love the idea of the butcher paper but I thought I’d share another tip I learned from my writing teacher, the fabulous Priscilla Long of Seattle. when we’re working on essays, she has us write ten topic sentences, one for each important thing we want to say in the essay. I know topic sentences sound boring but these are meant to be little reminders of what we plan to cover, not tantalizing hints. They’re just placeholders. And they’re not in order. You get to figure that out later. And then you just use freewriting to write the stuff underneath each topic sentence. I love this way of writing because it really frees me up. Of course, ten is arbitrary. Some topics have twelve, others six.

Re stickies: I had the opportunity of being a resident at the amazing women’s writing retreat, Hedgebrook, on Whidbey Island this March and the only thing I really, really missed that I didn’t bring from home was sticky notes. Didn’t realize how dependent I was on them. Had to make a trip to town to get some.

I like to unroll wrapping paper (putting the decorative side in) and tape it to the wall. I reuse it later for presents, too.

As you said, having “something concrete to work with” is the primary thing that gets me unblocked and creative again. At the moment, I have all the pieces of book on stickies, which are stuck to my wall. It’s messy, but it works!

Thanks for the blogging brilliance!

Jen