Vachon Imagined

When writers reach a creative block, there is tension, fear, doubt, and sometimes even shame.

The best writers are often paid to produce. Writing becomes a business. There are deadlines, expectations, audiences, numbers. And this is where great writers can end up writing in obscurity or stop writing altogether. What was once natural becomes something they feel they have to prove.

But you don’t have to be a traditional artist to live inspired.

Once you understand how to use anything, creative blocks begin to disappear.

Fatigue can be the muse.

Feelings of inferiority can be the muse.

Doubt can be the muse.

Anger can be the muse.

Even obscurity can be the muse.

We don’t always know how to use these things because we’re busy hiding from them or trying too hard to force the idea rather than let itself be revealed. We think we have to overcome the feeling before we can create. But what if the thing you’re trying to get rid of is the thing you’re supposed to follow?

Follow the obscurity until it takes on a story.

Follow the fatigue.

Follow the insecurity until an image comes to you.

Follow the strange thought you don’t understand yet.

There is something in it.

The story is already there, waiting to be developed and it’s choosing you, how cool is that?

This is true for the scientist, the teacher, the parent, the entrepreneur, even the person who doesn’t think of themselves as creative. Everyone is creating. We create businesses. We create families. We create solutions. We create ways of seeing the world.

We are creators whether we call ourselves artists or not.

And yet the moment we start thinking about ourselves as creators, something can become stifled. What was once seamless, easy, and effortless becomes conscious. We begin watching ourselves.

Am I doing this right?

Is this good enough?

Will anyone like it?

And perfectionism enters. Then doubt. Then insecurity. We mistake all of it for a lack of creativity.

Use it.

Pick it up and use it.

Follow it.

Be patient. Let yourself become curious about the very thing you wanted to escape.

The anger may contain the sentence.

The doubt may contain the question.

The fatigue may contain the truth.

You were never without material. You were standing inside it, trying not to feel it.

And this is when the question changes.

The problem is no longer, What do I write?

It becomes, How do I stop this abundant flow?

Because once you stop resisting what is here, everything becomes material. You don’t have to manufacture inspiration.

You learn to see.

And once you see, there is always something to follow.

The creative life becomes less about finding something to say and more about trying to keep up with everything that is already asking to be said.