#CreateIt22: Help for blocked creatives

If you want to just jump right in, here are the daily videos. I’m currently posting on BlueSky, Instagram, TikTok, Substack, and more with the hashtag #CreateIt22. If you want more information, read on.

Welcome, creative. If you’re here, you’re probably stuck.

I don’t think anyone knows for certain what their breaking point is. Well, In 2020, I found mine: I had two small strokes, and the few words I had left were suddenly gone.

I couldn’t remember my address. My phone number. What anything was called. I lived in fog, vague, unable to discern the shape of things beneath my fingertips. My short-term memory evaporated, and I couldn’t even recall what I’d just seen or read. I wept, literally, at my blinking cursor and blank pages.

This seems like a low creative point, doesn’t it? It certainly was… but it wasn’t really the first time I’d landed there.

I have written all my life. I have also been blocked for most of it. I was one of those geyser creatives. Sometimes the words flowed, unreliable and wonderful—and most of the time, they didn’t.

I thought this was normal. Every creative I knew lived in one of two phases: yay, creating, and boo, blocked.

Thanks to that geyser pattern, I always expected to return to “normal” eventually, writing in spurts with great gaps in between, feeling like a writer again. It had to happen, right? The words would come back.

This time, they did not.

I went months with nothing. Nothing. I went long enough without writing that I began to feel like a liar every time I called myself a writer.

It was a bad, bad spot, fellow creative. Had I been fooling myself all along? It felt that way, that the books I’d produced were flukes, that I never should have told anyone I was going to do this, that my creative hopes were done.

The good news is this mess had a hell of a silver lining. Finding myself completely blocked, unable to rely on geysers anymore, forced me to find a new way to function.

It’s a strange aspect of being blocked that no matter how long we go without it, we never lose the hunger, the need, to make something. Even if we give it up (whatever that means), we are unable to truly abandon the desire. We know we are meant to create.

I might have gone to sleep weeping into my pillow over no longer being a writer, but I’d wake knowing I was meant to tell stories. I might grieve all my unfinished manuscripts, but then find my thoughts drifting to tales I wanted to tell as if there were hope I still could.

Hope is weird. It can taste quite strange. Even though I’d given up, it seemed I couldn’t give up.I think many of you know this feeling. You are reading this book—and that means, no matter how long you’ve been blocked, you’re not ready to give up, either.

Creative, there is hope for you. I’ve gone from complete block to writing every single day, and I have not been blocked since I applied the principles I am going to teach you.

What changed? My understanding of creation.

There are only two steps to getting unblocked for good. Two steps to beating your creative block forever. Two steps to being the kind of person who can and will make new things every day.

Those two steps are simple. I didn’t say they’re easy. You’ll have to unlearn bad habits, not just learn new ones. You’ll have to train your thinking with new definitions for familiar words. You’ll have to fight the mindset that got you into this mess, reevaluating what you consider valuable and why. You’ll have to face yourself (your greatest foe), and the challenges that come with a consciously shaped identity.

Creative, you can do this. I know you can. I was able to, and I’m literally not firing on all cylinders.

CreateIt22 is designed so anyone can take these steps. I’m sharing them because I want you creating, too. I want you freed from block. I’m one beggar, showing others where to find a feast.

Come with me, and I’ll show you how this works.

How do I do #CreateIt22?

There are two overarching principles for this: make one new thing every day, and let it be tiny and terrible.

Now, these are huge principles, dealing with identity, the science of habits, and more, which is one of the reasons I create pep-talks every single day. In application, they’re simple, if not easy.

Every single day, make something new. This comes down to addressing fear, learning to face your inner critic, and the biological principles of habit-forming.
Let that new thing be tiny and terrible. This is crucial, because if you judge it harshly, or insist on it being perfect or large or publishable, you simply won’t be able to do it, and therefore will not form the habit.

As I said, these are simple. They are not easy.

I have done this, facing chronic illness, family stresses, financial woes, and more. Many other creatives have from all mediums, as well. You can, too. This entire thing is set up so anyone can.

It helps knowing you’re not alone. Reach out to me on any of the above platforms, and I’ll get back to you. We are in this together, creative. You’re not alone, and your creative journey is not at an end.