Goodreads asked Marie-Helene Bertino:

How do you deal with writer’s block?

Marie-Helene Bertino I've never had a moment in which I didn't have words, but I have had moments in which the body and mind were tired, sad, pummeled. I try to do something else to take my mind away from the page. I sing, dance, teach, have a long conversation with a good friend, walk my dog, antique, refinish a piece of furniture, call my mom, go on a very long walk, work out, paint, take a class... That's for the less serious kind of page-weariness. There were ten months I could not write after a set of scathing notes and what helped me then was switching up my practice. I began writing in ways I'd never tried before: in bed, in the middle of the night, in coffeeshops, in libraries, etc... In this way, I found a back door to my practice and tricked myself back into the house of my own creativity. To do any of these things, I find I hold myself in good stead when I cultivate ideas and interests that have nothing to do with writing but more to do with my curiosity about the world. The project of my creativity is life-long, and I treat it as such, a garden I want to grow and bloom forever in ways that surprise me. For me, this means I prepare, protect, recalibrate, cultivate, and repair the tools for my personal trade: my imagination, time, and mind.

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