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I recently wrote about my dance with “writer’s block”. I use quotes because I still don’t believe it’s real, but so far have no better words to describe what I went through.

I hear it from writers all the time – this often overwhelming situation of not being able to move forward. Of looking at something you’ve created and thinking that it is best aborted. Of getting spun around so badly, that you get lost in the forest of your own creation. The belief that it has no value.

I always know that beneath that sensation is a fear – of being judged, criticized, or ignored. And that, my friends, is the key to moving through the roadblock.

I offer you my totally unscientific, subjective perspective on the art of art:

We, as consumers of art, see only what is finished. Artists and creative are some of the bravest people on this planet, but even the most courageous would not dare share something in embryonic form. This gives the rest of us this romanticized view of what making art looks like. Some person, who is smarter than you, better looking than you and probably has more sex than you, arrives in a pristine art-making sanctuary, exhales deeply, and in a swirl of rainbow sparkles a ground-breaking, heart-shaking, soul-stirring piece of creative genius emerges, fully formed and magnificent.

This is to the creative process what Harlequin Romance is to love. Utter and complete fantasy. In my experience, making art is more like birthing a blue whale – full of blood and goo and a considerable amount of wailing (pun intended).

It is this incongruence that makes it so easy to dismiss our own brilliance, while it lies there mostly ugly, pooping itself on the page, stage or canvas. It is this tug on the emergency brake of flow that allows all the inner critics and demons to gather, unionize and shut the place down.

Here’s what’s real: It is ALL part of the process, even this aptly named ‘muddy middle’. This is the trail, sometimes purposely hidden by branches and brush, that takes you to the vista you long for. This is the part where you grow your writerly muscles (or your artistic balls).

There’s no getting around it. Trust me, I’ve tried.

Shifting perspective from…

‘These feelings of disdain, disgust and disappointment must mean my creation is worthless (and thus, so am I),”

to…

“These feelings mean I’m on the right track, I’ve hit the inner boundary to something big, and it’s just one small step to the other side,”

… changes everything.

It’s the wrongness we ascribe to the event that is our true chokehold. (That applies to nearly every single thing, btw.)

What if you recognized the muddled, tangled, terrible period as a necessary phase in your creative process?

What if you made it your refinery, where all the contaminating delusions, inconsistencies and masochistic messages get burned off in the fire, leaving a white hot ball of beauty and truth ready to make its mark on the world?

What if you saw that all that churning and brewing meant you were finally in the arena, sharing the same room with a set of beliefs that are no longer serving you, and begging for you to let them go?

Then what?

What glorious thing would you allow to pass though your magnificent vessel?