If You Have Writer’s Block, Maybe You Should Stop Lying
Struggling with writer's block? Perhaps it's time to confront the truth. Uncover the intriguing connection between honesty and creativity, and explore how embracing authenticity can unchain your words and set your storytelling free.
Your mental contents are constantly moving
You produce judgments, attitudes, opinions, emotions, melancholy, malaise, anger, and so on.
- If you don’t want to write about these things, it’s because you’re not comfortable with the notion that these are the things that you actually think
- Lots of smart, credentialed people think otherwise, and agreeing with them would be easier
Self-honesty is an ongoing process
As you continue producing creative work, you will change
- You may find that doing the things you once did is no longer congruent with your inner climate
- This gives you roughly two choices-either you flow with who you’ve actually become, or you slowly descend into a hollow parody of what you once were
Writing should be simple
You should shape who you are into a palatable format, rather than gussying up who you’re not
- When you’re in touch with your honest aesthetic/spiritual/material/intellectual priorities, writing is easy
- Once you begin, it shouldn’t feel like trying to squeeze champagne out of wrought iron, it should feel like opening a floodgate
It should feel like work rather than labor
Work can be challenging, surprising, effortful, emotional, but it isn’t something that requires intense coercion.
- Most importantly, it feels rewarding, in a deeper way than the “thank fuck that’s over” swell of relief you feel at the end of a day of laboring.
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