I have my own corner where I retreat to write, and a lot of the time I love it. If you can make one of those, then that’s great! Rooms and spaces to yourself are comfortable and safe, I know. But when you are not feeling it or losing direction or completely drained of inspiration, there’s one thing I find that helps.

GET OUT! In many cases, you don’t even have to drive anywhere or interact with people.

Places you can go (starting close to the origin and spreading outward): another room where you don’t normally go in, a porch, the front/backyard, a park, a library/coffeeshop/study room, any bench you can find, the list goes on. (NOTE: be careful of your surroundings, always watch out for yourself, and never put yourself knowingly in a dangerous situation!)

When the weather is nice, I like taking bike rides in my neighborhood. I started off with a small route and steadily expanded it. Some days I would go down a road I’ve never been down and look at the houses or landscaping. Even just going the same route but backwards was an entirely different experience. When I get back home, I feel recharged and sometimes even inspired.

Monotony can drain you, so change things up!

Write non-permanent scenes. Free write and see where the story goes. Don’t think, just keep it going. The parts of your story aren’t set in stone, so just play around with it!

Ask others for help. This generally helps more for little things than major parts of your story. You can provide your helper (a friend, family member, stranger…) as little or as much backstory/context. For instance, you wouldn’t have to explain much to get an opinion of what a normal response to “Can you not choke on your food when I’m trying to tell you a story?” would be. On the other hand, if you need, say, a possible ending to your short story, the person you’re asking for help may need where to start in order to help you as to where you could finish.

Write something else! You don’t have to work solely on one story, though do be careful not to mix up characters/personalities or plot lines. It’s okay to not be inspired for one story after you work for a while on it and instead turn to a different one.

Read! You cannot be a good writer without reading. Sometimes you simply won’t be in the right mindset for writing. So take a break from writing and instead read an interesting book. This can get your creative juices flowing.

Do something else! This is a bit broad, I know, but hear me out. Get another task in your life done and come back to writing later. Some possibilities: clean your room, make yourself a meal (nothing instant), do some studying/homework, go through your clothes and see if there’s anything you no longer need and can donate, take a shower/bath, go on a walk/run/bike ride, meditate, call a friend/family member and catch up, etc.  Some of these may not sound fun, but you’ll at least feel accomplished when you’ve completed something.

All of these methods are merely suggestions for things you can do to help work through your writer’s block. None of these are sure-fire, and you might not get unstuck right away. But do not worry, you will be okay and things will work out!

Treat your characters as real people!

You may have learned about static/flat and dynamic/round characters in English classes. Those labels speak of the role of a character in a story: do they change or not? But just because a character doesn’t appear to change does not mean that they should be written stereotypically or as just kind of … there. Lesser characters should be just like the people in your life; you may not know much about them and they may always appear the same, but they are still human. Moreover, all characters are just like people, with favorite colors and least favorite foods and a preference of music genre, et cetera. Yes, you don’t reveal all of this information in your stories, but it’s nice to think about in order to make the character believable and real.

So, you need a character and have no specifications. How do you go about creating (literary) life?

One suggestion is to base characters after people you experience in your life. Since the real world provides the most realistic examples of people (go figure), you can make a lot out of observing others. You can even base a character off of someone you know well. The other day, my creative writing professor told me something:

Basing a character on someone could mean making the character like someone or even unlike someone.

With that alone there are a large variety of options for you to start with.

Don’t want to leave your room? Search online for character ideas (here are some visual examples on Pintrest). Mix and match characteristics you like to create someone you want to write about!

Lastly, one thing I like to do with my more major characters is to create what I call “character profiles.” In these, I focus in-depth about a character’s appearance, personality, relationships, goals, etc. Here is an amazing, though extensive, profile template. Don’t worry about not filling it all out immediately, or even ever!

Above all else, make each character their own person. I have seen myself recycle character traits through multiple other characters, but this just leads to confusion on who is really who. This isn’t saying you can’t alter an old character to make a new and improved version, however. Though it may sound cliche, make each character unique.

To start: limit your mindless scrolling. I frequently find myself falling victim to mindless scrolling. Whether it be tumblr or Facebook, once I get started, it is hard to stop. I even find myself subconsciously typing in the name of either site when I open a new tab in my browser. After this started happening, I became suddenly self-aware of how little these habits contribute to my life.

First Alternative: set a time limit. You can indulge in social media without getting swallowed up into it. This can be tricky as you will be going down, post by post, and all of a sudden a couple hours have passed! Maybe instead of a “time limit,” you could just be wary of your length of stay on a site in general.

Second Alternative: reevaluate how you want to spend your time. Do you want to spend your precious time wasting away on a mind-numbing website (with the occasional laugh or renewed insight) or doing something that has meaning to you? A thought that pops into my head when I am mindlessly on the internet is, All of this time I’ve been online I could have been READING! I have many books in my queue (and not my tumblr queue) and I realized I am not getting through them near as fast as I would like because I spend so little time actually reading.

How long can I go like this and still call myself a bookworm?

So my challenge, for me and for my fellow reader/writers, is to get away from distractions and be mindful of how what you are spending time doing is affecting you.

-Momento mori

As I mentioned in my Daily Writing post, I try to keep a tiny notebook on me at all times. When I don’t have that, I jot things down in the notes section of my phone (smart phones aren’t totally a bad thing). When a landscape forces me to stop walking, when a person’s style catches my eye, or when an intriguing event happens to or around me, I jot it down.* For example:

Clouds carved like scales, golden light-shining through the cracks with deep blue in the steeper areas;

A book so cheaply published it has the wrong summary on its back

When I need a little help developing a character or scene, I can just look through these little bits I have written down for instant help. Also, taking the time to notice someone/something and write down specific details only boosts descriptive skills.

Dreams are another great source of material, usable or not. When I took a class on psychology in high school, one project had me write down my dreams in a “Dream Journal” as soon as I woke up in the morning. The week that I did this, I remembered much more of my dreams than I normally did, though some of the things I wrote down still completely escaped my memory. The best thing about this is there is a bunch of scenes, locations, and possibly characters created all without you having to try!

Overall, inspiration is bursting from your experiences. All you have to do it document it and save it for when you need it later!

*blurbs do not need to be in complete sentences

My mom is a teacher and avid scrapbooker. Because of this, there are whole books of miscellaneous, patterned paper hidden throughout our house. One day, I was looking to find paper to decorate a planner, and instead found myself going through a couple of these books and taking out any sheet I found neat looking. These pieces turned out to be great for quick impromptu writing sessions. I look at these papers and write whatever my mind thinks of when I see them. Or, if I am trying to get a certain feel for a scene, I can sift through the papers to see if one matches what I am trying to accomplish. From there, I write out any associations that accompany the paper (these can be details like texture or entire characters!).

Another way of obtaining inspiration is engaging your senses. Possibly the strongest memory trigger is smell. Find some lotion, lip balm, air freshener, laundry detergent, or even a drink. (coffee or tea both have a variety of strong smells to me. I also think the two usually smell better than they taste.) Get a good whiff, or ten. What memories do you immediately think of, what connections do you make in your head? This could lead many places: the too-flowery perfume of a preteen; the manly, eucalyptus cologne a little girl smells in her dad’s closet, the sweet, thick air of a carnival full to the brim with kettlecorn and candy apples.

Now, you might ask, what do I do with this inspiration? Where can I put the writing that comes out of this? Well, this can depend on what you produce. Much writing, surprisingly or not, is things that will never be published, never be worked on for more than a day, never have any “use.” Although every bit of writing does not funnel into a magnum opus, they each help you as a writer. You are improving your ability to make a reader see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel (here, touch is the physical sense, while feel is psychological) everything you incorporate into your writing.

You know when you hear “practice makes perfect”? That’s wrong. Practice won’t make perfect, but practice will continue make you better and better! I like to think that there is no perfect, but rather an infinite expanse of skill before you. See how far you can go!

Writing of almost any form can advance your skills. You should try to write as much as possible (preferably at least once a day). Even if you aren’t creating masterpieces and entire novels, just write! Getting ideas and thoughts down will help you out later when you can’t remember them or need inspiration. Also, you can just write fun little scenes that have no over-arching significance!

One possibility you have most likely heard about is a diary or journal. My personal journal is actually a Word document on my computer entitled “lanruoj” (I have a habit of creating inside jokes with myself through the names of my folders/files). In the file, I divulge all of the touchy-feely parts of my life or sometimes just put down my thoughts. This is a great way to get comfortable writing simply by making a habit of putting thoughts to actual words, and also turns out to be an amazing form of catharsis. And who knows, maybe when I’m old and gray, I will find a dusty file on my old computer. On this file will be memories that haven’t been triggered in years, glimpses at what my life was like when I was young, and a tool to measure for how far I have come since I wrote those entries (one can hope).

I also have a separate journal of sorts where I write my fictional “tid-bits,” as I call them. This journal is technically spread out over a few places; Some parts lie on my phone, some in my creative writing binder, and many in my computer and in a mini book of ideas (pictured above) I keep on me at all times. These tid-bits are random scenes that pop into my head or blurbs of an ongoing story I need to write down before I forget.

You choose what medium(s) and organizational style(s) you find work for you! Write on sticky-notes or scraps of paper and compile them into a box or folder. Create a folder on your computer with multiple files: one for names you come across that you find interesting, one for words/phrases you really like, one for little concepts that may blossom into a story or scene some day. Play around, make it fun! Writing, while the passion for it is serious, is creative and an adventure in itself. So make it a great one!