On Throwing Rocks

Hi. My name is Arilin, and I have writer’s block.

I don’t have it all the time. I’m not sure I have it most of the time, although as I write this at the start of 2026, I’ve had it for weeks and I still can’t break it.

Now, if you look around my website you might think, “Oh, come on, you write that much and you think you’ve ever had writer’s block?” Well, all things are relative, I guess. I’ve written five novels (Saida & Autumn, The Turning, Hurricane, the in-progress Mus Numena, and under a different name, Kismet), five novellas (Goddess, Big Trouble, Gates, and under a different name, Indigo Rain and Going Concerns), and several dozen short stories—but I’ve also been writing for longer than some of you have been alive. (Pause while I crumble to dust. Okay, back now.) There are far more prolific writers within furry, and many who crank out two thousand or more words a day. I consider it a win if I get five hundred a day, and I haven’t been hitting that fairly low-bar mark for about a month.

There’s a lot of advice out in the world about how to get through writer’s block: try writing something from a writing prompt, which could be anything from a sentence to a single word. Change your routine, anything from varying the music you play when you write to varying where you write. Go for a walk. Doodle. Do chores. Schedule your writing. Stop scheduling your writing.

All of these tricks work some of the time for some people; some tricks might work for you nine times out of ten, others might never work. For me, the most likely tricks are taking my laptop to a coffee shop or brewery—something I do just about weekly—or, if I’m writing at home, forcing myself to do 25-minute pomodoro sprints, and/or making sure that I have music playing. (Usually instrumental music, lo-fi or smooth jazz—if I’m sitting in front of the keyboard and things are too silent, my brain tends to start looping music inside my head that breaks my concentration. Just me?)

But they don’t always work. Sometimes, nothing seems to work. I just caught myself staring listlessly at my computer screen for the past five minutes. (I’ve put on Apple’s lo-fi station. Let’s see if that helps.)

I wish I had a surefire secret trick to reveal here, but I don’t. Sometimes what causes writer’s block isn’t something you can address with tricks, because it’s not something internal, not a failure on your part, not just the way your weird neurodivergent brain works. It’s ambient. It’s living in the middle of nowhere, or in the middle of somewhere that feels actively hostile to your existence. It’s being mired in a hateful family situation that’s untenable, yet near impossible to escape. It’s feeling the weight of becoming a caretaker to siblings or children or, as you get older, parents. And, yeah, it’s the fascism, watching a lot of what you “knew” about your country disintegrate as half your countrymen hand over power to people who are so obviously fucking villains did any of them take a junior high history class or just watch a single goddamn movie made since World War II—

Ahem. Anyway.

Something I’m learning about myself is that as much as I like being solitary, I need some sense of community, and I haven’t been giving myself enough of that since I had to move back to Florida (a state that feels actively hostile to many of my friends’ existences, even if I personally “pass”) (to live in the middle of nowhere) (to become a caretaker for a parent). The times I’ve been most recharged have been times I’ve left Florida. Going back to the San Francisco Bay Area for Further Confusion, to Pittsburgh for Anthrocon, to Dallas to Texas Furry Fiesta, to Lawrence, Kansas for a two-week residential writing workshop (not furry). I don’t think it’s getting away from the Florida-ness of it at all as much as it is being around people who feel like “my people.” Being in another part of Florida—a blue dot like Orlando or St. Petersburg, just like Lawrence and Dallas are blue dots in their respective red seas—helps, to be sure. I’ve noticed that when I lived in Florida a quarter-century ago, I loved exploring rural areas, but now I want to be in funky walkable neighborhoods where homes and businesses fly Pride flags. I don’t need to touch grass, I need to hang around queer anarchists.

Okay, but what does this mean for you, person who’s struggling with writer’s block but doesn’t share the particulars of my situation? Well: it means that first, you try the easy tricks, the lo-fi station or the pomodoros or writing at your favorite Italian restaurant. But then, you might need to think about the ambient things, the things that weigh on you and pull you away from your joy and your wonder and your you that you can’t change.

And figure out how to change them anyway. Just a little. Bit by bit. Piece by piece.

Talk to friends more—don’t wait for them to talk to you. (I’m really bad at that last one.) Find your community, or for all too many of us, stop neglecting the community you’ve already found. Travel more, if you can, and if it helps, but don’t neglect the local, the physical. Find your blue dot. A coffee shop, a brewery, a book club. A little sci-fi or comic con. A furry meetup. An Indivisible group, or some other way to throw rocks at fascists that resonates with you. Getting your words out into the world is a good way to throw rocks at fascists.

And no, none of what I said there is easy. The things that aren’t expensive are, in their own way, even more difficult. But here’s the thing: self-care isn’t selfish. You don’t have to do something that makes you worthy of it. It’s survival. And we need you to survive. We need you out there throwing rocks with us.

In less than two weeks from when I’m writing this, I’m going to be back in the SF Bay Area for five days, and I’m hoping that will recharge me, at least for a while. I hope to travel more this year, although that will depend on both my parent’s condition and my finances. But I think even just staycations in blue dot areas—taking out more time than just my Saturday day trips—might hit my reset button. I don’t know if it will, and if it does, I don’t know how long it’ll last. But I’m pretty sure it’s something I need.