Overcome writer’s block by focusing on mental health
Try therapy. Kim Koga says, “There’s a part of me that feels like I can’t stop writing the same poem that I’ve been writing since I was 20. … Therapy really helped me get unstuck. It’s helped me become more aware of things that I’m feeling, to move out of trauma in a way that can open my brain up more creatively.”1
Related to this, Paul Simon says that writer’s block is often because he has something to say but doesn’t want to say it. He says, “Once you discover what that thought is, if you can find another way of approaching it that isn’t negative to you, then you can deal with that subject matter.”2 Have a conversation with your resistant self. Fear is a part of the creative process.
Similarly, James Baldwin said that writing is “finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out.”3 A good song rings true.
Mary Gauthier shares that she had not been able to write another song for The Foundling because she had not yet contacted her birth mother.4