All Tangled Up and Everywhere to Go
Working the creative knots
Maybe it was the swelling and deflating of the moon. Or the early morning discoveries of dog shit, conspicuously gifted directly under my writing desk.
Could very well have been my mother-in-law’s week-long Halloween visit, sleeping on our basement couch instead of a bed like a normal human, or the potential client I’m still terrified I might scare off with my drunken enthusiasm for their project.
There was that big emotional thing with my parents, the real estate exam I’m prepping for (because when your husband’s best friend is retiring early and wants to hand his clients off to you, why not?), or, I don’t know… children on the brink of starvation in the world’s richest country.1
All of these things are legit reasons for feeling a little creatively constipated, but acknowledging the validity of the cause doesn’t do much to alleviate the pressure, or the pain.
It’s also historically accurate to say I’ve been easily productive, creatively and otherwise, under similar duress. And of course, knowing that to be true just adds pressure to the clog.
And yet again, I’ve lived to tell.
“Writing about a writer’s block is better than not writing at all.”
― Charles Bukowski
I’m not trying to be cheeky or cheap, or lazily meta. We’re all plenty well supplied with self-referential content.
Reminders about breaking through creative blocks are helpful though, especially when the work is so solitary. We can (and often need to) take comfort in knowing we’re not actually alone in our experience, and that what’s going on is explainable by greater human standards.
That this is being alive.
Others have been and are also alive.
This is a thing that happens and so, by evidence of its existence, will also not happen.
I try never to say it (because I’m a writer and so obnoxiously assume I can somehow say it better)—the only way out is indeed through.
Okay, so we know it’s a path. A somewhat linear progression from one thing (not creating) to the desired other thing (creating).
It’s not, as much as we’d prefer it to be, a switch—a control mechanism that can be toggled at will. We’re complex machines, supported by an even more complex environment. Simple tools don’t have purchase here.
But a ‘path’ implies movement, which is of course what we acutely feel a lack of.
What happens to a thing physically stuck?
Think about a knot, a tangled necklace or extension cord, a foot between two rocks. You free what’s fixed not through force—which either worsens, tears or breaks—but through slow and careful attention.
We often (mistakenly, I think) equate slowing down with stopping, or maybe that’s just me. Is it though? Popular entreaties to release our own pressure invariably include instructions for rest, doing as little as possible, and even trading effort of any level for it’s opposite—i.e. ‘self-care.’
But the knot won’t untie itself. And in fact, it might get knottier still if left to the elements.
Like a tangled slinky—I know you feel me here, parents—our creative energy sometimes needs cajoling back into its working shape. It hasn’t gone anywhere, isn’t broken, but is for sure non-functional. The slinky doesn’t slink.
Important to clarify, this isn’t self-doubt, that screeching gremlin of a critic in your ear. Nor is it about inspiration, or lack thereof. Different beasts, different approach.
It’s particular, this snarl… it needs both precision and patience, attention and method.
We’re picking apart the threads of our distractions and obligations, restoring shape to the coil of our creativity.
And just like a knot, you pull one loop and another tightens. You write and delete. Make a line, a stroke, a decision, and get stuck with something inoperable.
So you come at that knot from a different direction.
Every early morning that I couldn’t write what I needed this week, I eventually switched from my computer to my journal, from type to pencil.
I never journal at my desk. In bed, on the living room couch, occasionally out in the world somewhere, sure, but never at my writing desk.
Picking at the knot.
Every later morning that I’d otherwise be reviewing the work just done—-editing in my mind, making mental notes of what comes next—I instead sunk extra effort into making my second grader’s lunch notes.
They’ve been doodles and stickers on scrapbooking paper for his entire school career until now. This last week, they became collages.
Picking at the knot.
Every afternoon that I felt the urge to sink into distraction—queuing up a podcast, tidying the house, unnecessarily proactive grocery shopping—I instead explored new writers, listened to an entire album all the way through, stared out the window.2
Picking at the knot.
Novelty is helpful, almost always, but sometimes we just need to circle around the problem in a slightly different way.
It’s not a thought exercise, because you can’t think your way through it. It’s a discipline exercise, because you have to regulate your way through it.
It’s work done in the margins, peripheral to the greater goal. And like attending to that knot, the pressure is light, the energy… measured.
We know what consistency does for us, how regular rehearsal keeps the stuff we learn in our short-term memory long enough for our long-term memory to grab hold of it. The same mechanics apply here.
Writing, making, moving our bodies in certain ways daily, they’re all the same form of practice that ultimately lead to expertise. Attending to the skill, even when shunted and immobile, keeps our brains on the job. We’re still revving the engine even if the car isn’t moving.
We can also rely on, and take comfort in, the complex choreography going on in our brains, between the various networks involved in creativity. Improvisation and method are repeatedly synchronized as we dream, focus and create, but because there’s also a big bad world out there, we often have to be both the dancer and the choreographer.
We have to direct our moves, with precision but also fierce compassion. The most beautiful motion lies just on the other side of stagnation—it’s a freedom, hard-won but also the stuff of nature.
My Favorite Things (this week)
As with all my new music discovery these days, I got introduced to Lars Bartkuhn and this track via WDET, our Detroit NPR station. It’s made a fairly regular appearance on one of my favorite shows, but that hasn’t seemed to cut it for me.
More, please!
Also, this new Celeste:
Yes, and… fresh Daniel Caesar is everything ++ folks are saying it is.
Finishing Frankenstein (the book) before seeing Frankenstein (the del Toro). Takeaway: I love/adore GdT, and very much appreciate his deeply personal interpretation, buuuuut… Bernie Wrightson forever.
DEEP dive for this essay, the research and writings of Psychologist Roger Beaty; in particular “The Creative Brain” as published in Cerebrum.
And finally, PLEASE subscribe to
and her incredible publication, Black Sheep Mom.“When your child is behind bars, you better be a tough mother. I write what others won’t— because silence protects the system, not the people.”
Bridget writes beautifully, with a purpose so clear, and in ways that her readers can relate—not necessarily on an experiential level, but on a human one.
Okay, pps: because this is a little bit how the week has felt…
I love and thrive on your comments always, but this one really needs you! Your fellow readers need you. How have you untangled your creative knots? Moved around, through, over your blocks/plateaus?
Reminder: we’re all creators, even if we don’t call ourselves artists. We create our lives every day, so your story doesn’t have to involve what society easily defines as a creative process. Any stuck place needs unsticking.
Your sharing a story or two is a gift—a force of generosity in a world that needs all our creative energies. Thank you for reading and for writing!
A tricky metric, this by total net household wealth and nominal GDP; Nunn, Lewis. “The World’s 50 Richest Countries 2025, According To Financial Experts.” Forbes, 14 Aug. 2025.
Our 15 year-old caught me and asked what I was doing. When I told him, ‘just watching the leaves fall,’ I could literally feel his confusion bouncing of the back of my head. Parenting as leadership, baby.
I have spent the better part of 18 months trying to creatively work a knot out in my life. So much effort, from so many different angles, including fearsome intentional work, quiet reflective work, disengaged open-handedness. The last week has brought about an unraveling of that knot from forces outside of myself. Not how I would have preferred the knot to be undone, but a reality that I have to live with nonetheless.
What I am finding so interesting to sit with now, is the sudden awareness of how much of my constant emotional, spritual, and mental energy has been dedicated to this knot, even when I was not conscious of it. There has been a massive energetic let down that I was not expecting. At first blush, the energy drop felt peaceful...and that has now shifted into sadness. I expect that it will continue to evolve.
Where I find myself now is in observation of my responses - and working to just notice them, sit with them, allow them to be and move - and wondering where I will direct my energy now that there isn't this knot to focus on any longer.
Ok, I was reading this piece engrossed in the truth of it, feeling this picking at the knot myself right now in life and then... you mentioned me!! You completely blew wind into my sails this morning. Thank you for being real and kind and connecting. See you real soon. ;)