Writer's (sun)block - by Lu Hersey

 I'm finding high summer a very difficult time to write. It's not as if I don't have the time, and the days are wonderfully long. But that's part of the problem. Instead of knuckling down, sitting in front of the laptop, I'm idly gazing at the garden and wishing it either had a swimming pool or could be transported to Cornwall for the summer. My laptop has become somewhere to look on Rightmove for houses by the sea, find exotic beach holidays, or to research garden water features (none of which I can afford, but that's not the point). Some writers call this 'writer's block'. In my case, it's more like writer's sunblock.

My garden swimming pool

If you're suffering from a similar inability to focus on your writing when it's nice outside, stop looking at the possibility of AI writing the damn book for you (yes, I've also researched that 😎) and give yourself a break. It might be raining tomorrow.

Many famous writers have voiced their opinions on the subject of writer's block. Here's what acerbic writer and journalist Auberon Waugh had to say:

"In my experience, novelists and others who complain of a mysterious disease called Writer's Block should be treated with suspicion. This inexplicable failure to write anything can be the result of two conditions - simple laziness or having nothing to say... one only needs to develop a certain power of concentration and have something to say."

Laziness? Pfft. I prefer 'thinking time'. Even if that's simply thinking about driving to the beach... and if I have something to say, why not say it later?

Toni Morrison was more enigmatic. "I tell my students there is no such thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. It's blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven't got it right now."

Damn right Toni. I haven't got it right now. What I do have is a desire to go to swimming. Sometimes you've just got to live it rather than write it...

Neil Gaiman, whose output is so stunning, imaginative and prolific (just thinking about it is enough to give you writer's block) says:

"I don't believe in 'writer's block'. I try and deal with getting stuck by having more than one thing to work on at a time. And by knowing that even a hundred bad words that didn't exist before is forward progress."

Admittedly that's one way to get around it, Neil. Have a multitude of ideas and things you could be working on. Actually I have several ideas I could go back to... but then there are millions of other books out there for people to read, so why bother? Mine can all wait until the weather changes.

Philip Pullman is more pragmatic. "All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block and doctor's don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expect sympathy for it?"

Thing is, Philip, pipes need unblocking and people need curing. Books don't really need to be written, do they? But I see your point... 

Lastly, here's Chuck Palahniuk on the subject (you may need a content warning for this one, but it's one of my favourites): "Do you ever go into the bathroom and sit on the toilet when you don't need to take a shit? Do you ever just sit there completely empty and sit there and push? No you don't. You go eat something and them you live your life and what happens, happens. It's the same thing with writing. If I don't have an idea I'm terrified of losing, then I don't bother to write."

So I'm with Chuck. Right now, there's nothing in my head I'm terrified of losing. If that's how you feel too, just eat and live your life. Go out and enjoy your writer's sunblock. It's nearly summer solstice, so the days will be getting shorter soon enough...

My garden water feature. Not quite what I imagined, but it was a mere £17.99 online...

Lu Hersey

Something to think about

It's been a rough few weeks of late, and inspiration is currently low.

I wanted to write something though, however short, and as I was hunting around, I came across this quote from William Maxwell.* He's best known for being a fiction editor of The New Yorker magazine from 1936–1975. I've found it both a comfort and a strange source of inspiration. It's certainly given me something to think about.

'I don't think writer's block is anything more than a loss of confidence. It certainly isn't a loss of talent.'

* His full name was William Keepers Maxwell, which I find rather lovely.

Getting started when you're stuck by Alex English

It seems like ages ago when I wrote about keeping going in the summer holidays. Today was the day that my kids (finally!) went back to school and no longer could I put off getting started on the second draft of my first middle-grade novel. I’ve been dying to get stuck in for weeks, but my first major edit is the intimidiating prospect of writing a whole new chapter. The more I thought about it the more stuck I got. Today I made a breakthrough, though. Here’s how I did it:

 

1. Just write, stupid!

Yes, it’s an obvious one. Thinking about writing isn’t writing. Worrying about a new chapter isn’t writing a new chapter. To break myself out of my funk I started by setting a timer for 15 minutes, got my trusty fountain pen and a scruffy old notebook and started free-writing around my character and the scene I had very sketchily thought about.  Within a few minutes, the ideas started flowing along with my ink. I was back with my characters and they took over.

The trick is not to put too much pressure on. If you feel like the first line has to be perfect you never get started. But if your only plan is to put pen to paper for 15 minutes, it’s amazing what comes out.

 

2. Go for a walk

People talk about this all the time but it really works. There’s something about walking around that gets both the blood and the ideas flowing, and September is the perfect time of year for a stroll. If I’m feeling tense or worried about something, walking around outside amongst the trees instantly helps. If it's rainy, I stick on Spotify and have a dance by myself in the kitchen.

 

3. Better still, walk and dictate

Many of us have spoken about the benefits of dictation before, and I find I’m using it more and more. In fact I’m dictating this blog post on my iPhone whilst cooking a sweet potato vindaloo! If you have an iPhone, all the software you need is built in. I record using the standard notes programme, and upload to my computer at the end of the day. I love this for getting words on the page when I'm under deadline pressure.

 

4. If in doubt, change it up

In all today, I wrote 1,000 words of my new first chapter and have plenty of ideas for the rest. I did this through a combination of methods: dictating on the way back from the school run into my phone, typing directly into my computer when I got back, free-writing with pen and ink, and finally dictating my free writes into my laptop afterwards.

Not too shabby considering I had no clue how I was going to get started this morning.


How do you break yourself out of a writing funk, or get creative when you're feeling tense and under pressure?


Alex English is a graduate of Bath Spa University's MA Writing for Young People. Her picture books Yuck said the Yak, Pirates Don't Drive Diggers and Mine Mine Mine said the Porcupine are published by Maverick Arts Publishing. More picture books and her first middle-grade novel are forthcoming in 2020/2021/2022.
www.alexenglish.co.uk

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Games to overcome writer's block – David Thorpe

People often ask how to become a writer. It's too easy to respond: "just write". 

The idea of sitting down at blank screen or piece of paper is terrifying for someone not used to it. Partly that's why people go on writing courses: to be given exercises.

But even people on writing courses still find it difficult to write. There are too many psychological blocks.

For hopelessly addicted writers like myself it's often hard to remember what these blocks are, because we write almost all the time – even in our heads or when asleep, and when we are pretending not to be thinking about our latest plot problem in company because it's not really polite to let the people you are with know that you are not giving them the fullest attention.

Perhaps not being able to get writing even though you want to is like knowing that you need to exercise but finding it hard to get out of your chair and go for that walk.

It's not just the effort, it's actually scary.

And although the scary things are just in your head, that doesn't make them any less tough to handle.

What could be the way around this?

I suggest: to let a different part of your mind take over. 

Let us play

There is some considerable crossover between writing and playing.

Playing is what children do without even trying, without thinking about it, completely sublimely and unconsciously.

Give a child a couple of figurines or dolls and they will be making them interact, giving them lines to speak to each other and things to do before your back is turned.

Introduce two children who do not know each other and within minutes they will be playing.

The point about play is that you can't make a mistake. There is nothing at stake. You have nothing to lose. And it is fun.

Unfortunately as we become adults many of us forget how to play. In some cases perhaps that's why we drink alcohol or take other substances: to loosen our minds up.

Just as habitual athletes are used to flexing their muscles, so habitual writers are used to loosening their minds.

But beginner writers need to trick their minds into becoming loose. If you can't directly give yourself permission, you can do it in a roundabout way.

The beginner athlete isn't going for a walk, they are walking the dog. They aren't going for a cycle ride, they are cycling to the shop because they need some milk.

If you are a student of impro comedy then you will play games as part of your training, because you absolutely need a loose mind to stand up on a stage in front of an audience and be spontaneously silly.

Writers can borrow some of these games.

And there are ones for coming up with characters. Like:

Interview yourself in character

Take some names at random: two forenames and one surname. Now interview this person in the manner of a magazine article. What changed their life? What is their favourite cheese? Do they believe in God and if so what colour is God?

If you can't think of any questions yourself, just use ones from an existing magazine interview.

If you invent two characters this way, next write a short scene in which they meet each other. Try having the meet each other in unusual situations: a car crash, a funeral, arguing over who is next to be served in a crowded bar, in a spaceship due to be stranded on a strange planet.

Or this one: imagine a friend of yours in a different time and place, say gangster-ruled Chicago in the 1930s, or a country house in the time of Jane Austen. Give them a different name and have them meet another friend or relative of yours, also given a different name but the same personality.  What happens next?

Give them a reason for meeting: to arrange a marriage or a business deal. Or maybe they are in love with the same person or want to get their hands on the same stash of money or guns. What's the first thing they say? Or do?

Once you've started, write the first thing that comes into your head. Don't pause, don't analyse. Children don't analyse when they play.

Keep going, don't try to come up with anything better, just let it flow. If you stop, write the last thing you wrote again, and keep going.

Other games

Then there is guided meditation. Close your eyes. Imagine yourself going on a journey – to another place. Picture what you see and who you meet.

You have to go through a door. What is it like? Who or what is on the other side?

Stay in the trance state, open your eyes and write it down.

Or use a device to record you saying what you see and transcribe it later.

There are other games – for writing poetry for instance. See these ones compiled by Tim Wynne-Jones.

As soon as you do any of these things you are tricking your mind into playing. You are giving yourself permission to be a writer.

You are writing. And that's what writers do.

Have fun!

Unlocking Your Inner Potential - Rebecca Lisle

Well, is there inner potential, that's the question.  I'm certainly not sure there's any in me. I suspect that my innards are devoid of anything. Everything. I'm trying to write and I can't. My inner muse or well of inspiration or whatever, is now nothing but a clogged up puddle of mud.

I wondered if a self-help guide might help. Although I don't want my own self-help, I want someone else to help. Actually I guess I want someone else to write my 'book words' for me.

The trouble with this book is I am already full of fear and personally I think it's plain dangerous to do something you know for sure is scary. That's why it's scary. To stop you from doing it. Sensible really. Protective.

So this book is no help at all.

Apparently I do have an inner genius, really I do. There's lots about it on the internet. I have to find it, that's all. Unlock it. So I turn to my store of images which I gather as I go about the world, hoping one day they will become something. Anything. Since I always find doors inspiring and interesting here are a few of my favourites. They might give you inspiration. But these doors are . . .

              

          

Locked. Maybe for ever.

OK.  

I've got more photos. I've got these fascinating boxes, surely full of wonderful ideas and exciting plots:

How about this ancient box. What was it used for? Why the huge lock? Surely I can be inspired by its mysterious paintings of birds and spiky plants?  

What are those two chaps hiding in there? Are they smiling? I'm sure they look smug. I have the feeling they know the secret of how to write a good book and they've got it locked up in there and won't tell.

And what's inside this 15th century iron cask? The secret to the Universe? The best plot in the world?

And although I have some extraordinary keys - 

guess what - they don't unlock anything.

So back to the self-help books.  "How to be Happy" Impossible. It'll never happen. "How to write your novel in one year!" That's far too long. I want it done by the end of the week.  "The Easy Way to Write." That's just lies - there isn't one. "Everything I know about Writing." Fine, but you know it, you're successful, stop showing off. I know nothing. I can't write a thing.

Finally I take the plunge and write my very own self-help guide. A must for all would be novelists. It's called "The Only Way To Write"by Rebecca Lisle. Because there is only one me and only one way to write. And the best thing about it is it won't take long to read and it really does work!

There is one page of credits and acknowledgments: 

Firstly, I thank myself for all the hard work I've put into this book, myself for being my constant support and critic, myself for never giving up hope and belief in me and myself for feeding me constant cups of coffee and buns. I will never forget you. 

On the following page the advice begins. And ends. 

Stop faffing around and get on with it. 

Rebecca Lisle  www.rebeccalisle.com

Rebecca's most recent book THE SPIN, published by Hot Key Books has been nominated for the West Sussex Children's Book Award

August and the writer's thoughts turn ....... by Miriam Halahmy

"So where did summer go?" asked a poet friend on Facebook as August kicked in. I was at Lumb Bank, guest author on a writing retreat, and yes - it was raining hard.

Come August in England and dawn has gone dark and chill, leaves are clogging up the gutters and the flowers are fading in the patio pots. That's the thing about summer, by August its truly fading. I even wrote a poem about it one year.

Cheating on me

Here comes August

old prostitute

flowers faded in your red-dye hair.

You strut your green stuff

along days already crisp-edged

nights dark before ten.

All through parched June

classroom stiff with tired bodies

I dream of holidays

cheer myself hoarse at sports day

comfort the losers.

I wave my girl off to camp

and then it’s my turn.

August;

air laced with your carbon cocktail.

As we shave short the lawn

lock-up and head for the hills

the sun angle shifts.

In your see-through vest

you tease us, August;

long-limbed shadow of winter.

© Miriam Halahmy

How many writers feel like pumping out the great novel in August? Its not my best time to write, I have to admit. But if I write nothing then I feel even worse. And I’m not a big fan of the term ‘writer’s block’. It’s not that I always sit down at my desk ready to write and bang out 2000 words a day. It’s simply that I believe it is always possible to do a bit of writing, even if it isn’t the next chunk of the great work you had hoped for.

But with the help of chocolate, all is not lost!

Writing this blog will be my writing for today. Some of the points below I used in a blog for Lorrie Porter's excellent blogsite last year. But somehow in August it all seems very apt to ponder it all again.

So if you are deep in August, fed up the summer is nearly over and don't feel much like writing, here are my Five Favourite Tips for rebooting the writing fervour :-

1. Write a word, write a sentence, write something. Write with thick felt tip – my latest craze is Sharpie pens – deface a large sheet of brown paper. Take a word from your manuscript and brainstorm it all over the page. Writing is the trigger. Not writing makes us feel frozen inside. We are all about words so have fun and just write some.

2. I know, I know...  writing a set of disconnected words won’t get Chapter 14 written and you are feeling anxious and under pressure and can’t I offer something better than Number 1?

Yes I can! Sit down and write for 30 minutes and then get up and walk away. That brief writing time will return your self esteem and unfreeze your writing muscle. Do 30 minutes every day in the leanest, most uninspiring, most shut, closed, tight periods when you feel blocked, and you will breathe new life into your writing. You will stand up and walk away feeling, “I’ve done it, I’ve done my writing for today and now I can load the washing, cook dinner or watch Daytime TV without feeling guilty.”

3. Ask questions. Whenever I am stuck in the middle of a novel and I just can’t seem to write the next 50 words, let alone 5000, I switch to Bold Deep Red and put up any question which comes to mind. I answer each question before I put up the next one. I’m not brainstorming questions for the sake of it. I’m letting questions take over and trigger writing which ultimately will get me unstuck, reveal where I’m headed next and get me back to writing in a linear flow.

Here are a few examples :

a) Why am I sitting here?

b) What has just happened?

c) Who is x or why or z?

d) What do I want to say, write, do here on this page, in this para, in this book?

e) What do I honestly think is going to happen next?

I haven’t found that the question really matters. It’s a device, a trigger to trick me out back into writing. It works, mostly.

4. If it doesn’t work, or sometimes because it just feels better, I go back to pen and paper.  I wrote my first novel, Secret Territory, back in the 1990s

steam- age, by hand on the kitchen table, after the kids had gone to bed.

So when I’m stuck and the writing just isn’t pouring out of me, I go back to the old ways, the contact of pen on paper and I start asking all my questions. Usually I find I’ve covered several sheets in about 10 minutes, I’m ready to fire up the laptop once more and get back on my horse.

5. I know this all sounds a bit smug and as though I can write anytime, anywhere, with just a few nudges to get going again. Well, I can’t.

But like most people who have been doing this for donkey years, I have managed to find tricks and devices which will get me out of the doldrums and off again. 

Sometimes I know you just have to call it a day or even a week. But even in the worst dry patches there’s always something you can do.Write a poem, a shopping list, a note to teacher, a letter to your old aunt ( one of my favourites because we get so few personal letters these days)

We are writers, it's what we do, it doesn't always have to be the next great novel. But it has to involve black words on white background, strung together somehow.

Good luck with your writing and do let us know if you have a great tip for getting unstuck.

Summertime... - Lily Hyde

A post I wrote on ABBA in December, complaining about my difficulties finding a plot for a book I was working on, garnered a host of wise and useful replies, including one about writing seasons (thanks, Liz and Jen!).

It was cold and grey in London when I wrote that post. In a big city, especially one as temperate as London, it’s easy to disregard the seasons. If the squirrels were busily running about in Hyde Park, begging nuts from enamoured tourists, then why should I remember to hibernate for the winter? 

Now it’s hot and blue in the Carpathian mountains. Everything is growing and flowering through the long, long summer days. And I realise that creatively, at least, I was hibernating through that December. Now I’ve woken up. Not just that particular book I was stuck on, but a host of others too, have unfrozen. It literally feels like water running again, like plants sprouting.

It’s a lovely feeling, and I hope that the words I write down manage to capture the promise and ease I sense from the ideas filling my head.

Wishing you all a happy, fulfilling and productive writing summer!          

www.lilyhyde.com

Beginner's Mind - Heather Dyer

 

‘This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.’ - SHUNRYU SUZUKI

As soon as I signed my second book deal, I quit my day job and started writing full-time. Unwise? Maybe. But I had written a book before – twice – and assumed I could do it again.
I soon realized that it wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought. It wasn’t that I couldn’t write. I was writing constantly.  But my stories just petered out. Or I had to force them into a shape that didn’t feel right.

 

I couldn’t understand it – and neither could my publisher. I knew more about writing now than I had ever done. I had studied ‘plot arcs’. I had read Christopher Vogler and John Gardner and every other how-to-write book I could get my hands on. I knew how many chapters my book needed, how long each chapter needed to be, and how to pitch the language; but none of my ideas worked. And yet, I had stumbled through my first two books without a clue what I was doing. I’d just opened up my laptop and begun.

And then I realized what the trouble was. I had lost my ‘beginner’s mind’.

 

‘Beginner’s mind’ is a Zen Buddhist concept. It refers to an attitude of openness, eagerness, and a lack of preconceptions. It is non-judgemental. Children have beginner’s mind. If you ask a child to paint a picture they will just begin – without giving it much forethought, and without any anxiety over how it ‘should’ be done. 

This quality seems to deteriorate with age and with experience, however. If you ask the average adult to paint a picture they’ll say, ‘I can’t paint’. Then they’ll agonize over whether they’re doing it right and finally give up in disgust. This is because adults think too much – and thinking actually seems to inhibit creativity. 

 

In Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande explains: “...the root of genius is in the unconscious, not the conscious, mind. It is not by weighing, balancing, trimming, expanding with conscious intention, that an excellent piece of art is born. It takes its shape and has its origin outside the region of the conscious intellect."

Science backs this up. According to neuroscientists, insight – those sudden leaps in comprehension – arrive when the brain’s prefrontal cortex instructs the logical left hemisphere to shut down in order to allow the intuitive right hemisphere to wander freely. You will have experienced this yourself when you’re trying to remember someone’s name. The more you wrack your brains the more distant the answer feels. “Never mind,” you say. “It’ll come to me.” Sure enough, when you’re no longer thinking about it, the answer pops into your head.

The message seems clear: if we want to be creative we need to stop thinking, and start acting on our intuition instead. And we need to keep acting on it, moment to moment, following that risky trail. Rather than knowing where we’re going, we must allow ourselves to be led. And that’s the most magical thing about writing. By following our hearts instead of our minds, we seem to be able to intuit a pattern of greater harmony – and therefore beauty – than we could have planned. Shaun McNiff in Trust the Process says, “I learn over and over again that the creative process is an intelligence that knows where it has to go. Somehow it always finds the way to the place where I need to be, and it is always a destination that never could have been known by me in advance.”

We need to learn to be comfortable with not knowing the answer. Some artists and writers are good at this. Agnes Martin, an abstract painter, says:

“I have a vacant mind, in order to do exactly what the inspiration calls for….”

It’s this same ‘vacant mind’ that Keats is referring to in his letter to Robert Gittings:

“A Man of Achievement especially in literature, must possess this ‘Negative Capability’, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable searching after fact and reason.”

 

So if we want to be truly creative, perhaps we need to throw away the rulebook, put aside what we already know, and let our minds (and pens) wander freely until inspiration strikes. We need to stay beginners.
 
Heather Dyer
www.heatherdyer.co.uk
 

Twister Not Just A Kids Game - Lynne Garner

For the last few years I've been teaching creative writing to adults. In one of the sessions we discuss point of view and as part of that session I set a task. This task is to take a fairytale or nursery rhyme and attempt to tell it using the flash fiction form known as a  Twister. If you've never heard of the term basically it's a story or part of a story told in 140 characters or less. It originated on the social media site Twitter.
  
You may be able to guess what's coming next. Yep, I'm throwing down the gauntlet and hoping some of you want to give writing a twister or two a go. Don't forget to use first point of view. What follows is my attempt at The Three Billy Goats Gruff from the point of view of the troll:

Woken this morning by small goat trying to cross bridge without paying toll. What is the world coming to? #crossmybridge.com

Discovered second goat trying to sneak across bridge without paying toll. Just cannot believe how rude goats can be. #crossmybridge.com

This morning a third goat attempted to cross bridge without paying toll. How do they expect me to stay in business? #crossmybridge.com

For sale: one bridge in good state of repair, high daily foot fall and permission to charge toll. #businessforsale  

My students have written some fab versions of well known stories. So it's with fingers crossed some of the ABBA readers/followers give it a go and are willing to share. 

Lynne Garner

A little blatant self promotion:

I have three short distance learning courses commencing on the 6th July via Women On Writing:

How To Write A Picture Book And Get Published

Five Picture Books In Five Weeks - Advanced Course

How To Write A Hobby Based How To Book 

How to improve your working habits - by Nicola Morgan

Note 1: No shed necessary. That's a promise!

Note 2: Those who came to the SAS Conference in Peterborough this year know all about this and know that it's called Stimulus Generalisation

Working well shouldn’t be difficult. Make a list of things to do; tell yourself that you will do a, b and c before lunch; apply posterior to chair; do a, b and c. But most of us know what actually happens: in the absence of a boss to enforce when and where we produce a piece of work, bad habits come into play and we (I) play Spider Solitaire, go on Twitter, answer social emails, pay bills, make more coffee, dust behind the fridge…

That was me, until May 2011. Years of self-employment and working from home had created appallingly chaotic working habits. I got the work done – never missed a deadline yet – but it felt unhappily ill-disciplined, ineffective, pathetic. Social, domestic and work tasks were mixed up; the hours spent at my desk were too long and ineffective; real writing seemed to come last, if at all. Work-life not so much balance as collapsed in a heap of tangled intentions.

In May that changed. Now, if I say “shed”, you’ll roll your eyes and want to switch off, but I promise this is not about getting a writing shed. It’s about stimulus generalisation, as I now realise, thanks to my clinical psychologist friend who nodded wisely when I told her how my working habits changed instantly, the day I got a shed. Stimulus generalisation is something psychologists harness when dealing with addictions and negative habits, she said. Hmmm, sounds like me. Does it sound like you?

I’ll briefly explain the relevant aspects of stimulus generalisation but then, more importantly, unpick the elements of what I accidentally did, in order to make suggestions that anyone can use to alter poor working habits, including internet addiction. (Disclosure: I’m not a trained psychologist, though some of my work involves a degree of understanding of how our brains work; I’m just making sense of what happened to me and what might help others.)

Stimulus generalisation is akin to a Pavlovian response, although reflexes are not necessarily involved. Behaviour (leading to habits) is conditioned subconsciously by stimuli around us. So, if you tend to have a glass of wine while cooking the evening meal, cooking the evening meal becomes part of the set of triggers to have a glass of wine. Aspects of cooking the evening meal are the general stimuli around you: the clock saying 7pm, the light falling, the sound of a partner coming home, your own body clock, the smells in the kitchen, all the cues to anticipation of a relaxing evening. Together, these stimuli subconsciously reinforce a habit; and breaking the habit will be very hard if you don’t break the stimuli. In theory, you could just say, “I won’t have a glass of wine,” but the stimuli play heavily on your desires and behaviours and you are pretty likely to have that glass of wine. Thus speaks the voice of experience.

So, let’s unpick what happened with my shed. Effectively, I had suddenly changed almost all the stimuli around me, in one go. This made my existing desire to change working habits much easier; it enabled an immediate fresh slate, allowing new stimuli to create new habits. In the same way, an addict is encouraged, as part of therapy, to remove all physical aspects of the situations in which previously he took the addictive substance. Move house; throw away posters, furniture, possessions; avoid the friends who accompanied the addictive behaviour; take up new activities; change as much about your life and environs as possible. Every repeated stimulus has a hold on the person, each one like a strand within a rope.

Let’s move away from the specific shed example and generalise the conditions which may make new behaviours possible, conditions which any of us could replicate if we wanted to break undesired working habits.

1. Desire to change. We need to know what we want to change, and to want it strongly enough that we will make effort and think positively about the outcome. Part of this may involve feeling sufficiently negative about the current situation.

2. Planning ahead. Making detailed advance decisions about the changes, and setting a date on which the changes will start, help prime the mind to activate those changes.

3. Investment. It makes sense that if we have invested time, money and/or effort in the changes, this will help motivation.

4. Rising anticipation. If we have to wait eagerly for the start date, this is likely to help.

5. Support from others. Support from partner, family or friends, and their own investment in your success, are likely to have a positive effect.

6. Out with the old and in with the new. The tendency of the brain towards stimulus generalisation means that the more physical surroundings you can change, the better. You may not be able to afford a whole new room, or to replace all the furniture in it, but the more you can alter the physical surroundings, the better.

7. The use of all the senses. Our brains learn best when several senses are used. 

8. Blitzing it. I suspect that doing it all at once makes a greater impact.

Based on those principles, there follow some specific suggestions to help change working habits. Some are small and may seem trivial but your brain will notice more than you think. Some of the larger things won’t be practical for everyone and I’m not suggesting anyone does them all: pick a few that suit your situation; plan when to instigate the new regime; then do them all at once. Remember: once you have selected your new stimuli, make sure you apply them to your working hours, not your social or domestic hours. The point is to use a specific setting to teach your brain that it is supposed to be working, not doing social or domestic tasks. Or playing Spider Solitaire… The new environment will perform the role of a boss.

Suggestions:

o Move your work-space to a different room.

o Rearrange the furniture in your work-space, including the position of your desk and your view.

o Redecorate with new colours, changing as much as possible.

o Choose new furniture, particularly chair and desk and whatever is in your range of sight while working.

o Create a time-table for arriving and leaving work; leave your office door open if just taking a break, but close it (lock it?) when your working day ends. Make sure you take everything you will need during the evening, just as if you worked away from home; use a briefcase?!

o Have a separate in-tray for domestic/social tasks, and only deal with them outside working hours.

o Even something small can help, such as using a specific mug during working hours, or a particular pen or notebook for “real” writing.

o Anything separate for “work” use will help: stationery, clothes, shelves, diary, etc. Make use of the visual element: eg if you use blue files for work docs, have only the blue files in front of you during work hours or in your work space.

o Use all the senses. The suggestions above are all about what you can see but consider the following: you might play music when working (or when not working); you might harness the sense of smell by lighting a scented candle when doing writing work, or enjoy the smell and taste of real coffee; and yes, you have my permission to eat chocolate to herald the start of a writing session… Anything that you can commit to doing every time you start what is supposed to be a proper working (or writing) session.

The more we can change, the more coherently we plan the changes and the more simultaneously we effect them all, the easier it is for our brain to break old habits and allow new behaviours.

But you’ve got to want to, as much as I wanted that shed, and you’ve got to keep wanting it. Old habits not only die hard, they can return. Be vigilant!

By the way, a new edition of my book, BLAME MY BRAIN - The Teenage Brain Revealed, is available from May, also with an ebook version.

No Room with a View by Savita Kalhan

It’s gone, my cherished writing space. Up until Christmas I worked at my laptop in the dining room. I used to have the whole of the dining table to spread out in, surrounded by a chaotic array of files, piles of paper, notebooks, post-its and an assortment of pens and pencils. But I’ve had to vacate the dining room while the kitchen and dining room are being knocked into one room with an extra three metres added on. I’m looking forward to the end. However, in the meantime, icy gales rush through, making a cup of tea requires me to negotiate an obstacle course. I need to wear several layers of fleeces inside the house to avoid frostbite, and I’ve had to stack my WIP and all the notes and various versions of the manuscript in one teetering, homeless tower.

I’ve had a garden room built, completed just before Christmas, which will be my new working space. It’s sitting there gazing at me, (or maybe that's me gazing longingly at it!) To reach it, I would have to cross a ten foot ditch, a quagmire of mud, and fight off a plague of rats, and even if I made it there alive, there’s no space for me and my laptop and my tower of notes as it’s doubling as storage space for everything that was in the dining room and much of the kitchen that there’s no space for in the living room. I won't be able to get to it until April.

So I’m back in the box room, where there’s no room to swing my hair never mind swing a cat, and there is no view. I’ve been trying to convince myself that it’s cosy, that I can shut myself up inside it and pretend I can’t hear the constant banging and drilling and other noises emanating from the building site outside my non-existent back door. It’s not working, yet. I've hit a block with the WIP too and I'm wondering whether it's because I'm not in my usual writing space, physically and in my head. I know I have to make it work or find another temporary home for writing. I’ve never been a coffee shop writer. Coffee shops are for meeting friends, chatting, drinking coffee, nibbling on a slice of cake, idling time away. I can’t see myself sitting at a table with my laptop and being creative. People-watching and eavesdropping yes, but writing? Probably not.

I didn’t think I was such a creature of habit, tied by routines and patterns, but now I realise that I am. All this building work has probably been a good thing for me in that it’s forced me to realise what a stuck-in-the-mud person I am, and how changes in a writing space might actually be a good thing. So if the shoe-box room doesn’t work, I’m going to try a different room, and if that doesn’t work, I might even venture into a coffee shop or a library. I’m sure that I can write anywhere – I just haven’t had to write anywhere for a long time! Does anyone else have this problem, or can you write anywhere?

I’m in the shoe-box room right now. Hopefully I’ll be writing...

The Other Me by Ruth Symes / Megan Rix

I've always really liked the fact that ANYONE can be a writer - the work stands or falls on its own.  And, I’ve always liked the idea of having a pseudonym - but have usually been persuaded out of it. 'But people won't know it was you…’ True, but using a pseudonym can be a great way of beating writer’s block.

As Ruth Symes I’ve recently been concentrating on my Bella Donna series - about a witchling who lives half in the magical and half in the regular world. Before the first one came out I did suggest I used a more magical sounding pseudonym for the books  - Esmeralda Jones or The Purple Witch - but my publishers didn’t go for it.

When I wrote me my memoir ‘The Puppy that Came for Christmas’ under the pseudonym of Megan Rix my reason for writing it was so I never forgot the three wonderful puppies we had in a single year. But then one of my agents sold it to Penguin and they wanted the personal trauma we’d been going through written about too and a pseudonym started looking like a very good idea. There was an unbelievably short deadline to get the book out for Christmas and our real forever puppy, Traffy, became seriously ill and we were told we'd have to have her put down and I refused, and she recovered, and with all that going on it was a case of pseudonyms snoozeonyms - not a big deal either way in the scheme of things.

The name Megan Rix was only supposed to be used once (Rix is a family name of my husband’s - so he chose that) I didn't know Puffin would then commission me to write a children's book as Megan Rix - and now I have a double career as a children’s book writer and double the work (yikes - I’m typing as fast as I can!) If I didn't sleep or do any housework (hate housework) maybe I could do more...

Writing under two names means I need to do a lot more commissions to keep both careers going and as I mark off the time I have left to finish my next book a tiny part of me wishes I could have squeezed more TV writing in.

I'm writing this at 3-30 in the morning with Bella asleep on my feet, keeping them toasty, and a poorly Traffy beside me. (She doesn’t think she is poorly but has to have an op at 9.15 this morning so please wish her good thoughts if you can – they’re going to try to do a less major one first and if that works she’ll be home by Friday, if it doesn’t they’ll continue straight on to the more invasive op.)

One thing I know is whatever name I choose to use (and I don’t think Megan Rix will be my last) three things never change:

1. The pleasure I get when someone tells me they enjoyed my work – I’ve had some incredibly moving emails from adults and beautiful letters from children and will never forget watching a toddler ‘reading’ one of my picture books to his sibling whilst holding the book upside down.

2. Who I truly am.

3. The people and animals that I love.

(Thanks to Jan Burgess for the photo)

Ruth's latest book is Cat Magic (out in August) www.ruthsymes.com

Meg's latest book is The Great Escape www.meganrix.com