It’s a fact—all writers get stuck. But what should we when the painstaking proverbial writer’s block hits us over the head? Should we slip into a Requiem for a Dream type of depression? Or do we saddle up like John Wayne and brave the elements?

One idea is to brainstorm—they say that the creative side of our brain works non-linearly. The most conducive environment to brainstorming is indeed one of chaos—the less linear, the more creative. I’ll leave you to your own devices as you try and figure out your own “non-linear” approach, but one idea is to shotgun-write ideas and words that come to your head rather than complete sentences.

Of course one of the more obvious ways to overcome writer’s block is to draw influence from other authors. But where we do we draw the legal and ethical line? The short answer: you probably won’t. If you research copyright law online you will find a myriad of answers with seemingly defined parameters—but when it hits the courts it’s nearly always a matter of subjectivity.

One of the easiest things a writer can do is to find influence with little to no worry about copyright infringement, is to study history. History is full of some of the wildest and craziest characters, some so evil they would make Sauron feel at home in a Disney movie, and others so brave they would make Samwise Gamgee (the brave) look like *Spoiler Alert* Fredo Corleone in The Godfather Part II.

Not only is history full of interesting people and cultures like the Chinese who bound their feet so tight they would fold over on themselves, or the Aztecs who made balloon animals from animal intestines and burned them for the gods. History contains traces of human identity and helps us explore our nature—who we are, where we’ve come from, and how we’ve tried to cope with different challenges throughout the ages. Best of all history is vast and free. An author can easily draw from any age or culture and put their own spin on things without concern for copyright infringement.

They say that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it—but so are those