What’s something that gets in the way of your creativity, and how do you move through it?

Anxiety is a big one. There are a million little things to do and they crowd my mind and make me anxious. My creative work is how I make a living so when I worry about money, which I do all the time, my creativity suffers. Perfectionism and even near-perfectionism (and even just-okay-ism) make me anxious and make me fearful of writing and block my creativity. 

My best antidote for all of that is to remember that writing is so much more than putting fingers on keys — it’s conversations about ideas, and weird things that happened to you on an errand, and a poem that you read repeatedly or a song that plays in your head. I break down my creative process into bite-sized chunks sometimes, allowing myself the grace to listen to that song or to run that errand or to connect with someone else for a bit and it always gets my mind going. – R. Eric Thomas