As you pick up your phone for the hundredth time that day, you wonder what the reason for
your unproductivity is. The lack of ideas, or your lack of trust in your own creativity? You
scroll through your Instagram reels, filled with all the things you wish to be; everything but
yourself, and a bitter taste fills your mouth. You glare down at your empty page, in the mirror;
both reminders of what you’re so abysmally lacking. But is it truly you who is flawed, or your
mindset? Why is it that no matter how many times you push yourself up to grab your pen,
the only thing running around your mind like a mantra is your own sense of inadequacy?

Everything you do seems to be a feeble attempt at belonging to a system you never quite
understood—falling behind on deadlines, being constantly reprimanded because “you don’t
write the way you used to”, when you can’t even find yourself in the tangle of emotions inside
your head—crumbling into rubble the fragile facade of inclusion you built. You feel like a
fraud, an imposter. And bit by bit, your motivation, your bright, unique ideas fade to dust,
until all you can do is stare at the reels on your phone and carry your pathetic, envious heart.
Days pass like this, accumulating into months until the due date for the commonwealth
essay is long gone, until you realise you haven’t touched your university application in so
long you don’t remember where you left off. Your mind manipulates you to believe that all the
events up till now were meaningless and you have no one to blame but yourself.

In class, you get chided repeatedly for missed assignments and your weak interjections go
unheard. Your walk home is slow. Heart heavy and burdened with unsaid thoughts that
weigh cruelly like bricks. You see your reflection in the window of a book store and you can
barely recognise yourself. You peer through, eyes landing on a girl, aimlessly tracing along
the spines, and your mind seems to hyperfocus. You see yourself standing there, trying to
orient yourself, as if begging the books themselves to yell out the solution you’ve been
searching for. That is when you realise that amongst all the self-doubt and depression, you
lost your sense of purpose. Writing became a chore, rather than a desire to create. Your
eyes start to find more of you within the store, writers just as lost, and there is a shift in your
perspective. The world doesn’t seem all that lonely anymore. On a plane on which you
thought you were solitary, you are now surrounded. For the first time in a while, something
snaps in your mind: before you know it, you’re stepping into the bookstore, ready to reignite
your flame of passion. Hours pass once you let your pen touch paper as the words flow, the
invisible barrage shattered. You know it won’t last forever, but this high is exhilarating and
you try to salvage the little ember as much as you can, before it goes out again, before you
have to wait another few months to feel hope again.

Creative block affects many people around the globe. Due to many factors, psychological
and external, it is a mindset that is not an easy one to escape. Be it burnout, selfdoubt, or
obsession with perfectionism, everyone has experienced it. When you’re so deep in your
head, how do you recuperate and surmount the mountain of neverending expectation? It all
starts with your purpose: Why do you write? To heal your inner child? To burn even a little bit
of the darkness away? To ease the pain of the burden of thoughts weighing in your heart? Or
simply, for your own pleasure? Whatever it may be, each creation has a purpose, and you
must remember yours to keep the flame of motivation ignited. When your mind does go
blank, let it wander because caging it up with self-deprecating thoughts will only dig that hole
deeper. Give yourself time, and before you know it, your mind will click, and your pen will
flow freely. There isn’t a straightforward way to overcome writer’s block, but a consistent and
hopeful search for inspiration can go a long way.

Even the greatest authors have had to pause—have had to reassess, have had to doubt
themselves to grow further, to overcome their prior strengths, to achieve new heights. There
is no such thing as a perfect writer, only one who perseveres and learns to cherish their
work, and treats every failure like a lesson in and of itself. So, instead of dropping the whole
glass because a few drops escape, remember that patience is virtue, and keep holding your
pen, for losing it will be admitting defeat. And holding on will mean you still possess the
strength to create.

General Feedback:
To start off, pick an attention grabbing title that ties your whole theme together. Your title
determines whether or not people would actually want to read what you wrote, so make that
an area of focus. Secondly, one area where your skills can use some polishing is vocabulary,
sentence structures and punctuations. While a few advanced words are used, their
placement feels inconsistent, making it seem like they were added randomly rather than
integrated naturally into the writing. Besides that, you can work on your sentence structure
and use more complex, longer sentences to add new elements. Similarly with punctuations,
the use of commas throughout is very repetitive. Consider looking into slightly fancier
punctuations—em dashes, semi colons, colons etc. Lastly, expand the article to a minimum
of 800 words by adding content similar to the last two paragraphs. You can do this by
elaborating on why creative blocks are common, what causes people to experience them,
and how different individuals cope with them. Emphasize that creative blocks are not a
reflection of one’s potential but rather a natural part of the creative process—perhaps even a
sign of growth, or just the need for rest. Conclude with a few optimistic sentences that will
serve as reassurance for those who face creative blocks

– Aamena Zahra