“Years ago, a friend told me that she thinks of writer’s block as ‘fallow time,’ the season the farmer leaves the field unsown so that crops can grow more productively (I’m a city girl; I had to look it up). I’ve had some long fallow seasons—months, years—when I haven’t been able to start the story that’s burning inside of me. In retrospect, I realize that I wasn’t ready. But a writer has to write. So how do you start again after an extended dormant period? These strategies have worked for me: Try this prompt. Have your character reveal a secret she’s never told anybody before. The two-page secret I wrote a year ago won’t be in my book, but it got me started; I’m three hundred pages in. Invent deadlines. Mine have included: I must finish this essay by four o’clock today; I’ve promised to send a new piece to my writers group next week. Go out and be with nature. I live in New York City, where we are chronically nature-deprived. I’m lucky to live near Central Park. I have a favorite spot, overlooking the lake. It looks like the Adirondacks, with loads of wildlife and no traffic noise. Being there wakes up my imagination and makes me happy. Squelch your inner critic. If you have trouble, read and reread Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird (Anchor, 1995), for her profound and hilariously funny take on doing battle with that self-judging voice. I keep the book permanently on my bedside table.”
—Alice Eve Cohen, author of The Year My Mother Came Back (Algonquin, 2015)
Photo credit: Janet Charles