The question I’m always asking is: where and how is this author blocked in their creative process and what can we do about that?

As a gay creativity coach from the UK, I’m often working with writers who feel like they’ve hit a point of no return (or so it seems!).

They’ve been wrestling with revisions, struggling to outline or plan, overwhelmed by the endless choices around querying agents, or weighed down by the mountain of self-publishing tasks.

It’s a lot.

Creativity coaching (for writers) can help in a number of ways:

• Meaning matters. Most of the work we do as authors circles around meaning—what the story means, what it means to us, and how it might connect with readers. And this is often where people get stuck.

Making meaning can be a pleasure and a pain. Queer joy is real and vital, but the darker aspects of sexuality, identity, and lived experience might mean we touch on sensitive topics for ourselves and others. Characters may be confronting anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment on the page, while at the same time the author may be processing personal struggles of their own. Blocks, obstacles, and distractions mean we loose sight of what we really want to convey to the reader.

A quick tip: Part of the work in creativity coaching and meaning-making is showing self-compassion to ourselves while we write and revise, especially when the material touches personal or traumatic areas, so give yourself grace. There is time, and you’re only lost temporarily and you can get back on track.

• There’s always a way through. When the world feels upside down, it can seem like we’ve lost control. But we always have choice—over our space, our time, and our mindset.

Even carving out twenty minutes on a commute, or first thing in the morning, can keep a creative practice alive. A single journal entry, a flash fiction draft, or a reflection on a photograph can all count.

What blocks us most is usually negative self-talk: believing writing is a waste of time, doubting our skills, or spinning out over the future. The same brain that trips us up is also the place where we can shift things. Try working toward peace with your process, remembering that writing is a skill that develops, creating for yourself first, and, if “positivity” feels too much, simply aiming for neutral words on the page.

• Trust the creative writing process. Writing is iterative. It’s about experimenting, adapting, and discovering who you are as an author. You might be a pantser, a plantser, or the most meticulous outliner. All approaches are doable—until they stop working for a given project.

Sometimes the novel needs a strict outline while the romance flash piece calls for free writing. The point is not to cling to labels, but to work with what’s in front of you. Create the best you can, because that’s all you can do right now, and let your piece of flash fiction, your novel, your memoir, or piece of creative writing exist, and that’s all it needs to do. Sometimes the piece of writing needs to come out because it’s a block for something else that’s coming up, along, and through to the surface.

And then the magic of revision, redrafting, rewriting, and editing can come in. As they say, you can’t edit a blank page, so let those words flow.

Take those messy, cranky, crappy sentences and let’s see what’s underneath: what are you really trying to say, and how can I help move you on along to putting your ideal story out into the world.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay