What is it about writing in the summer that brings out the overthinking in me?

I find myself spinning, rejecting idea after idea, often without putting a single word on the page.  I know all the things to do when faced with writer’s block:

• lower my standards
• just write something over and over again until the words start to flow
• start small, or
• even do some laundry (that is my go-to writer’s block activity–not sure it’s anyone else’s

…but some knots are really hard to undo.

The same thing happens from time to time when taking photographs.  Some days there is simply NOTHING to photograph.  I’ve seen all the dandelions in all their various stages, the snails and lizards have all tucked themselves under a bush, inside a cactus, or in some dark place I’m not willing to explore, and the trees are just…green.  Sometimes I need to give myself a prompt to push out of that stagnant pool of a lack of imagination on my part.  So, I might say to myself, take photos of yellow.  As I head out the door with my camera or phone in my hand, I am looking for yellow.  I might notice the No Outlet sign on the corner–boring.  But what if I stand close to it and shoot looking up?  What if I get really close and fill the frame just with a corner of the sign?  Is that grass growing out of the back of the sign?  Suddenly I start to see yellow all around me: in the paint that SDG&E has used for their hieroglyphics on the street, in the teeny, tiny blossom of the weed growing out of the sidewalk crack, or the tomato that is just beginning to change from green toward red.

In the classroom, when I notice these knots starting to form when students sit down to write, even after we’ve spent some time generating ideas, I lean in and open a conversation often starting with something I know about the child’s interests.  With that student who wants to connect everything in the classroom to historical facts, I might ask about connections to the sinking of the Titanic that they keep telling me about.  To that Laker’s expert, I might ask a question about LaBron and his athletic prowess.  I might ask about a sibling, something about a parent’s work, leveraging all that I know to help open a space for the student to begin.  There is something about a casual conversation that loosens the knot for most students, allowing ideas to flow and words to form, first orally and then on the page.

So how do I help myself with this overthinking on the page?  Sometimes I turn to something I have read, seeking inspiration in the words of another.  A photo works well as a prompt for me, taking me back into a space, a place where I was in my creative element.  Sometimes an image can become a metaphor, guiding my thoughts and giving me a new way to see an experience or understand something I’ve been grappling with.  

This time it was Grant Snider’s comic that opened the door to my writing, forcing my brain to calm from violent spins to somewhat more graceful pirouettes.  Instead of pulling the knots tighter, they began to unwind and allow me to find some words and remind me that I do have strategies at my fingertips when I find myself overthinking and grasping for words.