I strongly sympathize, though I have no advice, ‘cause I’m just as permanently blocked as you are if not more. 

owoa 

I'm with you.

Ah, I feel y’all. Unfortunately, there seem to be quite a few of us suffering from this blockage. 

Ah yes, that old enemy. One solution is to go for a walk; just get out and look at stuff. Or you can stay in and take a line for a walk, as my art teacher puts it, make random shapes and movements with no goal in mind? Maybe look at other people’s art for a while. Same thing for writing: go out and listen, write a stream of consciousness or even nonsense, read some books... see what happens, yeah?

Hope this helps! Lovely poem, by the way.

Yeah, man, I feel that. I spent much of the last year suffering from a horrible creative block, feeling worthless for not creating and worthless when I tried.

Somehow, I recently was able to break out of that and have written about 20k words in the past few months alone. This may not seem like a lot to some people, but for someone with low self-confidence regarding writing and an (admittedly unhealthy) "if it's not perfect why try" mindset, it's a pretty big deal.

I don't know the exact reasons behind your block, but here are a couple of things that helped me out (mostly focused on writing). Everyone is different, of course, so what worked for me may not necessarily work for you. It's just important to keep trying things.

There's an app called 'Cold Turkey Writer' that you can download for free and has been saving my sorry self when it comes to motivation. You can enter a word count or time goal, press start, and the app will literally not close until you meet that goal. It's unbelievably frustrating and it has helped me so much. 

Honestly, the biggest thing that saved my writing was... fanfiction (*cough*sandersides*cough*). Original stories were really hard for me to motivate myself to start, and fanfiction was easy, because I had a lot of love and inspiration about the characters already. (It didn't hurt that I had a pretty decent reader base on the website I posted these works.) 

I struggled a lot with wanting to write things that are "sophisticated" and deep and gritty and Adult (I was reading a lot of Kazuo Ishiguro and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the time). You know, the sort of stuff that makes you seem smart. The sort of stuff you could brag about.

But I didn't have a lot of inspiration for it. I had ideas, sure, but they were exhaustingly pretentious, and trying to be sophisticated and deep and gritty and Adult was pretty draining.

So then I gave up on them for a while.

I started writing fanfiction. Fluff pieces, angst, and everything in between. Stuff where my favorite characters went on adventures and argued and fell in love and grappled with teen angst and started theater companies and had dramatic rom-com confession scenes in the rain. Stuff that was so silly and sweet and heartfelt and wonderfully self-indulgent.

Even though I would be mildly (okay, deeply) embarrassed if my parents ever found my Ao3, I had the best time. And writing all that helped motivate me to write my other stuff— my deep and gritty and Adult stuff, and that stuff was all the better for it

So be as self-indulgent as you want. Write what you want. If you really want to write something, don't worry about it being "sophisticated" enough or being too cliche or anything like that. You're your own worst critic, after all. When you're writing what you love, your writing is better. That love shows.

Good luck, man. Creative blocks suck, but you can get through it. Sometimes your brain just can't keep up with fictional problems when it's got a lot going on with its own. Not writing doesn't mean you're not a writer. You got this. I believe in you. <33 

(Ayy, Ookz says ieou! Like my favorite Muse character— oh wait. *silently mourns*)

@Secret and aFountainPen - I totally understand. I go through phases like this where I can't and don't do anything creative--and then I worry I've lost my creativity. But somehow, it always comes back.

I don't know why the blocks come. I think it's different for everybody. But one thing is for certain--you love to write and draw, and that's not going to change anytime soon.

Perhaps this is a time of evolution in your creative process--maybe it's time to branch out and try something new. You already have the stories in your head, but you don't have the motivation to put them down in writing. Maybe, instead of trying to write them, you could sing them! (Singing in the shower works wonders... ;) Maybe you could try to turn your art into writing. Or, maybe transform your stories into art.

Whatever the case, definitely don't try to force the block away. In my experience, it's a little like sleep paralysis--the more you struggle against it, the more you feel like you're suffocating. I find that when I relax against my lack of inspiration, my subconscience takes care of it over time, and before I know it, I have a fresh new angle to attack whatever it is I'm doing.

Your motivation is in there somewhere--it's just a matter of time before it surfaces again.