Last week, I described my vision of Helen’s Word, my subscription-only newsletter, as a paywalled garden:

— a safe space where I can experiment with words and wordcraft amongst fellow writers who, like me, aspire to bring more creativity, color, and joy into their writing lives . . . a muddy, messy place for growing things, not a museum filled with perfect glass flowers.

This week, I decided to go wild with the writing-as-gardening metaphor — first in my muddy, messy notebook, then on this colorful digital page. 

In the spirit of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson’s famous garden at Sissinghurst — where you can wander through the White Garden, the Summer Garden, the Herb Garden, and many more — I’ve arranged my plantings in a sequence of garden rooms, each with a character and color scheme of its own. 

Helen’s Word subscribers can ramble through the Noun Garden, the Verb Garden, the Adjective Garden, the Teaching Garden, and ChattieG’s Garden (a Barbie-inspired version of the kind of garden that I imagine ChatGPT might plant). No perfect glass flowers here— but plenty of fountains and follies amongst the garden beds…

The Noun Garden

The Noun Garden blossoms with concrete nouns rooted in nature — some pretty, some prickly: annuals ants bees  blossoms  branches buds  compost  dirt earth fertilizer  flowers  fruit  grass hedge herb mud mulch perennials pests roots  shrubs soil thorns  trees  vegetables weeds worms . . .

And then there are all the tools that humans have invented to help us tame the wilderness and make our gardens grow: gloves greenhouse hoe hose rake shears shovel spade trowel watering can weedwhacker wheelbarrow . . .

So many kinds of gardens! annual garden desert garden flower garden perennial garden rock garden succulent garden tea garden vegetable garden walled garden zen garden . . .

I especially love the vocabulary of garden design and decor: arbor bed bench birdbath conservatory courtyard decking folly fountain gazebo orchard path patio pergola plot pond pot statue trellis tromp l’oeil wall windchime . . .

In fact, it’s no accident that the frolicsome phrase “fountains and follies” made it into two of my books on writing. In Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write, I describe the metaphorical “parks and playgrounds” that distinguish a functioning writing community from a flourishing one:

A functioning community requires a well-developed infrastructure to link its inhabitants together and keep them safe: roads and bridges, streetlights and sewers, power stations and watertreatment plants. A flourishing community supplements the necessities of modern life with amenities designed to lift the spirit and feed the soul: parks and playgrounds, walkways and footbridges, street art and skateboard ramps, fountains and follies. (p. 200)

And in Writing with Pleasure, I invite my readers to read with a non-linear metaphor in mind, one attuned to their own interests and affinities:

For example, you could approach this book as a pleasure garden: a place of meandering pathways and comfortable benches, shade trees and flower beds, fountains and follies, where you can wander and linger at leisure. (p. xvi)

The Noun Garden can help you see and appreciate your own writing (and writing life) as a complex organic entity: intricately designed, carefully structured, lovingly tended, and alive to the pleasure of writer and reader alike.

The Verb Garden

If the Noun Garden points to the products of our writing, the Verb Garden is all about process. To garden is to transform things into actions, whether via transitive verbs that describing our own garden labor (we plant plants, shovel dirt with shovels, and compost leaves to make compost) or intransitive verbs that celebrate acts of nature (flowers flower, rain rains).

Not all gardening nouns double as verbs, of course: we can’t trowel with a trowel; trees don’t tree. Conversely, not all gardening verbs solidify into matching nouns: we don’t prune prunes or sow sows, although it might be fun to try.

Whatever the grammatical quirks of the Verb Garden, it’s clearly an action-oriented place where we make things, grow things, and transform the landscape: dig, fertilize, plant, prune, sow, transplant, water, weed, and so much more.

Any experienced gardener knows that you can’t just stick a seedling in the ground and expect it to flourish. You need to plant it in the right season, choose the right soil, and make sure it gets adequate sunlight or shade. As the roots begin to take hold, you must fertilize, water, and weed. The hardest part comes in late autumn, when you have to cut back even the most vigorous shoots to prepare your plant for winter and ensure abundant blossoms in spring.

To write is to garden: your hands in the soil, your face to the sky. Take heart.

The Adjective Garden

The Adjective Garden is a sparse and spindly place, less abundant than its neighbors.

There I found mostly compound nouns in which the noun garden modifies a second noun, doing the descriptive work of an adjective — for example garden party, garden shed, garden room. Interestingly, garden gets a different weighting in each of these pairings: a garden party is a specific genre of party that can only happen in a garden; a garden shed both inhabits and serves the garden; a garden room is a smaller garden within a larger one, not really a room at all.

Sometimes, as an adjective, garden gets a bad rap. Garden-variety writing is ordinary, not special. To lead my readers down the garden path is an act of deception, not generosity.

My brief tour of the Adjective Garden made me wonder what an Adverb Garden might look like. What would happen if you were to write gardeningly, or gardenishly, or in a gardenly mode?

The Teaching Garden

Gardening can serve a fertile metaphor for teaching, as the word kindergarten (children’s garden) reminds us. Equally importantly, the writing as gardening metaphor can teach us to become more resilient and resourceful writers. Gardeners don’t talk about “shitty first drafts” or “murdering your darlings” or “turbocharging your writing.” They talk about composting, pruning, and patience.

Gardening teaches us to take things slowly and to learn with our hands and hearts as well as with our heads. Liberated from the ching of a clanging cash register or alarm clock, the Tea(ching) Garden becomes a tea garden, a serene space of ritual and repose.

ChattieG’s Garden

I couldn’t possibly end my garden tour without a pitstop in the garden of ChattieG (aka ChatGPT).

Have you seen the new Barbie movie? In Barbieland, the beautiful, brilliant Barbies inhabit a perfect world of pink plastic houses, while the gormless Kens hang out at a place called Beach, where a big blue plastic wave hovers, unbreaking, over the plastic sand.

ChattieG’s garden is a place called Garden, where perfect plastic daisies bloom in perfect plastic flowerbeds. It’s a far cry from my writing garden, where worms ply the soil and scrappy flowers grow, flourish, and fade. I don’t mind visiting ChattieG’s Garden from time to time, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Exit through the Garden Shop

I’ve left out so much here: writing about gardens; writing in gardens; writers and their gardens! But it’s time for me to slip away from my paywalled garden and head back out into the wider world.

I’d love to hear about your own writing-as-gardening experiences, insights, and metaphors. Please leave a comment, or at least plant a heart.

This post was originally published on my free Substack newsletter, Helen’s Word. Subscribe here to access my full Substack archive and get weekly writing-related news and inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.

WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership, which costs just USD $12.50 per month on the annual plan. Not a member? Sign up now for a free 30-day trial!

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Last week I announced that, starting today, my end-of-the-week newsletter would go behind a “paid subscribers and WriteSPACE members only” paywall. 

This week, when I sat down to write my very first paid post, I hit a different kind of wall: Writer’s Block! Faced with the pressure of producing something good enough for people to want to pay for, my brain froze up like an oversized ice cube.

I cursed and kicked at my Writing Block for a while. Then I closed my notebook, stomped out to the kitchen, and wailed in frustration to my husband, “I’m having an existential crisis!” He listened patiently as I described my dilemma. My rant went something like this: 

I feel under pressure to write something amazing for my first paid post: the kind of brilliant missive that will generate lots of likes and comments and forwards and inspire my free subscribers to upgrade. But last week’s newsletter took me hours to write, yet didn’t accomplish any of those things, not even a single comment! Now, in the unlikely event that I actually I do manage to produce something decent, my free subscribers won’t even know about it because I’ve gone and locked it behind a paywall. And if I produce nothing but rubbish, my paid subscribers will all unsubscribe.

“So why did you decide to go paid in the first place?” my husband calmly asked. 

I cast my mind back and told him about my original vision for a twice-weekly newsletter called Helen’s Word. Early each week, I would publish a free post with news about innovative writing resources and upcoming events. Later in the week, Helen’s Word would move into a paywalled garden — a safe space where I can experiment with words and wordcraft amongst fellow writers who, like me, aspire to bring more creativity, color, and joy into their writing lives. I pictured a muddy, messy place for growing things, not a museum filled with perfect glass flowers.

As soon as I articulated the why of my writing — its deeper purpose, its ultimate goal — my Writing Block broke like a raincloud and released a rainfall of words. Freed from the burden of perfection, I once again found my flow…

Writing Unblock #1: Start with Why

Finding the why in Helen’s Word helped me move past my Writing Block into my writing garden (just as Finding the WHY in AI last week helped me figure out how and when to use AI writing tools — or not). So here’s a why-not to try: When your writing gets blocked, write a big question mark in the middle of a sheet of paper, then fill the page with questions and answers. Start with why: the burning heart of your writing, its motivation and purpose. From there you can branch out to other questions: what, where, when, who, how? The deeper you dig into your responses, the more likely you’ll be to find the root cause of your writing block — and root it out!

Writing Unblock #2: Freewrite

Freewriting is an unblocking technique championed by writing scholar Peter Elbow in his book Writing with Power:

To do a freewriting exercise, simply force yourself to write without stopping for ten minutes. Sometimes you will produce good writing, but that’s not the goal. Sometimes you will produce garbage, but that’s not the goal either. . . . If you can’t think of anything to write, write about how that feels or repeat over and over “I have nothing to write” or “Nonsense” or “No.” If you get stuck in the middle of a sentence or thought, just repeat the last word or phrase till something comes along. The only point is to keep writing.

Write about what? It doesn’t really matter. You can write about the topic that’s blocking you, or about writer’s block itself, or about anything else that comes to mind: gardens, dragons, poststructuralist theory. By the time the bell rings, at worst you’ll have broken your word-drought; and at best you may find that you’ve tapped into a whole new wellspring of ideas.

Writing Unblock #3: Talk it through

Talking freely, like writing freely, can dislodge stuck ideas. When I discussed my newsletter dilemma with my husband, the mere act of expressing my anxieties and voicing my aspirations — my why — helped me push through my Writing Block. If you don’t have a sympathetic friend or patient family member close to hand, you can talk to your dog or your cat or your favorite tree, or speak into the voice recorder on your phone so you can play your own words back later on. The point here is not to communicate with a sentient being (although that can be an excellent unblocking strategies too) but simply to activate your brain through the act of talking out loud.

Writing Unblock #4: Write in blocks

Warm thanks to Sophie Nicholls from Dear Writing for this creative unblocking technique. Grab some colorful sticky tape — duct tape, masking tape, washi tape — and mark out a large, asymmetrical grid on a piece of paper; then fill the white spaces between the taped lines with words. There’s something discombobulating but liberating about this exercise: each Writing Block on your formerly blank page now offers you a playful invitation to write.

Writing Unblock #5: Write in spirals

Another Unblock inspired by Sophie Nicholls: Start writing by hand in the centre of a blank page and let your words unwind in a spiral. Rotate your notebook slowly as you write, imagining a wheel being turned, a corkscrew opening a bottle, a galaxy spinning stars into space. Write about what’s opening up in you right now: what new ideas are unfurling like a fern frond as you turn and turn the page, and how might you bring some of that fresh, generative energy to your blocked writing?

Writing Unblock #6: Take your Writing Block around the block

Walk anywhere, at any pace. As you move your body through space, imagine yourself making your way over or through or around your Writing Block. What are its dimensions: how wide, how tall? Can you walk around it like a city block, enter its stairwell like an office block, pick it up like a child’s building block? Fly it like a kite? Fill it with soil and plant it with flowers? When you return to your writing space, check your pockets; if you’re still carrying your block, open a window and toss it out. (Make sure it doesn’t land on anyone’s head!) Then sit down with your notebook or computer to discover what words will appear next, now that you’ve outwalked your block.

Writing Unblock #7: Find a generative metaphor

Freewrite, draw, or mind map about a hobby you enjoy: for example, hiking, cooking, or gardening. How do you deal with obstacles and setbacks along the way, and how might those coping strategies help you move past your Writing Block? In Writing with Pleasure, I describe the power of metaphor to help us take control of our own writing narrative:

A well-turned metaphor can . . . amplify our pleasure in writing, casting light into the darkest corners of our Writespace and helping us negotiate its challenges. By rendering abstract emotions concrete, metaphors give shape and substance to our fears, hopes, and desires. At their most generative, they become the emotional touchstones that we return to again and again, the guides and mentors that lead us onward and inward to new discoveries and deeper truths about our writing.

Journeys inevitably involve breakdowns and detours; cooking involves spilled milk and collapsed soufflés; gardening involves compost, pests, and weeds; yet we cope with all those things, as we know that they’re simply part of the process. A compelling metaphor for writing that speaks to your own lived experience can help you transform your Writing Block from an impassable obstacle into a mere bump in the road.

Writing Unblock #8: Make something

I love assembling cut paper collages for my newsletter posts because the mere act of making something with my hands frees up my mind to wander in new directions. Searching for images and patterns, cutting out shapes, moving objects around, playing with color combinations, squeezing glue from the bottle and brushing it onto the paper: every step of the process feels meditative, textured, creative. When a Writing Block is filling up all the space in your brain, try letting your hands do the thinking and see what happens next.

Writing Unblock #9: Ask ChattieG for help

Last week I wrote about using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT to help you with routine writing tasks. Note the word generative here: these tools are great at trawling the Internet to assemble a compendium of ideas that other people have already come up and then using them to generate new ones. Ask for “10 ways to overcome writer’s block,” and you’ll get a fairly bland list of suggestions: talk to other writers; develop a writing routine; eliminate distractions. (Also, rather surprisingly, “Try writing drunk”). But change your prompt to “10 creative ways to overcome writer’s block” or even “10 crazy ways to overcome writer’s block,” and the suggestions get much more playful. Write with your non-dominant hand? Write while doing yoga? Write while wearing a costume? If your Writing Block is big and stubborn enough, anything is worth a try.

Writing Unblock #10: Crowdsource

In my upcoming 6-week Creativity Catalyst course, which starts in early September, we’ll be exploring these and other arts-based techniques for bringing creative, generative thinking to your academic, professional and personal writing. I’d love to see you there!

But in the meantime, it’s over to you. How do you move forward when your words get stuck? Please share your favorite Writing Unblocks in the Comments.

This post was originally published on my free Substack newsletter, Helen’s Word. Subscribe here to access my full Substack archive and get weekly writing-related news and inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.

WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership, which costs just USD $12.50 per month on the annual plan. Not a member? Sign up now for a free 30-day trial!

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Imagine that you’ve just hired a bright, eager research assistant called ChattieG. (That’s blogger Inger Mewburn’s playful moniker for ChatGPT. Isn’t it perfect?)

ChattieG’s job is to help you write better — but what exactly does that mean? More clearly? More efficiently? More persuasively? More creatively? If you hate writing, can ChattieG help you fall in love?

Amidst all the hysteria and hype around the rapid ascendance of AI language models such as ChattieG — what are they, how do they work, which one is best — it’s worth stepping back to put your eye to the telescope and ask the most basic question of all: why do you write in the first place? 

Try using the acronym WHY to shape your responses. For example:

Writing Helps You

Communicate with other people across time and space.

Send your research findings out into the world.

Express yourself creatively and emotionally.

Discover what you’re really thinking.

Generate new ideas.

Once you’ve zoomed in to find the why of your own writing, you can more easily shift your gaze to the WHY in AI. Why might you want to invite a chatbot into your writing orbit in the first place — and how can your new writing assistant help you become the writer you want to be?

AI as research assistant

Writing with a research assistant can Help You get ahead in your career — especially if you work in a field where research articles and reports follow a consistent template. With chatbotly cheer and extraordinary speed, ChattieG can gather resources, analyze data, organize your arguments, draft up your findings, and copyedit your work, thereby helping you research more efficiently and publish more prolifically. But chatbots are notoriously prone to error and hallucination, so you’ll need to keep an eye on ChattieG. An AI research assistant can help you do the grunt work, but you’re still the person whose name will go on the published paper.

AI as collaborator 

Writing collaboratively with a colleague or friend can Help You write more generatively, creatively, and even joyfully — unless, of course, the writing relationship sours into frustration or worse. The same is true of writing with a chatbot. Sure, ChattieG can spin out a Shakespearean sonnet about existential philosophy in a matter of seconds; but you’ll quickly tire of that game. Remember the 2013 Spike Jonze movie her, starring Joaquin Phoenix as an introverted loner who falls in love with his computer’s operating system? Like the sexy chatbot voiced in the film by Scarlett Johansson, ChattieG pretends to be human but is not — and in the end, real human beings generally prefer the company of other real human beings.

AI as secretary

Writing with a competent secretary (defined by Merriam-Webster as “one employed to handle correspondence and manage routine and detail work for a superior”) can Help You write formulaic prose more clearly and quickly, which in turn can free up your time for other, more creative pursuits. Simply dictate some bullet points containing the key information that you want to convey, specify your preferred writing style (e.g. creative or precise), and ChattieG will wrangle your fractured text into friendly emails, engaging website blurbs, and the like. Just keep in mind that word “superior” in the dictionary definition of secretary: you’re the boss here, and ChattieG’s job is to help you, not supplant you.

AI as teacher

Writing with a teacher or coach can Help You learn, grow, and become a better writer. And here is where ChattieG has truly surprised me: my chirpy research assistant has become, in many ways, my writing instructor. Whenever my artificially intelligent chatbot rewrites one of my sentences to make it shorter and sharper, I take note. This isn’t to say that I agree with all of ChattieG’s stylistic choices; much AI-generated writing is bland, formulaic, and predictable, and it will no doubt become even more so as Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD) — the tendency of generative AI models to spin into self-consuming “autophagous loops” that feed on their own machine-generated outputs — becomes more prevalent in the chatbot population. (ChattieG would never write such a long and syntactically complex sentence, by the way; but I trust my non-artificially-intelligent readers to be able to deal with it).

So why do I write? Because I’m a human being with a human voice, and that voice connects me to the world.

And why do I sometimes write with ChattieG? Because AI can help me with certain aspects of the writing process: for example, by saving me time on routine writing tasks; by prompting me to express things differently when I get stuck (much as a thesaurus does); and by reminding me what clear, concise, verb-driven prose looks like.

But the rest of the time, I’m back to wrestling with my wordcraft on my own — and relishing the challenge. This newsletter took me many hours to write, whereas ChattieG could have cranked it out in a flash. But I’ll bet you would have been able to spot the difference….

P.S. For what it’s worth, here’s ChattieG’s Shakespearean sonnet about existential philosophy:

To be or not to be, that is the question

That plagues the mind of every thinking soul

What is the meaning of this life's duration

And what's the purpose of our earthly role?

Some say we are the masters of our fate

And we can shape our destiny with will

Some say we are but pawns of chance and state

And we can only hope and suffer still

But I, who have beheld the face of love

And felt its power in my heart and mind

I know that there is something more above

And something more within that we can find

For love is not a product of our choice

But love is the expression of our voice

This post was originally published on my free Substack newsletter, Helen’s Word. Subscribe here to access my full Substack archive and get weekly writing-related news and inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.

WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership, which costs just USD $12.50 per month on the annual plan. Not a member? Sign up now for a free 30-day trial!

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