Don’t Make Your Writing Practice a Battlefield

So often I hear people talk about writer’s block as something they need to destroy.

While force might get you in your chair on some days and might actually get some words on the page, you can’t force your way into creative flow.

Resistance is not something we can beat into submission. It’s intricately tied to our subconscious stories, the ones we tell ourselves beneath the surface of our awareness about our abilities and deservedness and personal power.

When you are waging war on your resistance, you’re waging war on innermost yourself. On the story structure you’ve built protect your most vulnerable asset, the actual artist within. Your attack drives your inner self into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, the very opposite of flow. And we wonder why we don’t want to show up to the keyboard when this is what’s waiting for us there.

If you are facing resistance, do not attack the fortress you built to protect yourself when you were afraid, ashamed, or powerless. That part of you deserves better than your hostility. You would do better to knock on the door and patiently promise an alliance with the wounded artist within. Be someone your artist self can trust.

Show up to your writing as often as possible. Make your writing sessions a safe place for failure. Allow yourself to suck. Accept that you will not enjoy it some days. Learn the difference between the good kind of discomfort and injury to oneself. Encourage yourself to work through the former and walk away from the latter.

Know yourself. Know why you read and why you write and stop trying to force your writer self to write for someone else’s why. By the same measure, observe your attachment to your own why. Because attachment, too, is resistance.

Your artist self must feel safe with you first if they are ever to feel safe writing for others. I urge you. Don’t make your writing practice a battlefield.