Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera: No Such Thing As Writer's Block

Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera
No Such Thing as Writer’s Block

There’s no such thing as writer’s block.

It’s a hill I’m willing to die on.

If you think of it as a BLOCK, it becomes insurmountable.

If you think of it as a challenge, then you can go around it, over it, under it, or through it.

Three ways you can overcome the challenge:

MOVE – Start with whatever part of your body you are able to shift, shake, or shimmy. If possible, change your writing location. If you are inside, go outside. If you are sitting, find a place to stand.
PLAY – Put aside your laptop and return to childhood. Use a blank piece of paper and write with a crayon. In a spiral notebook, use markers in colors other than black or blue, and write across the lines instead of on them. Start in the bottom right corner of the page and write up the side, across the top, down the other side, across the bottom and work your way inward. Start in the middle of the page and spiral out. Combine any of the above techniques.
CRAFT – Whether you are writing poetry, prose, or drama, it helps to visualize. Maybe you already have some kind of digital board for the project you are working on. How about leaving the screen and creating objects for your character/persona/speaker with household objects like kitchen utensils, or pipe cleaners, clay, felt, yarn. There are creative reuse places like Remainders in Pasadena, CA. Find one in your area!

Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and a PhD at The University of Southern California. Her short stories have been anthologized in Rural Writers of Color, Made in L.A. Volume 4 & 5, Ramblings & Reflections: SouthWest Writers Winning Words Anthology, and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. Her play Blind Thrust Fault was featured in Center Theater Group Writers’ Workshop Festival and her one-act play “Temporary Arrangement” was featured in the Latinx group of the Short + Sweet Festival Hollywood. Her fiction has been nominated for Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and spotlighted in Best Small Fictions 2022. Her YA novel, Breaking Pattern, is available from Inlandia Books. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit.