I was in a creative rut. Let’s be honest here, Reader, I’d been in a creative rut for about a year at this point in June 2019.

You see 13 months earlier in one month alone I’d had my whole life turned upside down.

→ After I’d spent half a year working on a licensed work, Amazon shut down the imprint division responsible for publishing it only a few short months after it was released.

→ My foot had gotten broken and it had taken me half a year to dance properly on it again.

→ My car had been totaled. (And I wasn’t even in the car when it happened!)

→ And I’d been diagnosed with 2 rare chronic illnesses.

I was a mess. And during that time I’d had to put all my creative work on hold, drop out of going to live events, and put my publishing biz on hiatus.

Then the kicker—my wisdom tooth broke. Badly enough that I needed dental surgery to have it removed.

So there I was with a mouth full of stitches, woozy from surgery watching remakes of 80s cartoons in the middle of the day and eating soup.

I’d stopped writing—stopped creating. My career was spiraling and I knew it.

So I asked for some help—some advice.

I was seeing a therapist at the time to conquer my debilitating needle phobia and I asked her:

Should I return to what I was working on?

My fear:

What if I sit down to write and I find…I can’t? Or what if those stories don’t feel like me anymore?

You know that feeling—that doubt that’s always present in the back corners of your mind. Scratching and clawing and gnawing at you like a hungry tiger.

The voice that says, “Sure, you wrote something brilliant once. But what if it was just that once? What if the muse was just taking pity on you? What if she’s on holiday and never coming back?”

And that’s when my therapist said, “Well, then why don’t you start something new?”

“New?”

“Yes new. Entirely new. Not connected to anything. Then if it doesn’t work out you can try something new the next day.”

It sounds so stupidly simple. But back then when I was feeling utterly lost it was like one of those brilliant aha moments they animate so beautifully in anime. Where the character’s eyes go all big and their hair gets windswept back even though they’re inside and there’s no wind.

I put everything from my before life in a digital folder—sorta like how you would tape up a box and stick it in the back of your closet with clothes you only wear to weddings and funerals—and started something entirely new.

I made two characters—who in the beginning were literally just named after 2 pieces on a Shogi board—and gave myself the challenge of writing 500 words a day.

Once I hit that, I could stop if I wanted or continue. The characters could do anything they wanted and go anywhere as long as they did it on the page.

And you know what happened?

After not writing for much of 2018 I wrote 455,000 words in 2019.

Yes, you read that correctly. I wrote 455,000 words in 2019!

So, Reader, if you’re feeling stuck in a creative rut like I was back in 2019, try these 3 things…

1. Set aside whatever you’re working on and try something new.
2. Grab a creative prompt. FantasyNameGenerators.com has a story concept idea generator that is great for this.
3. Use it to help you get unstuck and write 500-50,000 words!

Try out a new genre, a new POV, or a new character type. Or all 3! It might just be the exact thing you never knew you needed.

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​Camp NaNoWriMo is right around the corner, Reader, and you can use it + my FREE 5-Day Story Creation mini-course to take action and try something new.

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Your cohort in storytelling,

Kat Vancil

🐱

PS 👉 My entry for the Wattpad Romance Will You Be Mine collab contest is live and available for you to read here.

On a class trip to a Shinto shrine, Takehiko Fujioka gets more than he bargained for when he makes a deal with the infamous kitsune Kazumi, Devourer of Hearts.

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The Saga Quest

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