I’ve just gone through a period of writers block and thanks to a good friend have come out safely at the far end. As a result I’ve put together this survival guide to those of you suffering writers block. The condition affects us all at one time or another so I suggest you mark this page for future reference.

Below are five suggestions to guide you through the maze and get those creative juices flowing again.

My first recommendation is to relax. Don’t get to over excited about what you want to write about, at this stage all that is important is that you are putting your fingers to the keyboard and typing. Don’t worry about the grammar, don’t worry about the spelling, and don’t worry about the structure, all you want to concentrate on is getting something down on paper, getting something, anything, written.

The second thought is pretty closely related to the one above. Let’s say you were writing a short story and you just cannot progress it, here’s what you could do. Look around your room, or out your window and spot three objects: e.g. dog, car, bed. Forget the story for the moment start writing about those three objects, write for about twenty minutes and link them together somehow in a piece of prose. The technical term for this exercise is ‘random stimulation,’ it’s a great way to kick start the imagination.

My third idea stems from my early school days. It was, I suppose, the first time I ever really wanted to write fiction for the sake of writing but I really hadn’t many ideas, or hadn’t read enough books to know what it was all about. So when I was reading a book I jotted down phrases that appealed to me and I tried to work one or two of those phrases into short stories that I’d write in the privacy of my own home. I’ve refined that idea somewhat. Sometimes when I develop writers block I pick an exciting phrase from a book, no more that three short paragraphs, and start to write from there. Now I’m not writing a summary of the story, I’m just using that as a starting point and seeing where it takes me.

The fourth suggestion I want to make is about building a character. I’ll sit down at my computer go to Google News and look at a picture connected with one of the main stories and write something fictional about that image. Sometime I’ll go to Google images and randomly type in someone’s job e.g. policeman, chief, bricklayer, politician, or whatever. Google will then throw me up hundreds of images of people working at that job, I just pick one and write about him or her: height, colour of hair, what car they drive, how many children, in other words I just construct a living character from that image. This is a great way to learn how to make your characters come alive.

I’ve found to that belonging to writing group is a great help and that’s my fifth and final idea. Join a writers group, you will find that it is a great place to get rid of writers block, possibly because there are like minded people there and their enthusiasm will help kick start your imagination. The one drawback here is that groups generally only meet for ten or so weeks at a time. Consider joining two, or look for one that operates for most of the year, if you live near a University you may find one there that operates during term time.

Simple ideas I know but try them and you’ll find that very soon you will get over that dreaded writers block.