I try to reframe getting stuck in my writing as an opportunity to pivot my attention away from the page and back to my body by asking myself what I need. I usually crave rest, connection, or some kind of kinetic, forward momentum. If the latter then I will take my dog, Cooper, for a walk. I try to reject the rote compulsion to plug my ears with wireless earbuds and listen to a podcast or music on my phone, so I can be present to the unspooling scenery daring to be named and noticed outside of my office. I archive all that is around me, like trying to name the exact shade of bright lavender blooming from the stunning wisteria vine crawling and cascading from my neighbor’s front porch in dramatic, fat clusters. As Cooper tugs me along, I listen to the soft click-click-clicks of his nails scratching the sidewalk contrasted with the cars whooshing by or the purring growl of various engines with brief bursts of songs blasting from open car windows. I catalogue the daily detritus: a cigarette butt with pink lipstick smudged around the tip of the filter, a seafoam-green tampon applicator atop a tuft of grass (as if crowd-surfing in the curb strip, ha!), ants swarming a gooey, white glob of unrecognizable food.
This is how I become unstuck: by observing life outside of my laptop and following Mary Oliver’s poetic advice to be a continual “bride married to amazement” by “taking the world into my arms” again, as I stir and translate my excitable senses into fresh language and sparkling specificity. I try to remember that I am not a machine meant for constant output. Sometimes my writing needs me to step away and simply refill my life with my own life—away from the e-mails, and the to-do list, and the worry, and the word count, and the looming deadlines, and, and, and…
Have you ever been smacked with the honeysuckle-drunk musk of wisteria? Abundantly floral with a hint of spice, and very much alive with the aliveness of living, pungent with resurrection power like smelling salts (but much, much sweeter), this scent brings me back to the world, back to myself, so I can pour myself onto the page again when I return to the work, actively renewed and buzzing!
—Tiana Clark, author of Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press, 2025)
Photo credit: Adrianne Mathiowetz Photography