Part one in a four part series on re-finding your creativity
With luck and surrender, the first six months – year – two years of writing were like being a rocket in full launch.. Everything you experienced – from your first sight of the wild Mojave desert to a gum wrapper in a small town gutter – inspired you. Even if you were a beginner in your craft, the words, the pictures, the loops and whorls of details seemed to emerge from you naturally. You felt like you were in the best kind of being in love – and you were!
Now, somewhere down the line, you are stuck. Blocking may have happened slowly: a day, a few days gone by when somehow you couldn’t find time or heart to sit down with creating – and suddenly it has been six months since you have brought a story, a poem, a few lines through. Or you may have found yourself suddenly without inspiration. The desert has gone drab and lifeless. The gum wrapper is just a soggy piece of paper and not the beginning of a sad and wonderful love story.
You are not alone. Every writer can begin to wonder if s/he had imagined the incandescence of being plugged into a live wire of creation. Maybe we’ve even read this line from poet/novelist Marge Piercy: The real writer writes… And we fear that if we are not creating, we are not a real writer, photographer, film-maker. I’ve never met writer who hasn’t gone through this.
There are near-infinite reasons why any of us find ourselves blocked. And there are nearly as many ways to break through what can feel like the end of our deepest dreams for ourselves. Blocked! 2 will take a look at how our childhood and teen experiences can either encourage or stomp on our creativity. Blocked! 3 will explore how we sabotage our work. Blocked! 4 will give you tricks, challenges and exercises to help you come back to your dreams of writing, photographing and filming. Blocked! 4 comes with a user warning: the tricks, challenges and exercises will only work if you work them. As you may have learned when you first began creating, the magic lies in taking action.
Feel free to respond to this post with any questions or experiences you have about being blocked,
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