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Creativity coach, writing and creative process instructor, speaker, author of Around the Writer's Block: Using Brain Science to Write the Way You Want (Penguin/Tarcher 2012) and Dancing in the Dragon's Den (Red Wheel Weiser), Teaching Artist at the Loft Literary Center.

Don’t Worry About Writer’s Block: You Have Wings!


"Big Moon Hug" painting used with permission from the artist Jerry Lee Kirk (To see more of Jerry's work, please visit http://www.jerrykirk.com)

Be like the bird that,

Pausing in her flight

Awhile on boughs too slight,

Feels them give way beneath her,

And yet sings,

Knowing she hath wings.

– Victor Hugo

It may be hard to believe when you’ve just gotten a rejection or your Saboteur is pushing you around or you’re struggling with writer’s block or some other form of resistance, but you have wings. Wings you might not even know you have.

How do you know you have wings? If you’re lucky, your allies remind you. If you’re especially lucky, you catch a glimpse of your winged shadow in the peripheral vision of your dreams and hopes. But even when your allies or your dreams remind you, and especially on the days when they don’t, you have to jump into the wind and hope.

How do you jump into the wind? You write today. You show up for your 15 Magic Minutes of Product Time. Maybe you draft something you’ve been thinking about. Maybe you freewrite to see what’s on your mind or what grabbed your attention today. Maybe you revise something you worked on some other day. Maybe you research. Maybe you map your ideas and plot possible writing topics for another day. Maybe you just sit there and wait. Maybe you move stuff around in what seems like an aimless waste of time. Doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you show up.

You don’t have to know how high you’ll jump today or if today’s jump will “add up to anything in the end” – just jump!

Every time you throw yourself into space propelled by trust in the Divine and your willingness to express has been given to you to share, your wings grow stronger, your heart sings louder and your spirit soars higher.

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6 Comments on “Don’t Worry About Writer’s Block: You Have Wings!”

  1. rosannebane March 14, 2011 at 10:01 am #

    Thanks Eden! I’m tickled to hear this one was so valuable for you.

    Like

  2. Eden Cross March 9, 2011 at 11:03 pm #

    Wonderful, thank you! This is one of the best ones for me thus far! exceedingly helpful
    perhaps it’s that I identify with it all, so deeply. Thank you!

    Like

  3. Michael Kelberer March 9, 2011 at 1:55 pm #

    Love that Hugo quote too….

    Like

    • rosannebane March 14, 2011 at 10:00 am #

      I first read that Hugo quote when I was 17 when I was at Outward Bound in North Carolina. (Isn’t it wonderful that good stuff like that stuck with me all these years and is still meaningful, but all the teenage agnst has fallen away. Thank goodness!)

      Like

  4. Laura Sommers March 8, 2011 at 6:05 pm #

    Lovely!

    Like

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