water and plays over the underside of the ramp. It’s the kind of rippling light that moves like it’s alive, illuminating the ragged streaks of rust, the salt-weathered ropes and the pigeons nestled in protected crevices. I hear the gulls skreeing as they wheel overhead, and I feel the heat from the deck bleeding through my shoes. It’s one of those rare and fleeting moments where each detail seems to gleam with vibrancy, like the air itself is alive, and my mind spreads wide like dandelion seeds on the wind. All those stresses from the past weeks fall away, and then my pen is scribbling madly as the ferry bumps in, searching out just the right words to capture this experience.
For more than 20 years, whenever I’ve faced yet another bout of writer’s block, I find my way back onto the page by way of the world. I might not know how to resolve a character’s emotional arc or how to fix a poem that refuses to work, but I can always write what’s in front of me. What I see, hear, smell and taste, teasing out those details that feel like anchor points. Often, simply writing down what is leads to being curious about what could be, and soon all those bricks that made up my block start crumbling away.
So if you’ve been feeling stuck, know that you’re not alone, and there is a way through. The simplest method is to grab a pen and notebook and just start describing your environment, but if you work well with a bit more structure, try one of the following exercises.
1. Choose a familiar location – a movie theatre, the beach, a used bookstore – the specifics don’t matter as long as you can clearly envision it. Now, imagine you’re standing there with your eyes closed. What sounds do you hear? Are there any distinctive scents? What kind of sensations travel through your body?
2. Pick a nearby object and describe it. Start with a neutral perspective at first. A plain white coffee mug, for example. Maybe the inside is stained with faint rings of brown, or the handle has a chip right where your littlest finger rests. Then, write it again imagining someone you love gave it to you, and again, from someone you hate.
3. Choose any colour and make a list of everything it makes you think of. Try to stretch beyond the visual and explore your other senses, and don’t be afraid to get abstract or personal. This doesn’t need to make sense to anyone but you. Purple, for example, makes me think of dusty, thin-skinned grapes, my father’s worn fleece sweater, melting popsicles on a burning August sidewalk, the one-way smoothness of velvet.
Whichever prompt you choose, set a timer for 10 minutes and do your best to free write without editing yourself until the alarm goes off. These are low-pressure, low-stakes exercises. They don’t need to be linear, or make sense, or have tension. You might uncover an idea that sparks your imagination, or you might not – the important thing is getting that pen moving. And if these don’t resonate, you can also open a nearby book to a random page and use a word or phrase as a prompt, or you could pick a favourite line of poetry or song lyric to use as your first line.
Above all, don’t be afraid to follow your curiosity. And remember, it doesn’t matter how long it’s been, you can always get unstuck.
www.angelamcowan.com
