Barbara Dee is the author of 14 middle grade novels, including Violets Are Blue and Maybe He Just Likes You. In her essay for PW, Dee reflects on her creative process and her forthcoming book, Unstuck, about a girl who struggles with anxiety and writer’s block.
Every writer knows the feeling: you’re sitting at the computer, or your writing notebook, staring at the same blank page as the day before, and the day before that. So you force yourself to write a sentence, but it’s terrible, so you delete it. Then you write a single word and delete that too. Now your head is buzzing and your heart is racing. You’re starting to panic, because what if you never write anything again?
