This insight helped me to view my fallow periods as preparatory to the fertile ones, and therefore as an inseparable part of the whole creative process.

the longer you sit there, the more your mind slows and calms down and settles. Once that starts to happen you can begin to focus on the problem you’ve chosen to think about.

what you do at this point, when this new idea of yours has become pretty clear, is to bring in your critical, analytical, fact-seeking mind to assess it.

Your thoughts follow your mood

For example, when you eat, the bit where the fork returns empty to your plate isn’t a failure. It’s just part of the eating process.

Writing is easy. Writing well is difficult.

creative people are much better at tolerating the vague sense of worry that we all get when we leave something unresolved.

So you just sit there and, eventually, as the mind quietens, odd ideas and notions relevant to your puzzle start popping in your mind. But they are … odd! And the reason they seem odd is that they’re not what our usual logical, critical, analytical mind is used to. They don’t arrive in the form of words, in neatly typed little sentences. Because th

Once you have the answers to these, then you go away, decide how valid the problems are … and fix them yourself. The people you have asked will probably suggest their solutions too. Ignore these completely.