Overcome writer’s block by mining the gold of your imagination

Writer’s block often comes from fear: fear of not being a good enough writer, and also fear of where your writing might take you if you let your rational mind give up control. One way to overcome writer’s block is to acknowledge the fear and make it your creative ally, as Ryan-Ashley Anderson did in the piece below.

In the Imaginative Storm, we have no rules about what you write in the 10 minutes: long or short, prose or poetry, story or meditation. When you’re not trying to achieve anything in particular, writer’s block disappears—and really strong material emerges.

Random prompts (such as the image of a gold mine, which inspired Ryan-Ashley’s piece), and a 10-minute timer, are brilliant tools for overcoming writer’s block. Join us any Saturday for our Prompt of the Week gathering; the Zoom link is on our homepage: click here.

The fear of wanting to be swallowed whole

Of tripping into some jagged, swollen, dripping, crumbling, craggy 

silty, lonely cave

and going deeply in.

Of saying yes to the unmarked dark, 

where we go to hide away from

penetrating pain.

And here’s what Ryan-Ashley wrote on a different Saturday, when we used the image below as a prompt. Both pieces, written in 10 minutes, are full of incredible raw material: vivid imagery, strong turns of phrase, and intense emotion.

 Renting rusted bicycles for five dollars a day,

Pedaling slow and easy down the strip (highway) to the shore,

Riding along the water–packed sand right between where the waves offered their last, thin laps, and the place where the sand began to get soft again,

Racing against the sun to get to the place that felt like nowhere, where there was nothing and nobody but big pools of hot water and hurried crabs, before the tide came back in.

Soaking alone in shallow pools of hot, sandy, silty, salty water along with god-knows what else, but I didn’t think about it and didn’t want to know.

Digging my toes deep into soft, muddy sand, arms floating out away from me, watching seagulls fly, free overhead,

Wondering what it would feel like to just sink deeply into the mighty cool, dark, complete.

Let the Imaginative Storm inspire you! You can find an archive of great writing prompts on the Imaginative Storm Circle and on our YouTube channel, as well as daily prompts on Instagram @imaginativestorm).

In November 2022 we will publish the book of the Imaginative Storm method, Write What You Don’t Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow by Allegra Huston and James Navé, founders of the Imaginative Storm method. Click here to pre-order.

In spring 2023, the online video course, Write What You Don’t Know: Imaginative Storm Writer Training, will be available. Join our mailing list now for updates and a 25% discount.