Sometimes it finds you when you look at the blank page. Other times when you have written half of your novel. Perhaps a few chapters before the end. You sit in front of your laptop, you place your fingers on the keyboard and after a few seconds, you find yourself scrolling down your Facebook news feed. Or, you grab a pen, write a few words on your notebook, then leave the pen because you decide to make a banoffee pie recipe instead. Your story either remains unborn inside your brain or unfinished on your hard drive. So, how do we overcome a creative block?

1. You need to understand why the story is important to you.

Do you want to inspire people? Do you want to give them a lesson? To communicate with them? Is it because you feel it’s important? Is it only because you want to take it out of your body? No matter what the reason is, write it down. You don’t have to share this. Write it there just for yourself. It might be a few sentences or just words or it can be a full page. Why is this beneficial? Well, first of all, you will manage to write something. Then it will give you a hint of how to structure your story if you are at the early writing stage. If you are nearly at the end it will probably give you a guide on how to end your story. It takes me more or less five years to write a novel. When I start I am a different person and have different things to say. After five years, I might end up towards a different direction from the story I am writing. This is also another reason to check why the story is still important to you.

2. Make a storyline.

It doesn’t need to be complete and you don’t have to do it at the beginning of your writing. If you do it before you start writing it will probably help you understand your character’s journey. It will also give you a guide on how to write chapters or scenes. If you have already started the story then it will help you identify the gaps in the plot. How to do it? You need to find your own way. I use two different methods. I draw a storyline and mark every important stop in my character’s journey. The other thing I do is to write down basic elements of every chapter and scene. When I read my notes they look like a summary of the whole story and then it’s easier to identify what is missing. A simple example is this: Let’s assume I write about a character’s daily life. He wakes up, goes to work, eats lunch, goes back home, watches tv and then sleeps. This is his storyline but I don’t see any human interaction. This is because this element is missing from my story. So, I will probably need to write a chapter a bit after the TV and before the sleep when the character meets a friend or a partner.

…The antidote to the writing block is writing…

3.Have a break.

Do something fun and try to find activities that bombard you with stimulus. Watch a film, observe how the characters develop and how the story unfolds. Read a book or visit an interesting gallery. If you are at a stage where anything related to art gets you shivers up your spine, then just do something that makes you happy or just spend some time sleeping. We need to rest our brains.

4. Write.

Yeah, the antidote to the writing block is writing! You don’t have to write a novel or an extraordinary story. Write something short and simple. A dream you had last night or a page in your diary. If you don’t know how to start, google some creative writing exercises and spend some time with them. Your focus should just be on the writing process. Don’t stress yourself with the creative outcome. Just write! If you want to go a step further you can write a letter to your creative self and praise him or her for their creativity. If during this exercise you realise you are more focus on the negatives than on the positives it’s fine. Have a look at the negative things you pointed out, they might help you do understand how you block yourself from writing.

5. This is the last one.

So, well done for reading the whole article! If you get stuck, you feel like you won’t write a single word or produce anything creative, sign up for workshops. Apart from meeting likeminded people, you will improve your creative skills. If you feel this choice will make you more stressed, why not try a meditation workshop, a life coaching session or even book yourself for a massage? Taking care of yourself will nurture your creative part.

Iluustration: Julia Nowak

Originally published at whymagazine.org on February 26, 2018.

There is a famous drawing that shows someone looking for diamonds and giving up right before he finds them. It’s true, we never know when we will find success, but are we really looking for it? And if so, what does success actually mean?

For many years I thought a successful writer is an artist who makes a living by writing. I have managed to run workshops, publish my short stories, get a funding from the Arts Council of England, but I wasn’t happy since I had to keep working at my day job to pay my bills and rent.

I was reading my stories on paper or watching them on stage and kept asking myself “What’s the point? I still need to work eight hours a day doing something that I don’t love.” Was it really me talking? I tried to listen to the voice a bit more carefully and noticed that it wasn’t mine. It was a mix of voices from society, media and probably my beloved working class mother. They were all saying the same thing: “To be successful means to get paid for what you do.” “To be successful means you are famous and get hundreds of likes when you post a picture of yourself eating a burger.” “To be successful means you give interviews and people recognise you when you walk on the street.” These voices had every right to speak but I didn’t have to agree with them, and neither do you.

The more I was paying attention to my little, frail, inner voice the louder it was becoming. But what was that this voice telling me? “To listen more to the people I meet in workshops or to the readers. To listen more to my body and observe how it feels when I complete or publish a story.” “To read my stories carefully and ask myself if they are worth publishing.” I was feeling happy and fulfilled whenever I was spending time on writing, or when readers were sending me emails telling me how much they liked my story. However, I was so used to shutting down these emotions since I had persuaded myself that happiness goes with success and success goes with fame and money. So, I decided to linger on the positive emotions I was getting from writing, learn to take in the positive feedback, listen carefully to the constructive feedback and stop bullying myself and putting myself down with sentences like: “You will never become a famous writer”, “you will never manage to finish this novel”, “your writing sucks” and so on.

I had persuaded myself that happiness goes with success and success goes with fame and money

Writing was and still is interlinked with my life. I learned to express myself, share my ideas and feelings through words. It would be great if I could make a living out of it but if not, is it really worth giving it up? The answer is no. If you remove writing from my life my life will probably be a boring and empty one. What writing taught me is that success is when you fill a blank page with words. If you manage to complete a story it’s good. If you manage to publish the story it’s even better. If one person reads your story and tells you he loved or hated it, it’s amazing! The successful bit though is the very first stage, when you find time to sit down and actually write something.

It is vital when you have concerns about giving up your dream to ask yourself what is it exactly that you get out of your art. If your art makes you fulfilled and keeps you balanced then maybe you should think twice before you abandon your dream. If your art makes you stressed and puts you down, think carefully. Maybe it’s not the actual art but the relationship you have with it. Maybe it’s just the way you look at things, and remember the way we look at things is often influenced by other people’s opinions.

I see many people around me, old friends or school mates giving up their dreams or distracting themselves by keeping occupied with other activities, relationships etc. If this makes them happy it’s great. If not, I am wondering if they have ever considered the amount of energy, time and money they have spent to chase their dream.

Since you’ve made your way through up until this point to get the diamonds, are you sure that now is the time to give up? We are human beings and it’s important to embrace our weaknesses or allow ourselves to feel tired. It’s fine to say “I can’t do this anymore. I’ve had enough.” I am only suggesting to explore whether your relationship with your art is a healthy one.

Franz Kafka, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and many others experienced little or no success during their lifetime. I have no idea if they considered themselves successful writers but I know for a fact that they didn’t stop writing.

Banner image: @fart_lyfe

Originally published at whymagazine.org on August 21, 2017.