I wrote this guide to getting unstuck and rediscovering your creative flow for the writers and artists like me who had read all the writing books and taken the courses and yet couldn’t get to the bottom of why they weren’t able to write regularly and in flow consistently—like would happen sometimes when taking a writing course or when you first get excited about an idea. Since I was fourteen and first started writing fiction and taking writing classes, I’ve been on a journey of finding ways to allow writing stories and making art to be more fun and effortless rather than the difficult slog that it seemed to be for so many writers and teachers I’d encountered. I knew there was a more natural, authentic way of writing or making art, and I was determined to find the right strategy.

Well, I found that strategies and habits could vary so much between artists, and as I wrote essays, stories, and theses, and as I dove deeper into my study of creativity and play, what really became clear to me was all the parts of the process that seemed mysterious and weren’t acknowledged in classrooms at all:

What really matters is your state of being and your relationship to your own imagination, your own spontaneity.

I didn’t need the productivity strategies or to read about someone else’s mindset about the process, I needed a way to navigate the resistance I felt on a moment by moment basis and a way to “trigger” the writing mood within myself so I wouldn’t put it off forever, especially when the conditions didn’t seem right for it! I set about collecting anything that helped me get into that creative headspace and when I couldn’t find it, made up some exercises myself.

After coaching creatives working on everything from plays to dissertations, I came up with some reflection prompts and quick exercises to help myself uncover what feels like the most natural, fun, and intuitive way to create. This workbook is not just a collection of the most important lessons I’ve learned about the deeper creative process that artists and writers don’t often know how to talk about, it is a book of ideas and exercises that help you go within for the answers and to find structure and habits that make sense to you. It’s helped my friends and clients, and I’m certain it will help you too.