Writers Block? Try Five Songs

I often find myself experiencing writers block, sometimes I feel like writing but become totally lost and get stuck for an idea. Today we are going to try a creative writing exercise called five songs. There are various things you can do with this, but for this exercise we will choose five of your favourite songs and their last lines. See mine below:

FNT  by Semisonic
Last line; Even when you are not new.
Smooth Sailing by Queen of the Stone Age
Last line; Shut up.
Carry On My Wayward Son by Kansas
Last line; Don't you cry no more, No more
The Man in the Box by Alice In Chains
Last line; Feed my eyes now you've sewn them shut
Heart Go Faster by Davey Brothers
Last line; I feel I could make it last forever

We will now do a multitude of things with this; 

● Write a short paragraph with the last line of one song as a beginning.
● Use the last word all five songs in your opening sentence.
● Try to incorporate the themes or words into a narrative.

See mine below.

It was not new to him. Not that she knew at this point. No matter what, this was the last time. He'd sewn his own eyes shut to the truth of it all. She wrote that he was her always. They made love under the stars and kissed each others scars. Nothing was secret from him. Nothing was known by her. He had said to her "I could make it last forever." And she believed him at the time.
But as the years pulled at their relationship the stitches came undone and he began to see the lies he was living in, the guilt towards her became unbearable and his self destruction seemed the only way to end it. Little fights building, disagreements everyday and then he said "no more". It was the first thing they agreed on for six months of their wistful domestic failure. They gave freedom to each other in a kiss in the doorway and never saw each other again. Their past began to shut up, slowly at first as the memories resisted and the memorabilia was distraught before it was destroyed. Little is left of what they were and how they felt for each other. First love. Never matched, nevertheless it's not always real.

Please feel free to post your paragraphs in the comments.

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From the Watchtower

The Blind Kings Sons 

Harry Potter and the Gothic Genre 

I Write A Dream

 It’s night-time, everything is a dark shade of blue and the air has a grain to it, as if it is full of dust or soot. I am walking very slowly down a dirt path way that is lined by reflective white stones and I seem to be waiting for something to happen. In the distance I can see the sea, but can not hear it as it seems to be paused from motion. I am walking towards it. I hear my dog, Cap, barking. The sound echoes and he runs to me from a dark pebbled beach to the left and in front of me. He has a spring to the way he runs which always amuses me, he is a far too old a dog to move like that. The white of his fur is as reflective as the stones, where as the black makes him almost invisible. We seem to be the only living things around and the only things moving.

            We continue, now in silence, and to the right of us we begin to see a curve of a concrete staircase that twists around an abandoned Lighthouse. We are drawn to it.

             At the point when we are close it, the waves pulse into motion and the sound is deafening, I focus on the steps and stand very still, my breath is in the air. Cap barks very loudly so I look down to him. I see his face very clearly and his eyes look inky in this light. He barks again softly whilst holding my gaze and then runs away, up the Lighthouse steps.

            I don’t want to let him go but I am unwilling to follow him. So I stand at the foot of the Lighthouse and stare up at the entirety of the building. It impresses me how large and solid it is as I have never seen one close up before. I wonder why its light is not on and why the thin windows look like sheets of ice in wooden frames. I have an overwhelming urge to pick up a white stone and break them all, but I do not.

            I start to walk up the steps, very cautiously, as the steps are very cold and seem damp. I really don’t want to slip as there is no one there to catch me. Then I am looking at the glass at the peek of the Lighthouse as if I am elevated equal to it and I see shadows within. My vision scopes down the height of the Lighthouse and I see that the steps are choking around it. I then see myself walking at a steady pace to the top. I am dressed in a black trench coat and a long scarf; it has lost its colour in the darkness.

            Something must have happened in the windowed room as I now see myself moving much quicker down the stairs, I am worried for myself as there are no hand rails, and I feel like I am going to fall. I don’t know where Cap has gone.

            I am now seeing out from in my own body again and I am still moving downwards, only now the spiral is evening out, and the further I progress, the slower I move and tomb stones appear around me, at first a few then many. The air becomes denser as I descend.

            I am unable to turn around and look back at the Lighthouse, but the fear I felt at the top has gone. I am clearly now in a cemetery, it is still night and I can make out the dark emerald colour of the grass beneath me. Like the stars, the blades are wet and I can feel cold beads of dew frozen to them, as if I am also the grass. This time there is no barking and my eyes look into a space which is cluttered with tomb stones, and between the two most striking graves Cap steps out from the one to the left.  I really want to walk forwards and stroke him or even call out to him, but, again, I can not. I feel like I’m not aloud to.

Trying to write a dream is difficult. If you attempt to write a dream, as I have attempted above, you may find yourself  using the word 'I'. However, the prospective in a dream is hard to place as it often shifts and you identify with many of the 'characters', perhaps even becoming them and all of these people are all creations and segments of oneself (like the movie Inspection, 2010). The 'I' in a dream may indeed change or disappear completely. If  you are watching your self in a dream, then in many ways that 'I' is not you. It cannot be. You must be the one watching that 'I' as you would in the logic of life. Yet it is you just as much as the background is you, as it is your dream and your creation. It all is you. Also the process of constructing a random and often nonsensical dream into a piece of writing means adapting it, to put it into writing means changing it into a form that is expressive and concise. This adds to the difficulty of writing a dream. You may have to examine the relationship between your dreams form and writings consciousness that is trying to control and find seance in the dream in order to successfully. I would recommend reading Maxine Hong's 'The Woman Warrior'; Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts' as it shows how to successfully write in a dream like voice throughout.  And most of all I would recommend giving writing from this prospective a try.

None of the images for this post are copyrighted or owned by me.

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All works Copyright Kate Ruston 2014

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Something to try...A Writing Exercise

"Look at the photograph on the insert. Imagine you are there. Describe what you see and your thoughts and feelings as you look around."

Write Prose...

The walls tower  awkwardly by my right. They stare at me... judging me and bickering their thoughts. Silently. Under foot the gritty sand nibbles at my soles and mock my blisters. A glint of water in the distance looks scared. As I approach it, it retreats. Crouching, I can study the sea life. Crustaceans, none of which I've ever seen before. Shrill reds and salty stenches greet me. I back away.

I haven't seen any one for days. I think I'm going in circles. Just round and around this island and I cant climb those cliffs though I can see some more stranded in the sea. They look lonely. Outcast from their brothers... like me. As I pause, I notice a bird ... or bird like thing.  It isn't stranded here. It wasn't abandoned. And for this I hate the bird! How did I get here? How can I leave? Do I want to?

There is something oddly familiar about this scenery.  Something strange about the sinister solitude, yet some how... it's comforting. Its like a sickly blanket of air washing over me. Sticking to my skin in the ever lasting twilight. Murky. Gray. Lethargic. Inescapable.

Change into poetry?

Something of a Nothing

I long for a place that we can be free.

I wish the walls to fall into themselves.
This place our watchtower cannot see,
A place where we can express ourselves.

The water retreats as we approach it,

Most things do in this barren landscape.
The cliffs stare down and together commit,
Crimes repressing us here, we can’t escape.

It seems so far, far away from us now,

And I’m sure both our thoughts collide.
Yet we both are aware they will never allow,
For us to forgive and learn to confide.

The walls may hold highest in this plane place,

But freedom’s nearer to love than to haste.


A Poem and Prose by Kate Ruston

Try with this photograph above and my own photographs below. Have fun and post your work.

Thank you for reading. Please show your support by clicking like, commenting and following.

Please check out my e-books on amazon kindle.
All works Copyright Kate Ruston 2014

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My e-Books

The Blind Kings Sons (£0.99)

Harry Potter and the Gothic Genre (£0.99)

My art @ Deviant Art