Creative ways around writer’s block

I struggled with writer’s block a week or two ago. It was a rough one…. There was a touch of Negative Nelly and some Imposter’s Syndrome thrown in, to really chum those waters. :D

An article on unique ways to combat the block caught my eye online - I bookmarked the page for future help if I should need it, but it made one thing pop into my to mind immediately. Planet Coaster.

I know, I know. It sounds odd, and a whole lot like an excuse to play a game instead of write. But the beauty of Planet Coaster is that you can build things from the ground up. And that’s what I did, with a critical, new location in Descant. It will play an important role in book 2, and I wanted to make sure I had the vision down. I spent more hours than I probably should have designing it. As for all you people who put things on the workshop like “Acropolis” or “lounge chair”, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If I couldn’t figure out how to make things myself, I got inspiration from other parks (or pasted some things directly into my park if the possibility was there).

You can find a quick little video made from 4 screenshots I took out of the game here. No spoilers, because you’ll be hard-pressed to guess what this area is for. But taking those hours to build this let my mind run wild in the background putting things into place so I could write easily again.

All of this should encourage anyone else that needs some hope: when you’re stuck and think you’ve written yourself into a corner, draft new corners and see where you end up!