“There are a host of prescribed tricks for writing droughts, from the age-old divine intervention of Erato to the more practical jaunt around the neighborhood. ‘Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow,’ Thoreau wrote in his journal. And who am I not to listen to my elders? I take what I can. I wait for the beautiful voice. I step away from the screen and exit my apartment to clear my head for new ideas. A schedule can be good. I write for three hours each day between the time I arrive home from work and before my wife arrives home. This is just exercise. Something I do whether I want to or not. One thing that worked for me when I was writing my memoir and daunted by the business of prose—descriptions, scene settings, or what Virginia Woolf called ‘This appalling narrative business of the realist: getting from lunch to dinner’—was composing the narrative as a letter. Dear Mom. Dear Ex-Wife. Dear username SugarandSpikes from the dating website. Dear Stranger on Craigslist Missed Connections. I found the epistolary form provided enough space to momentarily forget writing workshop craft talk and get to the emotional details, the things which needed to be said. It was important to get things on paper, and if I needed to, I could add the color of the wallpaper later. There will always be revisions.”
—Brett Fletcher Lauer, author of Faked Missed Connections: Divorce, Online Dating, and Other Failures (Soft Skull Press, 2016)
Photo credit: Gretchen Scott