The Crazy Quilt Approach to Writing

A Crazy Way to Deal with Writer's Block.

In our town, we have a large Mennonite community. They have similar roots as the Amish, but this particular branch is okay with modern conveniences and work in contemporary professions. However, they still have a love of fine crafting. We have a store in town that raises funds for their various outreaches to the poor. And most days, you can see several women from the local church sitting around a quilting frame picking up bits and pieces of colored cloth and hand stitching them into a pattern.

Sometimes when I am writing a novel, I feel like I’m quilting a story as much as writing it. You see, I have a method of dealing with writer’s block. First, I don’t believe in writer’s block. After all, if you can still write your name you don’t have anything preventing you from writing. What we call writer’s block is often just not being sure where to go next with your story.

So, here’s my trick. When I hit something like that, I just jump over that part of the story and work on a scene later in the novel. Even those of us who do not write out detailed plot outlines have some idea of where the story is going in general terms. So, if one of my fictional detectives is interviewing a witness, and I get stuck on what the questions and answers should be, I just jump to another section of the story like the scene where they discover an essential clue in the case or one where they arrest the wrong person or maybe even the revelation scene where they reveal the culprit.

In other words, I work on something different, and let that back part of my mind work on the other scene without out me pushing for an answer. Often, if I work a day or so on something else, I can come back to that scene, and everything clicks into place.

Of course, in editing, I’m like those ladies in their quilting circle, piecing together my scenes and putting them back into order.

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