Welcome back to Alchemy for Authors!
Do you feel the pull to write your book but find yourself procrastinating, doubting your abilities, or waiting for the perfect moment to start? What if the very resistance you’re facing is a sign you’re on the right path?
In this episode of Alchemy for Authors, I’m diving into the hidden messages behind creative resistance — what it’s really trying to tell you and how you can move through it. I’ll share why resistance often shows up strongest when you’re about to create something meaningful, along with practical tools and mindset shifts to break through fear, self-doubt, and perfectionism.
If you’ve ever wondered why writing your book feels so hard—and whether that struggle means you’re not cut out to be a writer—this episode is your reminder that resistance isn’t a stop sign… it’s a compass guiding you toward the work you’re meant to do.
Listen now to learn how to alchemise your resistance into your greatest creative breakthrough.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Join Carissa Andrews’s 12-week Millionaire Author Manifestation experience here: https://www.authorrevolution.org/a/2147529641/woteKkRf Remember to use the coupon code ‘ALCHEMY’ to get 30% off the full-price, or your first payment on the payment plan.
- Listen to the Bonus Episode: Millionaire Author Manifestation with Carissa Andrews here.
- Grab your copy of Claire Taylor’s books Reclaim Your Author Career and Sustain Your Author Career.
- Buy Steven Pressfield’s books: Turning Pro and The War of Art.
- Buy Orna Ross’s Creative Self-Publishing: ALLi’s Guide to Independent Publishing for Authors and Poets.
- Buy Julia Cameron’s books Finding Water and The Artist’s Way.
- Purchase Unspoken Truths and Hades’s Haunt.
- Learn more about the Ages of Pages book fair here: https://agesofpages.weebly.com/
For other resources you can check out my Author Resources page here: https://jobuer.com/author-resources/
Download your copy of Affirmations for Authors with a Day Job here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/dnj980xva5
If you enjoyed this episode please subscribe, rate and review. You can also support the show by buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jobuer. Your support helps me keep this podcast going and is greatly appreciated.
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If you enjoy Gothic Suspense, you can join my reader’s newsletter and download a FREE copy of my short story collection, Between the Shadows, here. You can find all my books at https://jobuer.com or visit https://Books2Read.com/JoBuer for links to your favourite store.
Find the full transcript of this episode below.
Please note: Some links may be affiliate links that help support the show.
Episode 101: Turning Resistance Into Your Creative Compass
Hello my lovelies! Welcome back to Alchemy for Authors.
Today’s episode is Episode 101: Turning Resistance Into Your Creative Compass. Today I am going to be talking about what your resistance is trying to tell you and how we can try and break through it.
First though, I’d like to share a little bit of a personal update. So at the moment I am working on the finishing touches or the finishing edits of my gothic suspense novel, Broken Lies, and I’ll be talking a little bit about that in this episode since it inspired it. I also got the wonderful news that one of my short stories recently got accepted into an anthology that will be available at an event here in New Zealand on the 26th of April. The Ages of Pages Book Fair here in Hamilton, New Zealand. The anthologies are only available at the book fair, but they do go to a fantastic cause, which is Duffy Books and Homes, which is a charitable trust that helps to get books into homes and boost the love of reading and literacy for children in particular. So I’m really excited to have a story included in an anthology for such an awesome cause.
I also want to say a big thank you to all those who tuned into episode 100 of Alchemy for Authors: Best Guest Manifestation Tips From 100 Plus Episodes. I have heard from a lot of you that you really enjoyed it and enjoyed hearing some of the past guests of Alchemy for Authors sharing their tips about manifestation in regards to up-levelling their author careers and whatnot.
Aligning with that episode, I’m really excited to share that my lovely friend, and best-selling author, Carissa Andrews from Author Revolution, has just opened the doors to her Millionaire Author Manifestation 12-week course. Now, I have talked about this course before on the show. I’ve had Carissa on to talk about it as well. And it is something that I enrolled in a few years ago and is still just a wonderful resource for going back to for connecting with people in her community that she’s created around manifestation for authors. And it’s something that I’m really excited to share with you. Because if you haven’t enrolled previously, or if manifestation is something that really interests you, then I’m highly recommending you go check it out. If you go back through the episodes of Alchemy for Authors, there was a Bonus Episode that came out between Episode 47 and 48, and that was on the Millionaire Author Manifestation course with Carissa Andrews, where she talks a little bit about the course. However, since then, I know she’s added lots more exciting things. There are meditations, hypnosis, lessons, there’s a supportive network of people that you get to be a part of, to cheer each other on, and it’s just such a wealth of information. So if it is something that you’re a little bit curious to, then I highly recommend you go check it out. There will be a link in the show notes. And the thing that I’m also excited about is because of my friendship with Carissa, if you use my link, you can also use the coupon code “ALCHEMY”, A L C H E M Y, and that will get you a 30 percent discount off the full price if you pay in full, or off your first payment if you decide to use the payment plan, which is also available. So that’s a really cool bonus. And of course, by using my link as well, you help support the show, because not only am I a student of the Millionaire Author Manifestation course, but I am also an affiliate. So there is no extra cost to you. In fact, you actually end up getting a discount and I get a little bit of a kickback that helps support the show. So it’s kind of a win-win if this is something that intrigues you a little bit.
So anyway, let’s get on with today’s show. I’ll give you a moment to make sure you’re ready, you’ve got a hot drink, you’ve got a comfy chair, and you’re ready to sit back and enjoy this episode.
Right, so today I am talking all about resistance. It is that nasty little thing that I think as authors, as writers, as creatives, we all endure or come across at some point in our lives.
Now, as somebody who has ADHD, resistance is kind of a big part of my life. I tend to feel it in all areas of my life at different times, and it might present itself as procrastination or just coming up against a wall where I just don’t want to do the thing that I know I need to do. In regards to my writing, this is something that I have battled with significantly when it comes to my gothic suspense novel Broken Lies. And I know I’ve talked about this a little bit on the show before.
So Broken Lies is the sequel to a novel that I published back in 2021, I think it was. And that novel was Unspoken Truths. It’s a gothic suspense novel based in New Zealand with a dual timeline, of, I think, it’s 1939 and 2015. It is, at its heart, a ghost story. The actual writing of the book, Unspoken Truths, was a hard journey, I have to say. Quite cathartic. It allowed me to express, in a fictionalised way, a lot of trauma that I had suffered from a previous job. And even though the plot and the characters do not relate in any way to what I experienced, or main players in my experience, the trauma that I’d gone through was still quite raw and really played itself out on the page through the experiences and emotions that my characters felt throughout the story. And so, of course, at the end of writing Unspoken Truths, there was quite a bit of burnout from it. It took me a little while to kind of heal from it, and it’s still probably my absolute favourite story, even though it’s not necessarily my bestseller. It’s a bit of a niche book. But it is still one that holds a special place in my heart, I guess.
On finishing writing it, I had a few people say, Oh, is there going to be a sequel? We’d really like to hear about what happens from some of the other characters. And right away, I was like, yeah, you know what? There definitely is room for a sequel. And so I started to work on the sequel. And I never really got much further than the first chapter or so, despite multiple starts. There was a big wall and a big block there, and I think part of it was the fear of having to go back through the emotional rollercoaster of what I went through with writing the first book, that really stepping into my shadow self again. So there was a definite reluctance to that. So much so that I couldn’t write anything for a while and it wasn’t until I switched gears and gave myself permission to write my clean, paranormal, cozy, mystery, Hades’s Haunt, that I started to get my writing mojo back. Because Hades’s Haunt, if you’ve read it, is a pretty fun book, all in all. It’s not a serious read, unlike a lot of my others. And I got a lot of joy and had a lot of fun out of giving that a go. And I had zero expectations, so it was relatively easy to write.
However, the sequel to Unspoken Truths, my novel Broken Lies, has sat there for a long time with multiple starts. Eventually, I did get the darn thing written, and again, it is a book that I really love. Despite the crossover in characters, it is different again than Unspoken Truths, but it is still a story that I really, yeah, really love and really carry in my heart. However, what I found was that after writing it, and honestly, it wasn’t easy, it was quite a slog, I really had to force myself to the page, it took a long time. I did all my multiple edits, got it to my editor, and she went through it pretty thoroughly and got it back to me over a year ago. I am still working on implementing her suggestions. There was a couple of chapter rewrites, and some edits, and what not. And there is no good reason that it should have taken this long, and I still haven’t got the book finished. And what is really crazy about this is, like I said, I really love this story. And I really want it out in the world because I’m finding it really hard to move on with the next Hades book, the next paranormal cozy book that I’ve got in mind to write, because I feel like I need to finish up this one project, Broken Lies, first before I move on.
So I have come across a lot of resistance in this book. And with some self-reflection I can see quite a few reasons for the resistance. Part of it is that it’s a sequel and so there’s that fear of it being compared too closely to the first book. There’s the fear that it won’t be loved as much, that people may not like it as much, or that I’ve somehow allowed, despite multiple, and I’m talking like lots and lots of edits, that I’ve still allowed some inconsistencies to come through with characters names or appearances or timelines, or something like that. Which, I have to remind myself, is okay if that happens. Because I think we’ve all read multiple books where sometimes there’s small slip ups. Or mistakes that, despite the best editing, still slip through. Even in traditionally published books where we expect that a little bit less. But mistakes do happen, they can be fixed. But it has definitely held me back from moving on and getting this darn book finished and published and out in the world. So there is a little bit of fear that it won’t compare to the first book and that is probably the thing that is most holding me back. There are other things, like once this book is out the way then I need to get on to all my other books. And that also brings a fear because the next Hades book, my paranormal cozy, is the second in a trilogy. So it’s also going to come with that heavy load of will it compare to the first book, which to date has been one of my best sellers. So I think for myself, fear is a big roadblock towards my productivity.
Now I am well aware from not only my own experience, but also from interviewing so many different authors on this show, that resistance is completely normal. All authors, all writers, all creatives, we come up against this for a myriad of reasons. We can feel that resistance towards moving forward with our work, towards putting words on paper, towards pressing publish. This is part of the author experience that we choose when we decide to go down this path of writing books. So the purpose of this episode then is to make sure that you’re reminded that you are not alone if you’re experiencing a little bit of resistance towards getting the words on the page, towards getting your edits done, towards getting your book out into the world. You are not alone.
I also want to examine some of the things that our resistance might be trying to tell us and also look at how we can move through resistance when it pops up for us as well.
So let’s talk about first what resistance really is. In my mind resistance is that invisible force that keeps us from doing the creative work that we feel that we’re called to do, or that we want to do. Sometimes resistance can pop up because we feel obligated to do something. That can sometimes be the case with me, particularly with ADHD, as soon as somebody tells me that I need to do something or have to do something, I feel a little bit of that resistance towards actually doing the thing. I don’t like to be told what to do.
In Steven Pressfield’s book, Turning Pro, he calls out resistance as being the enemy of every creative. And again, I want you listening to this to be reminded that everybody at some point will come up against resistance. You are not alone on this.
Pressfield also says that: “Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work… Resistance will not be reasoned with. It is always lying and always full of shit.”
This I think is always true. The excuses that I have told myself as to why I cannot get Broken Lies finished and out in the world is ridiculous. It’s everything from, I don’t have enough time, there’s too much stress going on in my life. Too much drama. I don’t have the emotional capacity right now. What if nobody likes it? What if too many people like it? What if it gets compared too closely to Unspoken Truths and one or the other comes out lacking? It’s a lot of what ifs. And a lot of dishonesty, if I’m being honest right now. Yes, the last couple of years have been pretty crazy for me, there have been some big family dramas, and work dramas, and severe burnout, and a whole big range of things, but probably no more than the average person if I’m completely honest. If I had really been feeling excited to get my book out in the world, I would have just found a way to do it. It would have been easier to have moved through the resistance. Not to say the resistance wouldn’t still be there, but it would have been easier to have moved through.
Pressfield also has this to say about resistance: “Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable.” Resistance aims to kill. “It’ll kill you like cancer… to achieve its agenda, which is to prevent you from actualizing your self”, or your creative self.
Julia Cameron, in her wonderful book The Artist’s Way, says this about resistance: “Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control. This is frightening and we resist it. Our resistance to our creativity is a form of self-destruction. We throw up roadblocks on our own path. Why do we do this? In order to maintain an illusion of control.”
Now, all of those quotes I really resonate with. When you’re going through and experiencing resistance, it can feel like the hardest thing on the planet and it is so destructive, destructive to your self-esteem, to your confidence in yourself, to your confidence in your abilities, to your career, to your success, to… you name it. It’s not a fun thing to be going through at all. And I think Julia Cameron is correct in that it does have a lot to do with control. The thing with being an author is that there are so many things outside of our control. We can’t necessarily control, other than by writing the best book that we can write, doing all those things like having a fantastic cover, getting really good edits, etc, but we still can’t control how our finished work is going to be received by the public. We can’t control if lots of people are going to read it, and if a lot of those people are going to love it. We can’t control its reception. We can’t control whether it’s going to take off and be an amazing success, or absolutely bomb. Therefore, isn’t it safer to just not write the book? To just not publish the book? To hold ourselves back? And that’s, in effect, what resistance does. It’s a mechanism for protection to save ourselves from getting hurt, from putting ourselves out there, from facing rejection or failure.
So resistance can show itself in a myriad of ways. It can show up as procrastination. It can show up as perfectionism, as self-doubt, as fear of judgment, as imposter syndrome, and probably a million other things as well.
Orna Ross, in her book Creative Self-Publishing: ALLi’s Guide to Independent Publishing for Authors and Poets, says that resistance often shows up as one of these three forms of fear: fear of failure, fear of success, or fear of the creative process itself. Also known as fear of change.
So then what might our resistance be telling us?
Yes, it’s likely telling us that we are putting up roadblocks because we’re scared of something, because there’s some kind of fear that is holding us back, whether consciously or subconsciously, that we are sabotaging our own success. However, there are some other things that our resistance, if we pay attention, might also be telling us. And the thing with resistance and any kind of blocks, in my opinion, is that once you recognise why they’re there, what the payoff is for you, how they’re showing up to protect you in some way, then I think it makes it so much easier to be able to move through them. So, here are some things that you might want to consider if resistance is holding you back in some way.
Maybe it’s trying to tell you that you’re actually on the right path. So resistance can often show up strongest when you’re doing something meaningful. So think about it, if you were creating something that you didn’t really care about, that wasn’t meaningful to you, you were just doing it, you’re probably not going to experience the kind of resistance that you would if you were doing something that mattered to you, if you were doing something that came from your heart, that you identified with in some way, that had meaning for you. So, it makes sense then, that if you’re doing something meaningful, fear is going to show up. Again, it’s a form of self-protection. It’s there to keep us safe from putting ourselves out there. I mean, as human beings, we’re much more inclined towards safety than to risk. We’re very risk adverse beings. Like most of us, will do everything we can to keep ourselves safe, to keep the people we care about safe. My argument would be, though, that to live a fulfilling life, we want to be doing the things that feel meaningful to us. So, maybe, that resistance is showing to remind us that we are doing something meaningful. That we are on the right path.
Resistance is also a reminder that we actually care deeply about our work. Much like the fact that it is meaningful, fear only shows up when things matter to us. And we’re all familiar with imposter syndrome, right? Feeling like a fraud, no matter how many times we do something that matters to us. Caring deeply about your work is important, I think. You don’t want to care so deeply that it paralyses you from moving forward. But I think our readers, I think our audiences and that know when we care deeply about something. It resonates with them. People are more inclined to care about things that other people care about deeply. So that resistance is that fear reminding us that what we’re doing matters. It matters to us, and that is a positive because then it will matter to others as well.
Resistance also shows up when we’re hitting an emotional or psychological block. Because, here’s the thing, sometimes our lives and what is going on in our lives is not always conducive to creativity. From my own personal experience, I know when there’s a lot of drama in my life, my capacity to string any kind of words together, whether verbal or written, is just not there. Burnout is a real thing, and so sometimes it is true that I think we do need to take breaks from our work so that we can do whatever healing we need to do, get the clarity and the capacity that we need to be able to get back in the game of writing or publishing. However, if we find that the drama or the things going on in our lives is impacting upon our writing for large periods of time, then I think that’s a really good signpost that something more significant needs to change in our life. We need better boundaries or we might need to change some external circumstances in our lives so that we can, again, put ourselves in a situation which is more conducive to being able to write. So, for example, if you’re in a really toxic relationship or a toxic job or something, and you find that that is leaving you so drained and burned out that you don’t have the capacity to put words on paper, then I think that’s a sure signpost, my friend, that something needs to change in those life areas.
And, of course, resistance can also stem from deeper insecurities as well. When you come up against those emotional or psychological blocks that maybe don’t have a lot to do with your external circumstances, then you’re going to have to go deeper into what is going on internally. So some questions that you might want to reflect on are: Am I afraid of success or failure? Do I fear being seen? Or misunderstood? Is there an old wound I haven’t yet addressed?
Now, what has helped me with really getting clear on my inner resistance and emotions and psychological blocks, and this will not be for everybody, but one way that helps me examine these is I tend to look at the Enneagram. The two wonderful books by Claire Taylor, who’s also been on the show, Reclaim Your Author Career and Sustain Your Author Career, I find are fantastic guide books for examining what our inner desires are, what our real fears are, and how that resistance might show up for us personally. Because we are not all the same. As human beings, we are different. There are however some similarities as to how groups of us, and in this case I’m talking about your Enneagram type, on what blocks, what forms of resistance might be showing up specifically for us. Because it could very well be that your resistance is also a sign that you’re misaligned with your innate creative values. That you’re trying too hard to fit into the box of somebody else’s creative values, or what somebody else says that you should be aligned to. So if you haven’t already, and if Enneagram is something that you think might interest you, I highly recommend you go check out Claire Taylor’s books and dive a little bit deeper into that. I’ve personally found them really beneficial in that area.
Now here’s a thing that I think is one of the big reasons that I got stuck with Unspoken Truths and potentially Broken Lies. And that is maybe you’re over identifying with your book. Delaying finishing a book might be due to the fact that the book feels like it’s too much of an extension of your own identity. When people talk about their books as being like their book baby, something they birthed, or a part of them, that might just be the sure sign that you have over identified with your book. Now, no wonder then, you’re scared to get the thing finished and out in the world. Because in doing so, you’re making yourself incredibly vulnerable. If you see your book as an extension of yourself, then of course putting it out in the world must be like putting it on the stage to be critiqued by anybody. And that’s a really scary thing. I would not want to put myself up on the stage and say, Hey people, tell me all the good and bad things about myself. Because I can tell you now, I am a little bit of a snowflake when it comes to people giving me negative critique. I don’t necessarily deal with that all that well. And so that kind of exposure must be terrifying and could very well be holding you back from putting your book out in the world. So if we can put in slightly better boundaries and know that the book is of us, but isn’t us, then we might be able to deal with that a little bit better.
So putting in a little bit of distance, write the book of your heart, put your heart and soul in, but then let it go, let it be its own entity out in the world and know that for negative or positive, it is not a reflection of who you are as a person. The negative or positive response that a book gets, it’s that reader’s reflection. It’s that reader’s expression of their values. If a reader hates your book, again, that’s not to do with you. It’s not necessarily to do with your book either. It’s that something in that did not align and resonate for them. Same with, if a reader loves your book, you know, it’s not necessarily got anything to do with you or your book. It’s just that something along the lines in your book resonated positively for them. So if we can put a little bit of distance between ourselves and what we put out in the world, then we’re probably going to save ourselves a lot of heartache and minimise some of that resistance as well.
And again, this is probably the one that I resonate with the most because Unspoken Truths really felt like it was a part of me and a part of my healing. It was a hard book to put out in the world. Broken Lies, however, despite being the sequel, was not written with the same cathartic outpouring of past trauma that Unspoken Truths was. But because of that, I do have that fear that maybe people won’t resonate as much because I did not pour my whole heart and soul and trauma into this book. I enjoyed it a lot more, had more fun writing it, but then that leaves me fearful that maybe it won’t resonate to quite the same depth. But again, it’s not really my business. My business is to write the book, to do the best job I can, to put it out there. It will resonate with those people it needs to resonate with and not with the people who it doesn’t need to. And neither one of those is actually an expression of who I am as a person.
So, when we come up against resistance, how can we move through it? And remembering that I am presently going through this to some extent, although definitely clearing these blocks a lot easier now, but this is just the disclaimer that I am not perfect with any of these things. I’m hoping the advice is taken in a way knowing that I am not perfect and I am experiencing these things myself and I don’t have it all figured out, but maybe something will resonate with you and will help you on your path to moving through resistance.
One thing that I do really like is the naming and acknowledging the fact that you are in resistance. Call it out. Say something like, “This is just my fear of failure showing up. This is just my fear of success. Oh well, let’s move through that. This is my fear that people are going to misunderstand my book. This is my fear that people are going to misunderstand me as a person.” Remember, you are not your book.
One way that you can name and acknowledge whatever fear, resistance actually is for you is by free writing. And this is a concept that Orna Ross promotes a lot to kind of get in touch with your subconscious where we kind of have all the answers to the roadblocks we put up for ourselves. And as authors, writing should be relatively easy for us. But it’s a way of allowing yourself to ask questions of that part of yourself that actually already knows the answers. So, it might be that you take out a journal, you take out a pen, and you get writing. Ask your resistance why it doesn’t want you to write or publish your book. What is it trying to protect you from? How can you reassure your resistance, yourself, that it is okay to move forward with your project?
A second thing that might help you move through your resistance is creating or setting up a little bit of a writing ritual. So it might just be setting up a small routine that at a certain time of the day, you sit down, you write for 15 minutes, non-negotiable, doesn’t even matter what you write. It might be that you light a candle, put on a particular type of music to set the mood and to, over time, switch your brain into writing mode. Give yourself that sacred space to get back into some kind of a writing routine. To tell yourself that now is the time to show up on paper.
For myself, I tend to use something that I call Quick Writes. And that is, literally, I will set a timer for 5, 10, 15 minutes, something like that, and I must write the whole time. And it doesn’t have to be on my project. It could be anything. It could be me just writing over and over again, I don’t know what to write about. I really hate this resistance. I wish it would go away. There is something about doing that without any expectations of what’s going to be on the page or of it being a masterpiece that, over time, starts to whittle away the opposition and the fear of just showing up to the page. It’s like building a muscle, I guess. It’s building that muscle of writing without expectation that it is perfect. And for somebody who for a long time really leant towards perfectionism, this has been a game changer for me. And it also leads to the idea of befriending imperfection, being okay with not being perfect. It’s all about writing that shitty first draft, right? It builds the muscle for just getting words on a page, knowing that you can edit it at another time. So I have found Quick Writes really, really useful for making headway with that whole mantra of done is better than perfect. I would rather have words on the page than no words on the page. No matter how imperfect they are.
Another concept that might help you move through resistance is to reframe your fear as a sign to keep going. As I mentioned before, fear means that you’re doing meaningful work. If you’re doing meaningful work, it probably means that meaningful work needs an audience, so you need to keep going. So it’s about how we want to grow as a person, and I’m hoping if you’re listening to this, considering it is a podcast on manifestation and mindset for authors primarily, that you want to grow as a person. You want to get better as an individual and also as a writer or author. Think back to any time in your life where you’ve had to grow in some way, whether you were laid off from a job, whether you were moving house, whether your life circumstances changed in some way that made you have to start over. Growth is always going to be uncomfortable at the beginning. But, most of the time, or I would say from my experience anyway, even in those ugly circumstances that I’ve absolutely hated at the time, further down the line, I’ve been able to look back and see that the growth was necessary. and I’m a better person for it.
So, instead of letting our fear hold us back, let it tell us that we’re on the right path, that what we’re creating has meaning and purpose, and to keep going. If you’ve written a book before, you’ll already know that at some point, it’s probably going to feel impossible. But if you’ve got to the end of the book and you’ve got it published, you also know that no matter how impossible it feels, you are still able to eventually get it out in the world.
Finding a writing community or finding somebody or something to hold you accountable can also be beneficial to moving through resistance as well. So it might be joining a writing group or joining a Facebook group of fellow authors, or just having a friend that you check in with regularly to keep you accountable. And, of course, you’re doing the same for them as well. It might be what you need to actually move through getting your work done, and to move through that resistance. I find that I’m usually much more inclined to get a project finished if I feel like people are depending on me, or I don’t want to disappoint somebody. So, that is a strategy that might be useful for you.
My final tip for moving through resistance is to actually just trust the process and surrender. Know that resistance is a natural part of the path of writing and publishing, but that it’s not an excuse for stopping or stalling on what you’re doing. Writing is, in effect, an act of trust. If you’ve written a book before, then you’ve already got that example, that knowing that resistance can show up, but you can move through and still get to completion. So I think keeping that at the forefront of mind is really important too. It’s that reminder that Elizabeth Gilbert gives us that you do not need anyone’s permission to live a creative life. So if your resistance is because you’re not trusting in your abilities, or somebody close to you has said that you can’t do the thing, it’s remembering that you don’t actually need anybody else’s permission. You just need your own permission to go forth and write that thing and publish that thing and do what your heart is drawn to do.
Now, different authors come at this in different ways, this trusting the process and surrendering. Myself, I guess I’m more inclined to the way that Julia Cameron expresses moving through resistance in Finding Water. She says: “So much of being an artist boils down to: ‘Just do it.’ There is little point in analysing our resistance, searching out deep reasons for why we cannot work. It is far better to face the resistance directly, to call a friend and say, ‘I need to work and I don’t want to work, and I’m going to work now for fifteen minutes.’ Signing up for a modest fifteen or twenty minutes usually gets us past our Inner Censor. It is such a slight amount of time that the Censor can be hoodwinked into thinking that it doesn’t really matter. If we were to say to our Censor, ‘Now I’m going to work for an hour or two,’ we would have a real fight on our hands. Because we say, ‘I’m just going to try a few minutes,’ our Censor can be gulled into letting us get to the page or the easel. A Censor has a great sense of self-importance. When we make our work small, humble, and doable, the Censor doesn’t know how to fight us.”
For myself, I tend to subscribe to the way through resistance is just to do the thing despite the resistance. However, Orna Ross, in her book Creative Self-Publishing, says that, “Yes, there are times when getting things done is a matter of discipline but for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Push and you get pushback. Whatever we try to suppress and control bounces back up, twice as strong. To fight resistance can strengthen and entrench it.” Orna then goes on to quote the Irish poet Mary O’Malley, who puts it, “What’s in the way is the way.”
So for Orna, by facing up to what is underlying our creative fear, is it fear of failure, or success, or just the creative process itself, you are no longer fighting the resistance per se, but you’re acknowledging it and showing a willingness to work with it, to understand it, and therefore to move through it. Orna reminds us that, “In creative mode, failure and rejection can be accepted, even welcomed. To want to create something is to acknowledge that we have, so far, failed to have it. So going through ‘no’ is the spark that highlights your path to ‘yes’.”
So recognising your fears of failure, recognising your fears of success, or your fears of creativity allows us to move through them, particularly when we’re willing to listen to why we have those fears in the first place, understand them, go deep into why and how they’re protecting us, and acknowledge ways in our life that they’ve shown up before and we’ve been okay, despite the sense of impending doom that sometimes these fears can show us.
So, by trusting the process, by acknowledging that everybody feels resistance, or imposter syndrome, or deals with procrastination, or perfectionism, or whatever way that it shows up for you, we are not alone in this journey. And there is ample evidence in the universe that we, like everybody else, can move through those blocks as well when they present themselves. So resistance isn’t a stop sign. It’s simply a compass pointing us towards an area of growth for ourselves.
So again, I encourage you to find a way, whether it’s free writing, whether it’s just listening to your inner dialogue, pay attention to what your biggest form of resistance is right now, and what it might be trying to tell you. And, are the things it’s trying to tell you, actually anchored in truth? Because the likelihood is they’re gonna be anchored in fear, not truth. And you’ll be able to, when you open your eyes and look around you, find ample examples of why those fears are actually lies. And they’re not malicious lies. They’re simply there to protect you, to keep you safe.
So I would love to hear how resistance is showing up in your life right now, and what it might be trying to tell you. You can reach out to me by emailing me at jo@jobuer.com, or DMing me through Facebook or Instagram. I primarily make my home on Instagram at the moment. I encourage you to check out past episodes where I’ve had guests on who’ve talked about imposter syndrome or resistance and how they’ve moved through it, if not for the advice that they offer, then just to be reminded that you are not alone, and it doesn’t mean that you are failing as an author if you’re experiencing these feelings, or you’re never going to be successful because of them. Like I said, there’s plenty of evidence out there in the world that that is not the case.
If you enjoyed episode 100, with guest tips on manifestation in regards to your author career, then I highly recommend you go check out Carissa Andrews Millionaire Author Manifestation 12-week experience. The link is in the show notes. And also a reminder that if you use my link, which is an affiliate link, but you can also use the coupon code ‘ALCHEMY’ to get 30 percent off the full price or your first payment if you decide to do the payment plan. So, my hope is that you check that out, you enjoy that special discount, and in doing so, you also help support the show by giving me a little bit of a kickback through the affiliate link as well. It’s a win-win.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, or any episode of Alchemy for Authors, then, just like my usual spiel, I would love, love, love, love, love, if you could please leave a review. Leaving a review on wherever you’re listening to this podcast from helps the algorithms put Alchemy for Authors in front of the eyes of other people who might find this show useful. It’s a small thing that actually means a lot to me and really helps me out with this show as well. Sharing with a friend, word of mouth, is probably my favourite way of people showing support. I love it when people talk positively about this show or recommend it to their friends or family or other people they feel might benefit from it. You can also support the show by buying me a coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/jobuer. That’s a $5 donation that helps support the costs that go on behind the scenes in putting this show together, there is a significant amount of costs that go into this, and it also helps support my time. That helps make this all the more worthwhile and in making it viable in taking time away from doing my writing to put this show together, if that makes sense. So thank you again for tuning in, my friend. I hope you enjoyed today’s show. I hope you have some strategies under your belt now, or are feeling a little bit better about moving through resistance, if this is something that you’re coming up against at the moment. Again, I would love to hear your stories about resistance and how you moved through or what resonated with you in today’s episode. Until next time, I am wishing you a wonderful writing week, my friend. Bye for now.
author mindset, imposter syndrome, Mindset, Resistance, writer's block