Reclaiming my Creativity: How I Overcame Writer’s Block

Creative dispositions fizzle out when not properly nurtured, becoming dormant in parts of the mind that are difficult, if not impossible, to reach.

And when that happens, life can lose all its meaning—become a muddled mess, fleeting, of unwavering misery and distress.

Losing  your creative spark, when it had inhabited a central part of your reality, is not unlike losing a person that you so dearly loved and made you feel things that can never been put into words, yet whose power sustained you and gave you direction and purpose—purpose so potent and vibrant such that no obstacle seemed insurmountable, no challenge too great.

The absence of these feelings cause the mind to slow down, colors to fade, and pessimism to reign. A walk in the park no longer refreshes you. Being in the company of others elicits no desire for connection. The world narrows, engulfing you with a fog of confusion and apathy.

Life simply stalls, becomes mundane, unwelcoming.

I might sound melodramatic. Maybe I am, but this is precisely what happened to me a few years ago when I fell ill, suddenly and inexplicably, with a mysterious and tormenting illness whose symptoms still follow and haunt me today.

Bed-bound, in a vegetative state, and pondering the prospect of death, mourning for my life and what I had so suddenly lost, in my struggle to survive my plight, medicated and defeated, the only thing in my mind was an image of me writing.

Hemingway once said, “[When] writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.”

And I was awfully close to becoming a personified example of that quote.

Look, I do not consider myself a good writer, not even a mediocre one, but this judgment is inconsequential to the fact that writing, over the years, had become a central part of my identity and served as a guiding light—and the chief creative outlet—for the rest of my existence.

And now I had to navigate life and imagine a future without that foundation.

The days passed, one-by-one, then the weeks, the months, and later the years, and I had become a semblance of my former self. Three entire years had passed since I had last read a book or written a single sentence on paper—for any exertion, physical or mental, would aggravate my illness and send me on another spiraling crush.

Despite this torturous cycle of exertions and subsequent crushes, I kept promising myself that I would heal, for no reason other than to write—write and get lost into worlds of my own making, however mundane or superficial.

And, when I finally saw the light—when the medications worked and my clarity of mind returned—I sprinted for my old self, ran as fast as I could to reclaim it and carry on like nothing had ever happened—but when I reached the end, there was nothing there.

The well was dry.

Hemingway spoke of wells and creativity during a 1958 interview. He said, “There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take out a regular amount than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill.[1]

But my well wasn’t just depleted; the water wasn’t murky; it simply didn’t exist anymore. Waiting it out wouldn’t achieve anything.

And, so, I became obsessed with building a new one. I obsessed with reclaiming my creative mind and craved for the moments when I would wield the pen and the words would flow.

I started by reading my former works, my essays and short stories, and tried to reintroduce the muse into my life.

Many writers believe in the muse. I am one of them. I conceive of the muse as a feeling—sometimes a voice—that advises us and transports us to states of mind that change the self and our writing.

Once the muse reveals itself, it knows the path that it must take us, yet it remains non-judgmental until we decide to fully embrace it, entrust our minds to it. When we do, it feels as if a power, equally external and internal, overtakes our thinking and directs it with clarity to the task at hand.

Writers will tell you that you do not decide the existence of the voice; it comes to you when it pleases, and I tend to agree that this is largely the case, but my muse had disappeared for years, and I did not want to wait any longer.

Hence,  I reverted to the extremes.

I chased creativity by introducing novelty in my life, artificially increasing my dopamine with medications, indulging in alcohol, meditating, and taking cold showers, Wim Hof style. Nothing worked.

The words would not flow and my mind would continue to stare at a blank page, unwilling to tap into the state of mind I knew I possessed but could not access.

I pondered giving up, telling myself that writing was no longer a viable path for me, that my illness had irrevocably taken from me that ability. The blank pages openly mocked me, and the words I once wielded so effortlessly now felt elusive and out of reach.

Each attempt at writing was met with frustration, and I began to believe that it was time to accept the painful reality and move on.

And when I was about to declare an end in my quest to reclaim my creativity, I came across the following quote by my friend and fellow writer, Jyri And, where he describes how he fights writer’s block:

I pick a quote, a phrase, an interesting word, or a fascinating passage, and start off by writing it down, and letting myself fall freely from there wherever the pen takes me. Few sentences or paragraphs.

Simple as that!

It wasn’t a groundbreaking idea—no, I had tried doing that before, numerous times, to no avail, but this time something clicked.

Perhaps it was the simplicity of Jyri’s approach, or, maybe, it was the gentle reminder that creativity could flow from the smallest of sparks.

Whatever it was, it served as the catalyst for what had been brewing in my mind, the point where the glass finally overfilled.

I took Jyri’s words and started running with them.  

I decided to give it another—one last—try, determined to let go of my ego and embrace the process without overthinking, simply writing. I scavenged around my room and found an old journal. I flipped through its pages and landed on a random quote I had written down years ago. It was from my literary mentor, Mohsin Hamid. I copied it down onto a fresh page and then sat there motionless, allowing my mind to wander, revisiting, in memory, Hamid’s novels and their writing style, trying to experience the settings, his idiosyncratic use of punctuation marks, and everything else that drew me to him. 

Eventually, the words started to flow. They weren’t perfect, and they didn’t have to be. What mattered was that I was writing—again.

Right there, I realized that reclaiming my creativity was not about erasing the impact of my illness or forcefully trying to overcome it, pretending it had never happened. It was about finding new ways to navigate my challenges and rediscovering the bliss of expression, one word at a time, even if that meant that my writing would no longer resemble my past works—allowing it to be reborn, anew, and become a new entity wholly mine, shaped by, and reflecting, my current challenges.

At last, a new well was found—filled to the brim with clean, unadulterated, spring water, ready to be consumed.

[1] George Plimpton and Ernest Hemingway, “The Art of Fiction No.21,” The Paris Review, Spring 1958.