070Today over at ARC, Richelle and I are blogging about our best ideas for breaking through writer’s block. One of my go-to strategies is to pick up a collection of poems or short stories. Billy Collins is one of my favorites. The ideas are playful, the language is lovely, and the stories within the poems clear away my stress and help me get back to my own writing.
From “Advice to Writers”

From a small vase, sparkling  blue, lift
a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,
and cover pages with tiny sentences
like long rows of devoted ants
that followed you in from the woods.

Billy Collins, The Apple That Astonished Paris; Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 1988