Want to Break Writer’s Block? Try Changing Positions

From New York Magazine:

I’m looking at this and I’m going, “Yep.” Oh, “Yep.” Ah, “Yep.” But the reason the headline grabbed me was for a slightly different reason.

When I’m writing, I’m often at a table, sometimes in the kitchen or in the dining room, with the laptop positioned on the table and I’m sitting at the chair pulled up to the laptop. Every now and then I write while on the couch, my bed or the recliner, but most often it’s at the table. Always with headphones on.

There will be times when for whatever reason, I just can’t get the writing process going. I’m stuck and the blank canvas is a bottomless pit, a creative dead zone. Then I do something, which at first blush might not seem significant: I change positions. If I was at the dining room table, I move to the couch. If I’m at the couch, I move to the floor. If I’m on my bed, I go to my knees. A different perspective and a different position seem to open up something in my mind and from which, the creativity returns. It’s always been an astonishing phenomenon to me.

Certainly, sometimes, it doesn’t work. I just end up on the floor, like, “What the fuck?’ But usually, it works.