Those words, (Tear down this wall!) were spoken by the one and only Ronald Reagan in 1987 referring to the Berlin Wall which separated the nation of Germany. Recently, I and several others were personally asked to write pieces for the Breathe Writers Conference Blog on a given topic or any other of our choosing as long as it pertained to writing. As “luck” would have it, my mind started formulating a piece on the topic of writers block. However, I think many of the factors that contribute to writers block also contribute to our feeling stuck in our singledom.
Of late, I have been reading a very good book on being single and how it’s really a gift from God. However, most of us don’t see it that way. Myself included for the most part! Yet, I am learning to see things differently and while the post I will be pasting below is geared towards writing, I think some of the principles could apply to “tearing down the walls” that keep us stuck in our thinking and sometimes destructive patterns.
Here is what I submitted to Breathe – I might dissect some of these ideas later for the non writers so we all have a chance to live lives that make us proud to be single!
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BONK! OUCH, BONK, OUCH, BONK OUCH!! Does it ever seem like every direction you turn, you’re hitting that invisible wall of writers block? We try to wrack our brains trying to create that next blog piece or the middle chapter of a book or sometimes just the idea of writing seems daunting. We know there are things, fragments, and ideas up there somewhere – but how to get them out and have them make sense?
Sometimes that last part is the hardest…trying to explain scenes, sequences and scenarios that make sense to others but for some reason don’t quite make sense to us because we have hit that invisible wall like a dog with a shock collar; it’s next thing to torture.
Please allow me to give you some ideas of how “TEAR DOWN THAT WALL”!
- Write a letter to a friend, or if there’s something bothering you, write a letter of complaint, no said you have to send it!
- Free write, it does not have to make a lick of sense for instance, “Swing from the tail of the q, grab the hook of the g, the ring of the o…oh what fun to roll and tumble like a weed, I am free as a bird to write what I might to your delight!”
See, that was actually kind of fun to read even – string words along on a theme, or a rhyme, this invigorates and stimulates the mind to keep going, thinking of words as something fun, whimsical. Nothing about free writing needs to be “perfect”!
- Try writing something out of your norm. For instance, try outlining a book of the Bible and create a devotional study from it. Esther is a great book to do this with. Or try writing out how to make toast, or another favorite daily activity step by step.
- Pretend you’re a newspaper reporter chronicling your day or one of your kids, answering the 5 W’s “Who, what, when, where & why?
- Find a luscious word like “quixotic” and work it into a sentence, or try to create a character around this as a characteristic.
- Pick an emotion and write a list of all the things that emotion smells like, tastes like or looks like.
- Take your shoes and socks off and connect with the ground, leave your phone, computer and e-reader, fit bit etc in the house. Look up at the sky, let your imagination wander, see shapes in the clouds, smell the grass and the earth, and BREATHE.
Remember, man’s first day of life was on the day God rested from His work – let that sink in the next time you feel the pain and pressure of writers block. We are created for community and fellowship, commune with the Lord, rest in Him and ask for a hammer to break down the invisible wall, block by agonizing block.
Single Slice of Cheese 