Artist M.L. Rio is just like the rest of us who create–sometimes she needs a little help, a nudge toward the possible on this Winter’s Solstice darkest day. Consider this your quiet gift of a hip check into the creative lane.

Overcoming Creative Obstacles (Writer’s Block)

When wrestling with writer’s block, Rio uses practical strategies, often relating to shifting focus or lowering expectations:

1. Treat Writing as a Job: Rio emphasizes that if writing is a career, you gotta do the time.  “Clock in and do your time,” even if the work feels difficult, forcing oneself to continue even when it “sucks”.
2. Use Physical Movement: To get her brain moving, Rio prioritizes physical movement. She believes that if she gets her body moving (like taking a walk or going to the gym), the brain will follow, and she often brainstorms while exercising.
3. Engage with External Art: When stuck, Rio makes sure to “feed her creative wellspring” by engaging with other people’s art. This includes activities such as going to a concert, visiting a museum, or reading a book that is not her own, which helps “grease the wheels and get stuff moving”.
4. Deliberately Write a Bad Version: As a last resort, Rio will intentionally write the worst version of the material she possibly can. This process is described as “very liberating” because it removes the stakes, ensuring she at least ends up with something, a zero draft at the least. By turning off her own “taste filter,” she often finds her way back into the flow, and her good writer instincts kick in after a couple of pages.

Enhancing Artistic Quality and Depth

Rio uses “intensive, holistic methods” to enhance the depth, realism, and visceral quality of her narratives. What the hell does that entail? See below:

1. Visceral and Sensory Writing: Rio describes herself as a “very visceral, physical writer” who aims to write books that feel so immersive readers can “climb inside them and live there”. To achieve this, she likes to write using all five senses.
2. Immersive On-Location Research: To ensure an accurate sense of place, especially in narratives with multiple locations, Rio finds it crucial to “get boots on the ground and really know what you’re talking about”. For the complete rewrite of Hot Wax, she sold her house and lived out of her car for 18 months, driving around, visiting research locations, and writing in places like roadside diners.
3. Prioritize Mundane Details: To counteract the tendency of fiction (especially about music or theater) to romanticize these worlds, Rio highlighted the importance of including mundane details. She deliberately made *Hot Wax* a “gross book” that is sweaty, gritty, grimy, and “reeking of cigarettes and hairspray and beer” to represent the truth of the world as she experienced it.
4. Use Music as Point Zero: Music is the “point zero” of her writing process, regardless of the book’s topic. She continuously compiles a “master tapes” soundtrack playlist during the writing and rewriting process that captures the overall “vibe of the book”.
5. Reject Expectations and Embrace the “Weird Shit”: After receiving industry feedback that her previous work wasn’t “literary enough” and that her writing (as a woman) needed to be quiet and subtle, Rio found that enhancing her artistic quality required resisting those norms. Encouraged by an editor to make Hot Wax “bigger and louder and weirder and more obnoxious,” she realized she needed permission to “do the weird shit,” which ultimately made the book work.
6. Holistic Writing Definition: Rio adopts a holistic view of writing, defining it beyond just putting new words on paper. Her process includes outlining, revision, marketing, research (driven by her PhD background), and spending time in her “discovery space” her mindscape.

So I am taking these  days between Winter Solstice and New Year’s Day to apply some or most of Rio’s advice.  Let me know if you want to meet for an adhoc short discussion on how to apply these to a kernel of a creative seed. Maybe it will sprout.