I haven’t written on this blog for the last month, other than the post I wrote a couple days ago. Part of that is because I’ve been really involved in working on the business, creating classes, and refining my brand (still doing that btw), which is evident by the fact that this website is now sporting a filler theme for the moment. But the other reason is cultivating creativity. You can sometimes only do so much writing before you have to give it a rest and recharge your creative batteries.

This applies to any creative activity you do. At a certain point you’ve got to know when to cultivate creativity, which means you may need to take a break. Now some proponents of writing will say you need to write everyday and that the serious writer will write even when s/he doesn’t want to, but I’ve never found the choice to not write to be all that harmful or problematic. What I’ve found is that when I force myself to write it makes it really hard to break through the block. So I only write when I feel moved to write and if this means there’s a gap of time when I’m not writing I accept that as part of the process of my writing.

I suspect that creativity differs somewhat for each person. It makes sense that for many people forcing themselves to write, paint, sculpt, etc works. But I’m sure I’m not the only who has the experience that forcing writing doesn’t work very well and ends up being an exercise in futility. In fact when I see people forcing themselves to write when its clear the writing isn’t coming, I think they risk burnout. I went through a period of burnout because I tried to force myself to write. It took five years to recover from that burnout and I’ve promised myself since that I won’t force myself to write. I’m just letting it come as it needs to.

That’s my advice to any writer. Respect your writer’s block. Spend some time with it or away from writing. Cultivate your creativity so that when its ready to bloom it allows you to produce.