Coping with creative blocks ✍️
Honoring your mental rhythms and knowing when to abandon projects
I've been sitting in the coziest coffee shop for 30 minutes.* I sip on a warm cup of rooibos tea as the gentle hum of chatter fills the surrounding space. A portrait of Machu Picchu extends across the wall above me, captivating in its undeniable grandeur.
I’m surrounded by 10 other writers, each of them intently focused on their respective projects. I feel at ease. My mind, normally racing at a million miles an hour, is… shockingly still. Rain falls freely from the overcast sky — perfect writing conditions.
I had big plans for the afternoon. I’d sit down and get straight to work on a big idea that had been floating through my head last week. The idea was supposed to unravel itself once I entered this serene space. I expected the words to seamlessly flow from my mind onto the screen.
Yet, they don’t. A creative sluggishness — an inability to tap into the inner voice I’d eagerly expected to convene with — stands in the way.
So, I figured I’d get a little meta with this newsletter and talk about this very challenge, one that’s been an ongoing struggle for me this year: creative blocks.
The Downside of Being in a Creative Profession
Last night, a friend and I chatted about our relationship with creativity. We both work in creative professions but also enjoy creating for ourselves.
“I have to be firm in protecting my creativity,” she said. “Otherwise, I end up giving all of it to my clients. Then there’s nothing left for me.”
I felt the exact same way.
While I’m grateful to work within a creative field, I often feel tapped out when it comes to working on my own pursuits.
I had big dreams this year of keeping up with my blog, posting to social media two to three times a week, starting a YouTube channel, writing a book proposal, and keeping up with this biweekly newsletter (yeah, I get a headache just thinking about it, too!). So far, I’ve managed to follow through with the final item on this list, though I’ll be honest and say that I’ve had to really push myself to write.
Why do I keep up with it then?
Well, because I simply can’t imagine not writing this newsletter. It’s a calling that comes from deep within, and though this passion doesn’t bring in any profit, that doesn’t matter. The shared ideas, community building, and self-expression are worth more than any monetary gain.
But I know that even with the biggest creative ambitions, there are limits to what can be achieved. I’ve had to modify my plans for the newsletter itself — stopping the interview portion for now, forgoing the graphics (which are fun to make but take a long time to put together), and generally letting go of a lot of my additional perfectionistic tendencies when I’m writing and editing.
Working with words is a blessing. But I’ve had to accept that there’s only a finite amount of creativity that I have left for my personal projects. I have to prioritize what’s most important, and even then, I have to be okay with not going above and beyond. Or abandoning projects (for the time being) when necessary. This has been a difficult, but necessary, lesson.
Honoring Your Creative Capacity
Elizabeth Gilbert, in her phenomenal book Big Magic, compares creativity to a relationship. Our creativity is looking to convene with us. It wants to give us the inspiration to write that next novel or pen a profound song. But the conditions aren’t always right — we have big life changes, we’re stressed, we haven’t been sleeping or eating well. There are a number of factors that can block our creativity.
Like our emotional energy, we have to honor that our creativity isn’t a limitless resource. We have to nourish it, protect it, and respect it. For me, this has meant reading work by people who inspire me, making sure I’ve slept enough, becoming aware of distractions, and trying to find pockets of relaxation throughout the day. I’m by no means consistent with all of these things, but the times I’ve managed to hone in on each one, it’s made a noticeable difference in my thought process. But even then, the creative blocks still creep up.
When I encounter a creative block, my instinct has always been to push through. When I don’t see the results I want, I get frustrated and enter the self-blame spiral. I want to write, but I also don’t want to write.
I’ve had to constantly remind myself that just because I identify as a creative, this doesn’t mean that the creativity will always show up in the ways I want. Or when I want.
I also think creative blocks are normal. As creatives, we often feel this pressure to continuously produce work. We witness prolific novelists crank out an 80,000-word book a year. We see YouTubers who release one, two, even three videos a week. We hear about musicians who always seem to be releasing a new album. How do they do it?! And what’s wrong with us?!
When it comes to creativity, I think the intention behind the work matters most. It’s better to write one really good novel in a lifetime than to churn out 30 mediocre ones. Intentional creations — those done with the heart and soul — are noticeably more moving. They evoke a certain kind of emotional reaction that work done in haste simply cannot.
We can consider creative blocks as a sign to step back, not lean in. They can tell us when we’re overextending ourselves in other areas of life, or when we need to give ourselves more time to sit with an idea.
Sometimes it’s best to let an idea percolate for a bit — to not rush into a project prematurely.
It’s also helpful to gain distance from the creative endeavor at hand. Engage with a different creative medium, chat with a friend, or spend some time outside. I find that each of these activities are excellent creative “unblockers” and help me return to my work with new perspectives.
Abandoning or Postponing Creative Ideas
You know the blogging, book writing, and YouTube channel aspirations I mentioned earlier? It’s been difficult to accept that I have to shelve them for now. Maybe once I’m in the right space to give them the attention they need, the ideas will flow. Maybe they won’t.
That’s the hardest part about being a creative — abandoning projects can feel deeply personal. Because they came from us — they’re like our creative children.
But this Vox article made an excellent point about quitting, which I think relates to the idea of abandoning creative ideas:
“Quitting can feel like standing on the precipice of a cliff, not knowing what awaits. However, the sooner you recognize a relationship, job, or practice isn’t for you, the more time you have to dedicate to the people and hobbies you are passionate about.”
Not every idea is worth seeing through. It can feel like giving up when we give our all to something but it doesn’t pan out in the way we expected.
Letting go — or holding off on — ideas can actually be a good thing, though. When we free ourselves of the pressure to see a creative endeavor through, we can use that energy elsewhere. We might have a breakthrough we otherwise wouldn’t. Or we find inspiration that can lead to something even better than we’d originally hoped.
It’s funny. I feel like this is exactly what happened with this newsletter. Though I’d expected to write about something else entirely, the creative blocks idea popped up. And I’m actually pretty glad I saw it through. Maybe that’s just what I needed — permission to let go of the idea I’d planned to write about so this one could fully manifest itself.
If you’re dealing with a similar challenge this week, I encourage you to do the same. You never know what might happen!
Until next time,
Brina
* I wrote the majority of this on 10/22/23.
🌹Reflection
In what ways have creative blocks shown up for you? Can you pinpoint a cause behind them, and if so, what do you think they are?
How can you cut yourself a bit more slack when you encounter creative blocks?
👋🏽 Welcome!
… to newest subscribers Andrea, Grace, Eric, Kelly, George, and Erin. Happy to have you all along for the journey!
🎨 Content Corner
Song: “Funny Thing” by Thundercat (groovy in every sense of the word!)
Book: The Perfumist of Paris (the third book in Alka Joshi’s captivating series — I loved the French and Indian cultural mixes in this one!)
Movie: Dear Zindagi (a heartwarming story that follows a 20-something cinematographer’s journey through therapy, an experience that leads to self-acceptance and forgiveness towards her family)
📝 Insightful Reads
Some of the best Substack pieces I’ve read the past couple of weeks:
Ah thanks for the mention! And I Love big magic too - I need to re read that!
Also hear you on the perfectionism vibes, it took so much joy out of my book-writing process. :( xx