When the Creative Well Runs Dry

“macro shot photography of dried leaf” by Jez Timms on Unsplash

I’ve been in the heart of a creative drought for a while, now.

Maybe this is a natural thing. I keep hearing from other writers, from other creators, how it’s natural to have a dry spell. How there are fallow times and lean times, and how everything is cyclical.

But something about that reeks of bullshit to me. Maybe it’s because I haven’t actually written anything noteworthy. I haven’t done anything to justify having a dry period.

Sure, I’ve written a fairly large chunk of a fairly terrible novel that I have no idea how to deal with. Where, despite my best ideas, I can’t actually pin down the latter half of the story. Mainly because, like living with grief and depression, trying to write about a character suffering from grief and major depression is deeply and profoundly boring.

Everything that I try to write feels boring.

I’m trying to edit my first novel, over two years after I gave up querying it. For all the world, it feels like I’m flogging a dead horse, even as much as I love that story and those characters. I’m trying to shock a flatline, and that whole damn book is staying dead.

Even trying to write on Medium is just . . . not happening. None of my ideas feel any good. I’ve started adding poems behind the paywall to a special publication, just so I can…