It was inevitable that I was going to touch upon this topic at some point. I’m not the most prolific writer. I sporadically find inspiration. I work in short bursts of energy. I take it as it comes but it’s frustrating, especially when I have so many ideas mapped out.

Writer’s block can be due to many reasons but the one I have been at the mercy of in the last year is losing a sense of self. I uprooted many parts of my life and had to concentrate on those bits of it that aren’t associated with writing to get by. It was the right thing to do, but I have really struggled to regain exactly who I was and, more importantly, how I define myself.

I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that I can’t have anything true to say because I have lost the ‘I’. I sacrificed it somewhere along the way and am a little lost for how to get it back. Now those well laid out plans and projects are a burden. I don’t feel like an imposter or a fraud; I feel alien to myself. I maybe took for granted the sense of identity I derived from my creativity and interests and that by suspending them I left myself exposed to a vicious cycle of being out of touch and lacking the confidence to get back to the same place.

When it’s yourself that’s the problem the easiest way over these mental hurdles is to have good people around you that understand you: people that are going to challenge, encourage and pressure you into returning to the person they know you really are and want to be.

Another thing that has helped is meditation, albeit in a rather basic way. I have been taking the time to sit down, close my eyes and clear my mind for twenty minutes every day. I have found that it certainly switches your brain into a separate mode of thinking and I’m already finding that I can flick that switch during the day if need be. In psychological terms, this is a great mechanism for escaping the irrational and animalistic thinking that has been clouding my imagination but has also been helping me ‘survive’ in my new environment. I am slowly coaching my brain away from this ‘state of emergency’.

It’s quite a daunting task sitting down to write when you are in the midst of writer’s block. Trying to overcome through pure stubbornness is not a nice experience because it is your mind’s stubbornness that you are fighting in the first place. In this tug of war, the feeling of tension and immobility is very real and devoid of inspiration. The opposing forces of intention are debilitating. The whole exercise can often be demoralising and completely unproductive.

The only good thing about writer’s block is the recovery. Like a Swedish spring, its promise in the long hard winter feels empty. How could life ever possibly reanimate in such an unceasingly frozen landscape? Yet there, finally, is the thaw and with it the impatient first shoot and bloom, quickly succeeded by many more as the meltwater itself nourishes the flora it had held in suspension.

My recent barren period has been due to rather unique circumstances and very unlike my usual cases of idleness. Usually, it is caused by more common reasons that can plague any of us in life generally and not just artistically, for instance, acute self-doubt. I sometimes have this when I’ve been reading back my previous work in a hypercritical way. With the same mind-set, I know I could write-off almost anything as devoid of merit, let alone my own humble creations, yet this mentality is not open to rational perspective and instead encourages me to ditch the pen and paper altogether.

Alternatively, I can create a wall of self-doubt not from extreme self-criticism but from high levels of reverence for others. The old adage is to consume (with an open and critical mind) just as much as you create, but sometimes I find I can be overwhelmed by the genius of something and it has a demoralising effect on my own artistic ambitions.

With both of these issues, what’s really needed is a rational sense of perspective, which is why a support network is so important. This, coincidentally, is something that I have almost completely lost during these recent troubles and feel I must work on rebuilding by taking the leap once again of putting myself out into the local writing community. Having a close and respectful relationship with your peers doesn’t necessitate being in agreement with them, it simply requires being open, honest and kind. Relationships formed under these terms are fruitful for an artist.

The reason that we get frustrated with periods of impotence is because we know the beauty and reward of creation, it’s all around us, and we want to participate in this world by fulfilling our contribution to it. That contribution is, however, at one and the same time, also you. It is you and your shortcomings and your inability to contribute. To overcome them is not to fight this energy or to relinquish it; it is to harness it to realign oneself back to a natural state. That often means stepping away from the page. Think of it as pre-conditioning.

The last thing I would recommend for anyone suffering from writer’s block is to remove oneself, as much as possible, from confinement. This could be physical confinement, mental confinement or spiritual confinement. Take away those things that supress you. Sometimes you may even be supressing yourself with routine. Enjoy freedom of any kind and you will in turn enjoy a freedom of mind through an ability to make a choice. And in order decide you will begin to employ the imagination to some degree.

This month's favourites:
   Aries, Welcome Home
   W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden
   A Hijacking (2012)