WRITER'S BLOCK?

 

Writer's block? Touch wood, it hasn't happened yet. But... I do get stuck on plot lines and character development form time to time. So what do I do? Sit and stare at the screen? Just write rubbish, hoping something useful will come out of it? Panic? None of these. I take myself, and Aggie, for a walk to the beach, preferably when the tide is out.

Then, as we roam on the exposed sand and rock pools, my mind roams too, things become clearer and ideas coalesce. When I return home, 'Hey Presto!' I'm back on track.

I just love the solitude, the sound of the waves, the feel of the wind and, of course, the birds. The insistent and nervous piping of the oystercatchers, trotting on their orange legs, looking for cockles to eat; the bubbling song, and rising glissando of curlews then, when disturbed, their urgent, arrow-straight flight, beaks drooping like a feathered Concorde.

 

 

And at the end of the walk, time to sit down on a bench and just savour the seascape for a few minutes before returning home, filled with a new enthusiasm to get on with writing. Which is what I must do now.