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Beating Writer's Block with Your Children's Help
by Angela Giles Klocke

Writer's block ... the dreaded evil that plagues most writers at some point in their career. We read books, seek out advice and do all we can to beat it or even ward it off before it hits. Did you know your children can help you beat it? Here are a few ideas for you next time you're the victim.

Play a word association game with your children. Announce a word and let them take it from there. Take notes as they go and use clustering to lead you to a fun tale.

At bed-time, allow them to tell you a story instead. Most children tell stories that may make no sense but hold valuable nuggets of information within. Again, take notes, even if they are just mental, and draw on these next time you are in front of your chosen writing tool.

Help children clean their rooms and use it not only as a time for mind-work (mindless jobs lead to thinking moments) but to also listen to them jabber away. Most recently, I was able to come up with a story-line from this activity and am currently marketing it.

Go outside and play with your children. Run and jump (or hobble and pretend like me some days) and remember what it's like to be a child. Think of your own childhood when you could run around without a care in the world. You wouldn't believe how well this opens your mind and gets your creative juices flowing.

Ask your children "What If" questions. What if we could fly? What if the world was square? Take notes on their perceptions of things like this and use them in your works. You don't have to be writing children's stories to benefit from this fun exercise.

Have your children share their dreams with you. If you think we have amazing dreams, wait until you hear what kind of dreams children have. Every little detail is fascinating and children always add on with their own creativeness (after all, children ARE the best story tellers). One can find a wealth of story or article material here.

Just listen to your children talk. It's easy to block them out while driving down the road or trying to relax, but taking the time to listen can open you up to the real life dialogue you need for your stories and such. All too often I read novels that have children talking and I usually feel as though the author has never really listened to a child. It rarely rings true to life.

Children can be the ones who prevent us from getting any writing done at all sometimes, but they can be the same ones to help us get going when we run into a block. Learn to work with them instead of always trying to work around them. You'll find you benefit a lot more this way.

Angela Giles Klocke is the owner of Klocke Publishing. This article was previously was published at Suite101.com. It is reprinted with permission.

The Authentic Self: Journaling Your Joys, Griefs and Everything in Between by Shery Russ

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