7 Super Creative Steps to Beat Writer’s Block!
Have you ever had the burning desire to tell a story, but just couldn’t find the right words?
Yes, too many of us remain with stories locked inside because we just don’t know where to start. So, we sit in the wee hours of the morning staring at a blinking cursor, or at night with our hands hovering tentatively over the page – and nothing comes.
Therefore, as a writer and teacher of writing, I often suggest that my students use semantic mapping as a fun way to beat writer’s block. (Download your FREE guide).
Semantic mapping is a way to creatively and graphically represent concepts and ideas. The map, when complete, will be a visual representation of the thematic and schematic relations that compose an idea. For example, you may be tasked to write about adaptation. What a broad topic to write about! How on earth do you get all your thoughts down on the page coherently, let alone convey personal connection and voice?
Let me show you how semantic mapping works:
Here’s a map that I completed from the word “adaptation”. You will notice that I had three distinct streams of thought while I mapped:
- Evolution
- Survival
- Illness/Cancer
After that, guided by the movement of my hand on the page, I let my mind make unrestricted connections.
The Process
Thinking of Darwin, I was led to the thought of evolution and the understanding that the larger or stronger organism does not always outlive the lesser. As a result, this then made me think one of the smallest organisms: spiders. Spiders came to me as I had recently read articles about entire Australian and Pakistani towns invaded by spiders and covered in webs.
Similarly, these reports reminded me of the fact that humans – although more intelligent and imposing than most in the animal kingdom – could be overrun or inconvenienced by quite minute creatures. Then my mind went to the tiniest entity that we repeatedly fall prey to – the cell. At that time, a beloved family member had undergone the surgery for a mastectomy and I was feeling powerless in the situation, so onto the map, it went.
The Final Product
Yes! All this from ONE word! Our minds already naturally jump from one thought to another. Above all, without editing or judging the thoughts that pop into your mind, a semantic map can beat writer’s block and lead you to a more fully realized idea and piece.
The final product of my semantic mapping, Whitewash, is to the right. This piece was eventually published in Bellevue Literary Review; a journal that publishes fiction, nonfiction and poetry about the human body, illness, health and healing.
In conclusion, we designed a FREE step-by-step semantic mapping guide for you to DOWNLOAD so that you, too, can beat writer’s block.
Do let us know about your experience utilizing it in the comments below!
Happy Writing!
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent…
I
She heard of a world gauzed in white:
strange tableau of drag-line silk sweating
in night’s precipitation. Milky film, thin
as reflection, bristling with silver light
veiling shrub, field, farm and fence post –
an Australian woodland now a paper lung
rising & falling as the wind eased
toward the swollen Murrumbidgee River.
II
Blanketing the bed is a mosaic of her illness: 16 x-rays,
4 mammograms. Diagnosis: Invasive Ductal Carcinoma.
A bright red circle and arrow necessary to identify
the miniscular tumor resembling a dusty orb of cobweb –
mutated stromal cells spiraling outward from the hub.
III
Witnesses describe the invasion:
Wolf spiders, unhoused by flood
& spinning to stay alive in our world
trellis land to limb, limb to leaf in a blizzard
of lisle – each strand a mere 2,000,000th of a meter.
8,000 human residents evacuated, leaving
the arachnids to alter what remained
of their kingdom.
IV
A lifetime of generous phytonutrients – a lifetime craving immortality
& those quiet cells, also refusing to die, continued multiplying
unhindered. She pictures them: tiny spiders, less than 1 mm in width,
tarsal claws the color of honey and crimson, quarrying
whatever healthy issue left to plunder
in her chest sutured and gauzed in white.
**claps**