Above All Else, a Writer Must Have Faith
If you meet seasoned writers who tell you that they don’t believe in writer’s block, be skeptical!
Writer’s block is a very real phenomenon. As humans, the most powerful tool we have is our minds, which — let’s be honest — can make us believe just about anything.
Even though I have been writing and journaling consistently since I was eight years old, I still have problems with writer’s block. Take today, for example. I want to write this post but have been staring at my computer screen for almost an hour, trying to figure out what to write next.
Writer’s block never really goes away, for me anyway, and it can happen for any number of reasons. Typically, I find that writer’s block results from allowing external opinions or circumstances interfere with our writing practice.
This is a lesson I have had to learn over and over again, starting most memorably fifteen years ago when I decided to put writing first after finding inspiration and my voice while completing Julia Cameron’s creative unblocking course The Artist’s Way. The course was a revelation to me, and I got serious about my craft as a fiction writer and poet and applied to MFA programs in creative writing. I didn’t get accepted. I was devastated. I stopped writing for awhile but eventually took a creative writing course at my local community college and found the will to continue.
After working consistently on my craft for another three years, I got accepted to the MFA program at Columbia College in Chicago. I was ecstatic! FINALLY, I was going to earn the terminal degree that told the world I was a writer. The only problem? It didn’t work out.
Continue reading “Overcoming Writer’s Block: My Journey as a Writer”
Okay, I admit it: I am writing this blog post for myself today, just as much as I am writing it for all of you, my lovely audience. Why? Because even though I have made a career out of writing, there are still plenty of days when I doubt my own abilities and talents, and I recognize the need to talk myself back into what I know, based on the hard lessons about writing and life that I need to learn and re-learn.
Today is one such day. While journaling this morning, I kept thinking about how uncomplicated my life would be if I could only stick to my blog on web development. I mean, as a career, it makes good money, and so does my blog on the topic! So I go back to developing websites, only to sneak off and work on a novel or screenplay in progress when I should be blogging about “The Best JavaScript Courses of 2018” or piloting a new course on the Python programming language. Continue reading “5 Ways to Stop Sabotaging Your Writing Dreams”