Writing

I find that, for me, the best thing I can do to get around a block is to stop attacking it. My mind works in the background and eventually produces a strong solution.

Some specifics are: long walks during which I intentionally don't think about that project, a few days writing another section or tackling a different piece entirely, or editing for a while rather than writing. The best thing I can do for a book-length project after the first draft is stop looking at it for a few months, but you can apply the same principle (that taking your conscious mind off the work allows new thoughts to percolate) for any duration during the drafting process.

I agree with Powderhorn's assessment, though, that your framing of this hurdle sounds less about struggling to compose sentences and more about struggling with the content emotionally. In those cases, I tend to lean on friends or writing partners and aim to talk out/about the issue before putting it to paper.

I hope you find a new creative path forward!

You only have one of those chapters? Lucky!

For me, facing such a passage can be relatively overwhelming, and it doesn't help that during such times, memory can be fragmented and disjointed, adding yet another hurdle to the process.

That said, my first question is whether the words aren't coming or something else is blocking you that you're interpreting as words because that's the end result. I'm not so much looking for you to answer that question here, but rather to spend some time for yourself determining whether you've correctly ascertained the root cause(s). More than once, I've gotten stuck and gone off on a useless excursion for lack of considering the actual problem being faced.

I have only two suggestions:

• Distill the chapter into a single sentence with at most two dependent clauses. There's obviously an inciting event, but that may be a red herring when figuring out what the chapter is for in the larger narrative. Ultimately, it needs to advance the story, and determining how that occurs (later themes that become at least incipient at this juncture are good threads to pull on) can bring the structure and flow into sharper focus.

• Immerse yourself in what you can from that era. Music is going to be easiest; depending on how far you're looking back, little else such as landmarks may be left. If you were writing at the time (either journaling or personal communication), that's obviously going to be a more reliable form of memory than viewing things from across decades -- and you can't plagiarize yourself, so don't shy away from your own primary sources.

If you can afford it, talk therapy might help. In my experience, a good therapist is good at asking the questions that make it easier to put difficult memories into words, words that make it easier to think about the memory in a verbal context with other ideas that have also been put into words. Or in other words, to process them.