Writing Through Loss and Writer’s Block

In my last Ramblings I mentioned that I wanted to pen a post about writing through painful events in your life so here it is.

If you didn’t see last Friday’s Ramblings you won’t know that I recently learned that someone who was(and I should say, still is), very special to me, had passed away from cancer. It’s a man I had a long term relationship with and besides my dad, he’s been the most influential person in my life.

The news of his death shocked me and not just because he was still fairly young but it’s brought up lots of memories and feelings I hadn’t thought about or dealt with for a long time.

It’s sort of thrown me off track and my writing has been pushed to the back burner for a bit. I’m hoping it’s not going to be another long stretch of writer’s block so I’m trying all sorts of ways to avoid it.

That’s what made me think about writing this post. These kinds of events in life are unavoidable. We lose loved ones, we go through illness, and we face bumps in the road. So how can you handle it?

I’ve been trying a couple of things. First one is music. Not so long ago, I always wrote with music playing in the background but slowly got out of the habit but now I’m back with it. Headphones on listening to a selection of music I have stored through my Amazon account. The music seems to help me focus my attention away from the loss I’m feeling.

Journal…I have to admit I’ve never been one for keeping a journal but now it’s helping me write down my feelings, memories, and whatever my emotions are when I have the book open.

Turn the memories into stories. This is sort of related to the journal part. I’ve been taking out snippets of thoughts and figuring out how I can use them in future stories. One of the first books I read about writing was that being an author is a bit like opening a vein where you let all your experiences, secrets, whatever’s within you, out on the page. Some future character I create might have a thought about what I’m going through right now. I might even write a book where a character deals with a similar loss.

Bottom line is life isn’t all plain sailing so as authors let’s use our writing to heal and recover from whatever it throws at us.