Unblocking the writer's block

Image by Shima Abedinzade from Pixabay

I’m suffering from writer’s block and have done so for a long time. Maybe for most of my life, although I have written many poems (a tiny handful of which have been published, in Christian outlets) and a few short stories, and at least one devotional.

I think the block has several causes. A low-lying depressive state that has been with me my whole life. It heavily shadowed my childhood, and it’s dogged me as an adult, sometimes leading to acts of self-sabotage. I’m adopted, and some of this is certainly ‘adoptee stuff’ … but of course it’s not just adoptees who suffer from this.

Another malaise is that I need to let my mind rest. Too much social media, too much pointless scrolling, too much ‘overwhelm’ from the barrage of news and opinions we are flooded with every day. Add to that my anxiety over the state of the nation and the world in general. I am genuinely concerned about the current fractured state of Western democracy and the malicious forces out there that would like to wreck it. All the wars and rumours of wars and the suffering. The little I can do is to pray, and to support charities (some Christian, some not) who do what they can to make this world a better place.

So what am I doing about my writer’s block?

Over the next month I have three aims:

1) To read through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. This best-selling work was first published 30 years ago and is particularly aimed at writers. The author offers a self-help course over 12 weeks to help you unlock your inner creativity. She refers to God throughout as the Great Creator, something I can happily affirm as a Christian (obviously). People have found this book extremely helpful, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

2) To finish a short story in time for a writing competition in September.

But the third aim is the most important:

3) To abide in the love of my great Creator. To abide in Him, and listen to Him, and rest in Him. His love is the source of all creativity, all imagination, every desire to recover Eden, to help bring in the kingdom, and to care for this beautiful world He gave us … to bless this world with the writing gifts He gave us.

And to remember this truth, and pray it in, and live it out:

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. – Ephesians 2:10 (NRSV)

I’m an Anglican lay minister and an Administrator for the education and learning office of the United Reformed Church. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul, published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW anthology Merry Christmas Everyone.