Resources

Warm Up Exercise

Here's an exercise you can play with between now and our concentrated session to get the juices flowing. Some clients have found it useful, some not. If it doesn't work for you, don't worry. If you considered it and found it didn’t fit, you’ve done your job.

• Over the next week, find three or four consecutive days that you can commit to writing about your obstacle for at least 15 minutes. Write in a mode of dispassionate observation — as if you were watching the behaviors (i.e., whatever struggle you have, in whatever way that manifests itself) that you're not happy with happen to someone else, trusting in the basic good nature of that individual, and compassionate and curious about what is behind those behaviors and the emotions behind them.  

• As you reflect on what you notice, make the assumption that what's taking place is taking place for some good reason that you don't yet understand, but which understanding will evolve as you sit down to write. See what story or stories emerge, focusing on putting those behaviors into a context in which they serve some purpose or positive intention — perhaps one that could be better served some other way, but that doesn't matter just now.  

• Another way to put it: If you were a screenwriter writing about yourself as a character in the story and the block you are working on was something annoying and maybe even extremely upsetting early in the film, which turned out to be instrumental towards the end, what purpose would it have had to have served?

• The point is just to bring compassionate, dispassionate observation to what you'd ultimately like to change with a lot of curiosity about how it might serve you, and see what emerges as you write.
  
  

If you end up "writing" with no words on the page, that's just fine.

If you're curious about this exercise and want to know more, it's adapted from Timothy Wilson’s book Redirect, and the Pennebaker Writing Exercise.

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Writer's Block -- What It Is and Isn't

Interested in other resources on writer's block? This New Yorker article explains why the Concentrated Coaching approach (that includes a creative exercise reconnecting you to your core intention, and work to help sort out emotional blocks) can be so effective. Most writer's block clients are back to writing following their concentrated session.