It's been a couple of days since I wrote a post, and that's because my personal life has been extraordinarily stressful. Which led me to think about how your life affects your writing, and how it evolves over the years (or decades).
It's not always the negative stuff that causes changes (or problems) though. I think changes in writing or battles with writer's block are a result of the natural course of personal evolution. As you become more wise, your writing changes. As you experience something new, your writing changes. As you experience loss, your writing changes or stops for a while.
All of life's experiences can be absolutely wonderful for your creativity or can be completely writer's block-inducing. Perhaps this is why writers say they need to be inspired by something in order to write.
What inspires you? What blocks you? Is it a feeling? A place? An event?
And then there are those dichotomies. Deep pain is often my biggest catalyst for some of my very best writing. But then deep pain can also make me sink further into writer's block than just about anything else on the planet. It's funny how that works.
I guess the trick, then, is learning to recognize those things (or feelings or settings) in your life that either inspire you or block you. And then figuring out how to maneuver around them or harness them into something productive.
I think the ability to maneuver and adapt can only come through practice. And living. And more practice. And then a fierce determination to just do. To just write. Without self-judgment. Because it's your dharma, as we say in yoga. Your purpose. The thing you were meant to spend your life doing.
As Forrest Gump said, "That's all I have to say about that." Happy writing!
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