Stuck on Writing

In a lecture at Harvard, e.e. cumings once said: "If poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it's you — nobody else — who determine your destiny and decide your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you. There's the artist's responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth."

This all boils down to one thing. No one can write like you do whether it’s poetry or prose.  Even if you get stuck, or your mind strays, or you feel there isn’t another bloody thing you can bleed onto the page, or if you’re writing is interrupted by thinking about recipes and how you can make the Chilean sea bass for dinner, you are writing. Simply take whatever it is and turn it into a scene, or at the very least, exposition or dialogue. Who cares if it's lousy?  You can always toss it.  but maybe, just maybe there will be a little spark--there will be a kernel of something you can really use.

Easy to say.  Try it.