Easiest Way to Unblock Creativity
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- Опубликовано: 3 янв 2024
- When was the last time inspiration hit you? When was the last time you were in the flow state with your writing? For many writers, the answer to both of these questions is either, “a long time ago,” or, “I can’t even remember.” Although all of us strive to tune into our creativity and enjoy the writing process, sadly, this is a reality for very few of us. For most writers, the creative flow state feels like an unattainable dream that we will never reach.
What most writers don’t know is that there is always something specific blocking our creativity. Usually, we’re asking ourselves one particular question that not only interrupts our flow, but disconnects us entirely from the creative process. This is when we end up in a situation where we’re reacting to the creative process out of anxiety, instead of responding to our own creativity in the present moment.
And the more anxiety you’re feeling, the less able you are to flow with your writing.
Once you become aware of how this one question triggers your anxiety, you can then take steps to shift into a place where you’re feeling confident in yourself as a writer. The more self-confidence you feel, the better you’re able to be in flow, and the more fun writing is, overall.
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Hi Lauren - I would love to take the Finding your writing voice but when I try to access your site, I can't access it. The message says that the site uses unsupported protocols. (I'm in the UK, so I don't know if that has something to do with it.) Is there another way to sign up and view the class?
@@dianemiller6718 Hey Diane, Yes! Email me at writecitysf@gmail.com and I'll send you details on the class, and if you do want to join, I'll get you setup on registration. :)
Such wise advice! This is at the very heart of every start & stop I’ve experienced with my writing and art. As a recovering perfectionist, I’ve found that lowering the bar significantly - not expecting much from myself (relative to my usual perfect & over-the-top expectations) - has enabled me to make steady progress. Thank you, Lauren, for being a lighthouse for creatives who struggle!
The "Am I doing this the right way?" question gets me stuck all the time. For some reason I've been revolving around the question of if drafting longhand or with touch typing is best. I go back and forth and am swayed so easily based on research, but I can't seem to come up with my own determination.
Our insecurities come up. I know that feeling but I think it's better to wait for a while until we are not so anxious to read it again and save whatever you feel worth saving. Being a good writer is also being a good corrector, not mean, not negligent.
I think when you feel a sense of relief is a sign that something is good about it, maybe not all but I sometimes destroyed things I have written that could have been re-modeled.
So I think is good to keep it for a while and read it again when you are in a more objective mindset and not when our inner critic shows up.
I have read this advice long ago: whatever you write, keep it in your drawer at least for a week.
I would add that even if you don't like it, you might save good ideas, sentences or expressions you like before deleting the whole piece.
Excellent, thanks Lauren...just what I needed to hear x
Thank you so much for this video Lauren, it lands eerily close to the heart of a problem I have struggled with as a brand new writer. I have enjoyed and learned from all your content and every class and writing session I have participated in, and I expect this one to be just as enlightening. My latest block occurred for me in the last session of the October Silent Writing group, and I've been stuck since. I would like to share here a part of my story and experience that may help illustrate some of the ideas you talked about here and hopefully give some food for thought for others who may be struggling with similar obstacles, and maybe even provide another angle to view this from that you had not considered and can hopefully address. A little context:
I'm "A'zoidant" a term I've coined to express the Schizoid and Avoidant Personality adaptations I formed due to attachment trauma and ongoing emotional abuse and neglect from birth through my teens. At 15 I walked away from my Fundamentalist upbringing, my childhood, and anything reeking of religion or the irrational in favor of reason, and survival, but retained a tentative link to my dissociated emotions, intuition, and the mythic through literature, music, and role-playing games. The writers, musicians, and game creators I admired became my psychologists, philosophers, and priests, providing me with a language to help calm the Tempest in the iron teapot between my ears. Later, my wife was instrumental in introducing me to rudimentary Taoist and Buddhist philosophy, but otherwise my "gods" were cold hard reality, reason, survival, and sharing a life with my wife. When she died unexpectedly 9 years ago after 23 years together I began to crumble. A long series of defeats and betrayals, then a chance meeting with someone who brought me eye-to-eye with my core trauma, plunged me fully into the world of the irrational and spiritual that I had mostly ignored for over 40 years.
She was "...surely a daughter of Pink Floyd and Venus, or perhaps Aphrodite Herself..." - we were chatting amiably, and I felt a deja vu sense of "recognition" though I knew we had never met; suddenly my mind froze as if meeting the glance of Medusa- I shrank, became a cockroach at her feet, not worthy of staining the sole of her dainty sandal. I scurried out of the shop without a phone number, but with her name, a single syllable, following me and echoing in my insect brain which began spinning yarns from it of the possibilities I scurried away from.
Later, when I was alone, I entered an immersive waking dream that began with a poem that spontaneously unwound in my mind, whispered in my ear by the beating wings of a dragonfly:
"I'm pleased to meet you
my long-forgotten friend,
though I don't remember,
when last we met,
were we then lovers or kin?,
or how many times
have our lives' lines
been crossed in thick or in thin,
but I hope we share in the pleasure
of meeting here...again"
-excerpt from "The Book Of Ronin "
The (real) owl in the pine tree some yards away repeatedly asked "Who". After I frantically scribbled the poem into a notebook a visual fantasy narrative of my early childhood unfolded, accompanied by a "lullaby" (Dio-"Don't Talk To Strangers) sang to me by my "Seeress" mother as she stitched my swaddling blankets around me and blingly sewed my lips shut, cursing me to silence. A figure in a twilight, barren, grayscale landscape appeared, a mercenary "protector" and "defender of lost causes" in shabby piecemeal armor with a katana slung over his shoulder. I alternately observed him and WAS him, as we received cryptic instructions from an unseen Feminine presence - "...raise a Temple, a bridge between worlds that will allow you to walk between them at will. Wise teachers and students will come and a community will grow up around it..." and in doing so I would gain the "power to create Beauty from Darkness Itself". As the "dream" ended I wept silently, exhausted and bewildered, as the owl continued its questioning. On the third day I was visited by a bright cobalt blue and black damselfly, surely a jewel from the breast of some goddess' gown, who lighted nearby and surveyed me with his all-seeing eyes as if asking "So, what's it gonna be?" I was speechless and had no answer. A citron female arrived and he took wing and joined with her mid-flight, their bodies forming a lopsided open heart symbol. They danced, parted, and departed to whatever world they came from, apparently accompanied by the owl. I remained in a distant hologram world now punctuated by exquisite symbolism expressed so eloquently by every tiny flower, weeping yet again at the agonizingly beautiful wonder all around me. You can't make this stuff up, at least I can't. Message received.
I never considered writing before posting my first public comments in a chat group on Christmas Eve of 2022. Since then I have sharpened my quill in the forums of several wise teachers who have showed me in 9 months the truth of my A'zoidant nature I had been unaware of, and storylines and characters began to emerge from my scribblings.
"The Book Of Ronin" doesn't easily fit into any existing genre- it is a fantasy/adventure/dark romance/ political and social commentary/psychological thriller/self help/neo-paganist revival/meta-historical/modern mythology challenge to the status quo. And it is a diary of one man's experience of the cause and effects of childhood trauma, and his attempts to re-integrate the fragments of a broken life-it is my soul, tattoed on the page in blue ink distilled from starlight and grief. One of those fragments is the subject of my current despair and a central figure in my trauma adaptations.
AniMae (her Latin name) first made her appearance this past summer in another dream-like storytime inspired by, among other influences, the Seal song "Kiss From A Rose". In summary: Ronin awakens her spirit with ritual magick and invites her to dance ("I feared you would never ask.") as he plays violin, and she projects her physical form into a "possible" world (via dragonfly) where she appears to a young acolyte priest and frustrated artist, emerging from the shadows of his bedroom wearing only her bracers and jewels- "I come to you neither naked nor ashamed, but as I was created, as were you." Through their sexual encounter she reveals aspects of her Divine Feminine nature and leaves him with gifts which he cherishes but feels compelled to hide (a freshly-pencilled self-portrait, a new rosary made from her jewels, a violet long-stemmed rose on his pillow, and a violet "rosy" kiss on his throat surrounding two small puncture wounds). Ronin awakes dishevelled, lying on the stone lid of a tomb, the site of his ritual; his armor has been cast off haphazardly, his inkwell overturned and spilling its last drops, but pages of his diary have been filled and he has a brand new tattoo on his chest, a violet "rosy" kiss on his throat surrounding two small puncture wounds, and a violet long-stemmed rose lies beside him. As he takes the rose in hand to smell its perfume he pricks his finger on a thorn and a fat drop of blood wells up and falls to the alabaster stone where it is absorbed and dissappears. A rich female soprano voice echoes up from the tomb below as if through vast halls of stone -" Why do you taunt and tease me so with mere crumbs of yourself Darling, when I have waited here for so long? Come to me, give yourself to me, and you shall have all that I am. There's room inside for two."
My next encounter with AniMae was through the guided imagery/automatic writing exercise from the "Writing Into The Dark" course, part of an argument in progress between she and Ronin. My body hummed with electric heat prickles as she spoke and I transcribed for at least 10 minutes. She explained her vampirism, why she is the way she is, that SHE is not the evil parasite, and Ronin's dilemma: "Life or Death, Ronin, me AND you, or me OR you? CHOOSE!" She still has much more to say, as does Ronin. She is the gateway and guide to the deeper unconscious where Ronin must find the answers he seeks and the primary purpose of his mission- the boy. Without her story and assistance all is lost.
I hadn't yet begun putting the first AniMae encounter on paper before the second encounter was written, though it had been living inside me for weeks as I was preoccupied with practical matters and a very revealing personal narrative to a correspondent and potential collaborator. I think I began recording AniMae's debut story while nursing a vulnerability hangover, and though her story is rich in my mind there are many details of her actions and aspects that are difficult to express, and she represents symbolic concepts that I am not yet fully familiar with (like the contents of the orange purse) and I was stopped in my tracks as I diverted my attention to research of symbolism I felt was crucial to explaining her character and how to include it (her jewels, for instance). I also felt I was missing some essential concept that I had failed to recognize and interpret through the story and that had to be included here - without these elements the story is little more than porn and a shallow plot device. I also recognize a repeating theme of being brought eye-to-eye with my core trauma, a re-enactment of that September day and a name, a single syllable, that still echoes in my head. Is my mind shutting me out to avoid confronting what I most want to discover? I have been confronted by similar mechanisms in other parts of the story, as in life, with similar results. Trauma is a trickster- how do I befriend an adversary that refuses to be seen?
🙏🕊💙🌒🌕🌘