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Tips and techniques for overcoming creative resistance.
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Easily Overcome Writer's Resistance
or Writer's Block
Kate Arms-Roberts
Kate Arms-Roberts
Founder, Improv Living Improve Your Life With the Power of Improv Mission: Using the tools of embodied creativity
and improvised performance forms to empower people to change the world
Supporting Creative Work
Theatre: Acting coach and Director
Writing Circle Facilitator: Writing on the spot and critique groups
InterPlay: Fun, easy practices and principles for creating improvisationally in a non-judgmental, environment
Today's Goal
To understand the source of writer's block
And the simple ways to reduce resistance
Who this training is for
People who want to write, but find themselves having making it happen.
Problems You May Be Facing
You set a time to write, sit down at your computer and fritter away your time on Facebook?
You let helping other people interfere with your commitments to yourself to write?
Or, when you sit down to write, you simply find that your ideas are gone and all the things you thought you wanted to write about aren't in your mind anymore?
The Goal
Understand where resistance comes from Understand why resistance will never go
away completely Develop systems to reduce resistance and
create anyway
The Ugly Truth
Resistance doesn't go away. Any time to start a new project, you are
stepping into the unknown and the unknown always triggers fear.
The Good News You can reduce resistance AND learn ways
of writing despite it.
The Challenge
Creative resistance is grounded in fear, but not all fear is conscious.
With unconscious fear, you need a way of managing the fear.
With conscious fear, you need to feel safe to explore and exorcise the fears.
Fear
“If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Freeze, Flight, or Fight
The faces of Resistance are the faces of fear:
Freeze: Classic Writer's Block – sitting at the computer and nothing comes.
Flight: Always finding something else to do.
Fight: self-criticism, perfectionism
Two Sources of Fear
Fear of the unknown – writing into something that scares you, or just is unfamiliar
Fear based on a past experience
Dealing with Fear
Fear doesn't go away. You need a system for managing it.
Notice
Reduce through Ritual
Daily Practices
The first step in managing resistance is to notice that you are experiencing it.
The fact that you are on this call means that you have already noticed yourself suffering
from resistance and writer's block.
Notice
Reduce through Routine
Starting routine
Ending routine
As many senses engaged as possible
3 Daily Practices to Retrain Your Brain
1) Process activities – creative play
2) Product activities – work towards a product
3) Self-Care
Process Activities
To keep the playfulness from which creativity flows easily, cultivate creative practices that do not have any drive towards completion of a product.
Take 15-minutes a day to keep yourself in play.
Writing
Music
Drawing
DancingColouring
PaintingSinging
Daydreaming
Knitting
Product Activities
Set yourself a small goal that you can actually make – 15 minutes a day
Do more if you have time or inclination, but only make the 15 minute commitment to yourself.
Idea Generation
ResearchMind-mapping
Sketches
Story-boarding
Getting or giving feedbackWriting
Editing
Taking a class
Querying
Self-Care
Self-care gives you what you need in your life in order to be the writer that you strive to be.
Sleep
Exercise
Meditation
Time to focus on one thing
Play
Record and Reward
Recording your progress and rewarding your habit development will motivate you to build your habits.
Because the commitments are for short periods of time, you want to focus on rewarding the doing, not the result.
Rewarding the result stresses the brain and increases fear.
Celebrate
When you create, acknowledge your successes!
What Now?
Take this information and put it to use now Work with me and I will help you develop
specific habits, rituals, and routines to reduce your resistance and design rewards for writing despite the resistance that remains.
Working with Me
Custom program based on where you are and your specific needs
Identifying your blocks Crafting a ritual or routine to hold your
creativity Building a system of rewards to support
building your new habits Celebration of your creative output
Take Action
Apply for a Focus Session: a short call during which we will assess where you are, discuss what you need to move forward, and set-up a plan for taking action.
www.improvliving.com/writingwithease
What Happens if You Wait?
Resistance will win.
Every day you wait to use these skills is another day you let your dreams slip away.
Fast Action Reward
For anyone who applies for a focus session in the next 48 hours:
Poster with the 3 Daily Practices
Voice and Movement Integration Exercise .mp3
Q & A
www.improvliving.com/writingwithease/