Imagine this scenario: You’re a prolific writer, a veteran of a dozen critically acclaimed and best selling novels, and currently deep into the juicy heart of your latest work.

The words are flowing like Niagara Falls after a week of torrential rain, your characters are rich, alive and thriving, the story is galloping along like a herd of wild angry buffalo, and creatively, nothing could be going better.

And then, without warning, it hits you. Bang, right between the eyes.

One morning you go to your computer to write the next chapter and you can’t find the right words. You start typing but every sentence seems clunky, stuttering and awkward.

Hours go by, and nothing improves. You try to keep writing but the more you do, the more frustrated you become.

Now, your characters suddenly seem flawed, flimsy and one-dimensional. Suddenly, the people you’ve spent so much time with and been so close to, seem superficial and flat.

Harry, your lead character, is just a bit too handsome and flawless to empathise with. And Bethan, if she’s that unkind, insecure and callous, would she really be as popular as she is?

You realise too there are inconsistencies in the plot, that Catherine couldn’t be in Rome with her dying father because she’d only been in Los Angeles an hour beforehand, and Annie couldn’t have been on that trek in Peru two years ago because she’d have been eight and half months pregnant...

You write on but it just gets worse, the words more incoherent, the sentences all jumbled and out of sequence, you can’t string together two paragraphs that you feel are of any value to the novel.

In short, it feels like it’s all going horribly wrong.

Most of us who create no doubt have experienced this kind of creative block or crisis in a creative project at some time or other in our lives.

When we get stuck like this, as well as feeling unable to go forward with the work and the anxiety and fears that this creative paralysis can bring, what’s perhaps even more unsettling is how all we’ve created so far starts to seem a little less shiny and glowing.

Just a day or two of feeling creatively blocked can change our perspective hugely and we begin doubting whether a single sentence in our novel, brushstroke on our canvas, or note in our composition are of any use at all!

Another factor creeps in too, that of feeling we SHOULD be creating, we SHOULD be keeping to our target of 500 words a day, that we’re not progressing, we’re wasting valuable time.

Despite our best efforts to create and push through the block, sometimes it feels like wading through a river of treacle. Upstream. With concrete boots on!

Sometimes, the solution and the way through such creative blocks is not in the words, the brushstrokes or the notes.

Trying to add to what we’ve already created when it’s not flowing well just makes us more anxious, more debilitated, more depressed.

Reluctant as we often are to admit it, sometimes the best creative work is not just in the words.

Put another way, sometimes the most effective and beneficial creative work we can put into our project when we’re stuck like this, is to take a major change of direction and scenery.

A walk in the woods with no aim other than to enjoy all the nature around us. A day out with our children, or someone else’s children to remember how the world looks through the eyes of those so young. A long drive in the country with a few of our favourite albums blaring out of the stereo at full volume.

Sometimes, it’s during these valuable breaks AWAY from our creative project that we have the subtle insights and “A-ha!” moments that can literally revolutionise the approach we take when we return to work on them.

In fact, although we may feel guilty taking time away from the project, especially when we feel we’re not progressing on it as well as we should and ought to be spending MORE time on it, the greatest work we can do for the benefit of our creative project is by getting some distance and perspective AWAY from it.

So the next time you feel creatively blocked in one of your projects, try this different kind of approach. Remember, sometimes the best creative work is not just in writing the words.

Dan Goodwin
http://www.CoachCreative.com