Q: Any advice for getting back to a project when you’re feeling over it?

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Headshots via Alexandra Cameron

This is something I know all too well and spend a lot of time talking about! How to move through or past creative blocks. I certainly don’t hold all the answers - and it’s taken a long time to figure out the varying ways in which my mind and body work. It’s about your own creative patterns and how to really get the best out of them. But there are things that have helped me along the way.

It’s important to remember, and this is really hard because we all have deadlines and lives, that the development of any good project takes time. You’ll read so many interviews with writers whose novels took eight years to pull together, or filmmakers whose films were a decade long process. Those tend to be the projects that move you deeply. I’m not saying every single project has to take a lifetime, we would all like to get our projects off the ground faster than that, but I do think there’s something to be said about changing your relationship to time.

I spent a lot of time in a very fast paced career which was deeply rooted in the production of content. Things are produced, shared and in the age of social media - they disappear.  It’s a cycle to make the work, share the work, get the dopamine hit from having people tell you the work is great, and then onto the next thing. What I really love about long form ways of writing and filmmaking are that you’re hopefully making work which will stand the test of time. There’s a place and space for every kind of work but for me it was very useful to break the neural pathways of make, share, like, hit, repeat.

These are now projects I go to sleep and wake up thinking about. So think of it like a relationship. And like with any relationship, there are ups and downs. Periods where you will feel more invested than others, and moments where you will be annoyed and frustrated.

Often when I’m in a moment of not being able to connect I will sit there and try and force myself to focus and work. But actually it’s important to recognise when you need to step back from something to fall in love with it again. Of course when you are really in the throes of production, those rules cannot apply in the same way. But while they can, when you have a project where you are able to take the time, you absolutely should.

I’ve been reminded recently the importance of taking a moment to disconnect for a bit. It doesn’t have to be that you go on a writing retreat to rekindle the magic - it can just be going for a walk or having a couple of days where you focus on something else. I always find when I take myself out of the thing, I then reconnect with it.

It also helps to be less connected to technology. Just having moments where your mind is clearer. I then try and immerse myself in other parts of the world I am creating. Maybe stepping into a certain space that makes me think of my characters, or immersing myself in other forms of storytelling that are going to nourish me.

My biggest piece of advice has to be - take a break. Simple as that.

You can send Qs about anything at all over to thefeelsliv@gmail.com!