Writer’s block is a truly horrible enemy. It’s not just a cliche, and I suspect it applies to creatives of all types, but a writer can easily lose months or years to writer’s block. I most certainly have. It’s nothing as simple as being able to think of the right word; it’s far more to do with the vulnerability of creativity, and fears of failure and of success, and laying yourself open to being judged. It grabs you, and then the next thing you know an entire day has gone by without doing anything useful at all — or a week. Or more.
I’ll give you a technique for beating writer’s block in a moment, but in many ways, that’s what this site is about. My purpose in developing Ghostwoods is three-fold. Partly, it’s to get myself thinking about things that are interesting, or useful, or stimulate my imagination. It’s also a chance to air some ideas, hopefully get a little bit of feedback or reaction in some areas. Ideally, the site will also help me to enforce some self-discipline, give me an extra rod to beat myself with when I’d rather go and sit in the park or something. As a bonus, it’s always great to have a venue to meet interesting new people. The one thing I’m absolutely not going to do is try to put in paid advertising links.
My Moleskin Journal, by Earl
So. Back to block. The best thing you can do to help unblock yourself creatively is to keep morning pages. It’s simple. Every day, once you’re up and awake, write three pages or so of text (about 750 words). It doesn’t have to be good English. It doesn’t even have to be in any language you know. The content absolutely doesn’t matter. Write about whatever’s on your mind, total stream of consciousness babble. If you literally have a blank mind, write “My mind is blank” two hundred times, although I guarantee your subconscious will throw you something else fairly quickly.
Never let anyone else see your morning pages. Feel free to delete/shred/burn it as soon as you’re done, if you’re worried about it falling into the wrong hands. Just make sure you do it, every day, soon after getting up.
Keeping morning pages really helps to clear your mind, to get your worries and fears out of your head and onto the page. Without them in the way, creativity becomes much easier. For writers, it also gets your subconscious into the idea of writing, removing some of the immediate hurdle. It’s not always easy to force yourself to do it at first, but persevere with it a few weeks, and it’ll become an indispensable part of your daily routine. Over time, it will help you to get a better handle on your own psychology, and it can be a very useful therapeutic tool in its own right.
If you’re trying to be creative however, it can be the key to unlocking your talents.
Is there any equivalent for drawing that people have heard of or can think of? I have a hard time getting started on my pile of ‘good ideas for later’, I just feel boring and talentless
Actually, morning pages do work well for any creative endeavour, not just word-related ones. It’s more to do with clearing the subconscious than about the writing side of it. That said, there very may well be good art-related techniques, but I don’t know any off-hand. I have an artist friend; I’ll ask her and report back if she has any good suggestions!