Writing Advice*: Getting Unstuck
*salt grains abound
Last week, I finished up running a residency for the MFA in Creative Writing program at SPU’s campus. The conversations were rich, the guest writers and lecturers delightful, and the student readings superb. Even now, as a staff member, I come away from the residencies inspired to write more and write more better.
One aspect of my writing I tend to reflect on is my process. People can give you all sorts of writing advice, but ultimately, you have to find what works best for you. Understanding my writing process has been a process of trial and error. I’ve tried many things, some helpful, some not.
Developing a writing discipline is always a challenge. It’s not just about finding time or subject matter. For me, it can be hard to commit to writing when I feel stuck. Often, the stuckness happens when I’m at the revision stage. What am I really trying to say? How will the reader understand it? What am I missing? What should I cut? Should I just start over?
So here are some tips for overcoming stuckness, with sources if I can remember them. These work for me; try them for yourself if you want.
Put Poems in Form
I primarily write in free verse. The ideas and images and metaphors in my poems take precedence over rhythm, rhyme, and sound. However, I have noticed, as I’ve been revising over 50 of my poems this summer, I am often at a loss as to how to “spice up” the poems, how to revise them so their punch matches my enthusiasm.
The problem I have in revision is that I am often “beholden to the first form” a piece takes—this happens no matter the genre I write. This means when I revise, the intro is roughly the same, the middle, same, the ending, the same. I do some condensing, some sharpening, some image tweaking. But the poem still feels and looks like nothing’s changed.
So here’s my new rule (well, suggestion): when revising a poem, I must attempt to put it into form. My first draft is about discovering what I even mean to say. The first draft is a process of discovery. (The second, third, fourth drafts may be as well.)
For one revision, I try out a villanelle, which involves rhyme and repetition of lines, like a refrain. This means I have to figure out what the “centers of gravity” (thanks, Tony Hoagland) are in my poem. If I can successfully write a villanelle, I can usually determine what draws me to the poem, and what I want to draw out for the reader.
Next, I go for a sonnet. I like the sonnet because I have to pay attention to meter, which gets me thinking about musicality. And when I think about musicality, especially when I write myself into a corner, I have to create more interesting turns of phrase, which leads to more discovery, more resonance than I would find in free verse alone.
If I’ve done the above, I can return to free verse, incorporating what I liked from the other forms. Or I can stick with the villanelle or sonnet. I’ve done this with about five poems so far this summer, and it has certainly sharpened my poetic sensibilities, and made those poems much stronger.
Focus on Details
If you get stuck working on a scene, particularly one that arouses significant emotions, it can be hard to move forward. One piece of advice I’ve heard from more than one source: focus on a detail. Don’t write about the emotion or relationship or traumatic event directly. Write about a detail, an object, an image. This can be useful in poetry, non-fiction, and fiction.
I write a lot of grief poetry. After my son died in 2017, I wrote several poems trying to capture the whole of the grief experience. I even have a poem called “Stages of Grief,” a long poem in which I write about many experiences, many emotions, many perspectives of my personal grief. It’s trying to do too much (it also includes a lot of “explanation,” which is my biggest writing sin).
My best grief poems, in my opinion, are those with narrower scopes, that start with a detail or an image and go from there. When I focus on something concrete, the poem expands beyond that detail. When I try to write as if the whole universe was contained in the poem, it falls short. Better to start with the humble detail and see where it leads.
In The Art of the Wasted Day, Patricia Hampl shares about coming to trust the detail. As an exercise, she forced herself to write descriptions of images. “To my growing astonishment,” she writes, “these descriptive passages, sometimes running two, three pages, even longer, had a way of shearing off into narrative after all. … Description, which had seemed like background in novels, static and inert as a butterfly pinned to the page of my notebook, proved to be a dynamic engine that stoked voice and, even more, propelled the occasional narrative arc” (182–183). Start with the detail. You don’t know where you’ll end up until you write it out.
Read Others, then Converse with Them
This is from poet Scott Cairns. “When I don’t know what to write, I take a favorite book off the shelf, then I read until I come across something interesting, and then I say, ‘thank you, so-and-so, I’ll take it from here,’ and then I write in response to what they said.” (His latest book, out next week, Correspondence With My Greeks, apparently demonstrates this practice.)
I’ve only tried this a couple times, but it is certainly fun. Make a list of your go-to books or writers—say, five or six to start. Have their works at the ready whenever you feel stuckness coming on. Then pick one and read. Then write in response. See what happens. Here are some of my go-tos:
The Bible (particularly Psalms, Proverbs, and prophets)
Jorge Luis Borges
Emily Dickinson
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Franz Kafka
Write Something Different
When you can’t write what you want to write, write something different. I have many writing projects I’ve made some sort of progress on, and many more ideas piling up in my imagination. Sometimes I’m stuck (unmotivated, uninspired, undisciplined) when it comes to my “primary” writing projects. Instead of staring at a blank screen, I try to focus on some other thing I can write. As long as I’m participating in the rite of writing, right?
Lately, I’ve been trying to get some of my “smaller” ideas started. Even if I don’t have a full story in mind, I at least begin from the kernel that first popped in my mind. If you don’t have ideas, find some prompts. There are plenty of prompts to be found in books and online. You can also turn anything you read into a prompt. This is similar to the “Read then Write” suggestion above. Here are a few ideas I’ve had. Maybe take one for yourself.
The chosen one says no; what happens to the world while the chosen one stays home and goes on with their regular routines?
You can be immortal, and have infinite wealth, but you cannot leave this room. What kind of person says yes?
Dozens of riderless warhorses from both sides of a battle mingle and form their own wild herd. Who finds them, and what happens next?
A man feels guilty for some act unremembered by anyone else. His journey of penance causes more harm than his original faux pas. Write it as a comedy or tragedy.
Read Joy Harjo’s “A Map to the Next World.” Write your own “map to the next world.” (This was an exercise from Karen An-Hwei Lee.)
What do you do to get unstuck in your writing (or other creative pursuits)? Let me know—I’m always looking for more suggestions, at least to try them out and see what happens. Blessings on your writing!