Ideas for Overcoming Writer's Block

Top 10 tips on writing: There are some pretty good ideas here, from Steinbeck to Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

TheTimeIsNow: Writing prompts and exercises from Poets and Writers. Click on this link for an assortment of prompts and exercises. You can even sign up to receive these via email.

Prompt of the day: Write from someone's/something's perspective that is not a human. Sometimes, photos help with this. The photo to the left is a flamingo's point of view .


This is an amazing site from the United Kingdom that helps overcome writer's block. First Line Generators, Plot Generators, you can find a lot of help here!http://writingexercises.co.uk/index.php

101 Best Website for Writers -- Great source for publication possibilities.

Advice to Writers -- Great source for inspiration, guidance, motivational quotes.

2.14.19 If you are searching for a good idea, look in the news. There's bound to be something interesting there. Take this article, for example, from the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. Video Shows Man Releasing Rat Inside New Jersey McDonald’s, Sparking Total Chaos. Who knows what compelled the man to do this. Put it in a story. There is a cool part of the story where a child in McDonald's asks the man, "Can I hold it?"

Excerpts taken from various issues of Poets and Writers, "Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin."

  • Perhaps there is one book for every life." All the LivesWe Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf by Katharine Smyth
  • "I've known Death a long time, but now Death knows me." The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells, translated from the German by Charlotte Collins
  • "When I was a girl, I would sneak down the hall late at night once my parents were asleep." Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro
  • "My name doesn't matter." We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
  • "This book was conceived in a hospital." Black is the Body: Stories from my Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine by Emily Bernhard
  • "The beginning is always difficult." A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems. by Marilyn Chin
  • "One day as a child or eight or nine I went so school, sat down in my plastic chair, and proceeded to forget how to write." The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet by Kim Adrian
  • "I did not want to write to you." Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon