Off the Keyboard: Breaking Out of Writer’s Block by Linda Carroll-Bradd

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Breaking Out of Writer’s Block by Linda Carroll-Bradd

After being laid off from a job I’d held for six and a half years, I initially thought—great, I’ll have all day to write. The search for employment dragged from weeks to months, and my creative spirit took a hard hit. If employers didn’t want to hire me, then readers can’t want to buy my stories. This bad thinking became a downward spiral that basically killed my love for writing for almost two years. Sure, I revised old stuff but new stories weren’t bubbling up inside me.

A major life change and relocation halfway across the US this year allowed me to write full-time. I had one simple goal: get a story accepted and published in 2012. To accomplish that, I knew I had to write short and I turned to publisher calls for submissions. I love these because they have a specific word count (ranging from 5-15K, some longer), a theme and (best of all) a deadline. Sometimes, the theme is only a holiday or a one-line statement but that’s enough to jump start my plotting.

My first two shorts were rejected but I knew when I submitted the competition would be tough for this well-known publisher. These were the stories that broke my creative block, and I will revise, expand and resubmit those in the future. Now, the field was wide open and I spent several hours compiling a folder of these calls. I wrote a Thanksgiving story set in a small Texas town, a Christmas story set in a different small Texas town, a Christmas story set in 1884 Aspen, and a contemporary summer story set in a small California town. Stories from a historical western anthology published several years ago are now being released as singles—this is a story set in 1871 Wyoming Territory. So within the span of two months, I signed five contracts.

I also write under a pen name and I had luck with my short erotic romance stories too. I sold two shorts (one had been rejected by one publisher but I sent it right out to another).

I wrote a rodeo story for a publisher’s call. By the time I was offered a contract, I’d realized that getting established with three new publishers involved more non-writing time than I thought. I declined that offer and now have a completed story to submit to one of my new publishers, as soon as I catch my breath with promo, blogs, website updates, edits, revisions, etc.

I credit these calls for submissions from various publishers with providing the structure and impetus for me to again get serious about writing and to break my creative block.