It’s taken thirty-nine years to discover why I’ve never finished writing my novel.

Sure, I’ve finished things: scripts and what I call A Novel That Wasn’t. For as long as I can remember, there’s been an invisible barrier.

While unable to touch it, I felt its force acting upon my creative and personal life for so long that, come thirty-nine and a half years on this planet, I’d grown familiar with feeling like a whole-baked delusional failure.

‘I’m just one of those people who’s set to fail, to never realise her creative dreams,’ I thought.

What’s this got to do with a writer’s life?

Despite setting aside margins of time, despite reading and following How To Write a Novel, doing the Pomodoro technique, writing myself a schedule, doing a Creative Writing MA, attending courses, scribbling synopses, developing treatments — nothing was paying off. I was writing well, but not fruitfully.

Despite the hours I put in, I wasn’t getting any closer. Meanwhile, look left: peers are completing the second, their third book. They’re landing writing jobs. Non-friends, shit writers, unkind combative writers presenting as coaches were cinching publishing deals. Karma? Quoi? Not for those people on the fast track to, ‘Hey, come to my book signing event.’

The unfinished novel became a weight around my neck, a burden upon my back, a gnawing roach inside my skull.

‘What was I put on this earth for?’ I mused, ‘If not to write?’

Then came the night when, from the ether, Lisa emerged. She works as a coach, as a shaman, a spiritual guide. After dinner, on a night spent amongst friends, she drew my tarot cards. Nearly everyone else had had their reading while I hung back, daunted by what I’d hear. A friend challenged me, “Now, Anna, get your reading.” I went to the table and drew seven cards.

This was the breath of cleansing air I needed to come in, though looking at the spread, you’d think I’d run to the hills. The death card. The ten of swords. Lisa looked at me, consulted her spirits and said, “Are you looking after yourself?”

“As much as I know how to,” I said. But I wasn’t sleeping — not through the nights. And those conversations inside my head kept repeating: you’re failing; you’ll wind up a knot of unfinished dreams and despair.

After that evening’s reading, I made an appointment to visit Lisa for a therapy session. Me being how I am, I’m not one for talking.

Not about my feelings! Not about my life!

The closest I’d come to therapy were Reiki or Metamorphic Technique sessions. Perfect, I thought, for one who’s not prone to talking.

Yet, years ago, let’s say in 2003, I’d had an astrological reading. My astrologer friend Ru said, so kindly, “There’s nothing wrong with sitting with a therapist to talk about some issues. Sometimes, that’s the help you need.” I never arranged that time to talk.

The tarot card draw was the turning point.

Sitting in a white room in Marina Village, Lagos with a reiki table to one side, Lisa and I sat down.

The reason?

My reading from that earlier tarot evening said I had blocks that needed removing; if I didn’t, I’d only keep repeating the patterns of never finishing work; of faltering, of stopping short. I didn’t want that.

I don’t want that for you, either.

I sense I must bring something into this world yet, thirty-nine years into my life on this planet, I’m a Gordian knot of artistic frustrations.

If you feel that way, too —

Here’s what I learned about why I wasn’t writing my best novel:

• The egoic mind takes over.
• Past traumas inform our personality; in their worst expression, we assume modes of behaviour and of thought that are damaging.
• We — that unhealthy egoic mind — inhibit our true natures from reaching our fullest potential, our greatest expression.
• Attachment to any future outcomes is impossible because the future is a projection.
• We attach our identities to a body of pain and problems. That’s who we become, yet it’s not who we are.
• I wasn’t taking responsibility for my role in the world.
• I was living according to other people’s ideas.
• I was identifying myself with future outcomes.
• I was carrying the pain of my past within my memory.
• I did not believe that my work or I had value.
• I was standing in my way.
• Fucked-up parts of me were stopping my light from shining.
• I was in The Mind-Personality Trap, a black hole I wasn’t letting myself escape from.

That black hole was crushing my being.

I was crushing my being.

This is what they don’t teach you at school: we can be our greatest hindrance and our greatest source of power. The mind and the personality we develop to survive have the potential to bugger us up. Those self-help books in bookshops’ aisles are for the School of Life, an education system everyone attends.

What can we do to bring our creativity into the light?

• Assume responsibility for where you’re at, no matter the circumstances. If you feel someone else put you there, now’s not the time for projection. Empower yourself by taking ownership of the situation.
• Accept who and how you are, irrespective of what others put upon you — who are they to tell you who you are? That’s for you to be and do.
• Acknowledge that the world wants you to be one way. Be bold: be other, go against the grain if that’s who you are.
• Appreciate this opportunity to grow and change, no matter how painful it is.
• Explore your projections. Own them. Explore them without judgement.
• Do the work. Take on a therapist and do the work. Stay the course.
• Learn to observe your mind at work.
• Know that the thoughts you have about future outcomes only make your work in the now harder.
• Let go of goals. Absolve yourself of outcomes. Heed the moment.
• Be the work as you do it; accept the process of creation as the reward.
• Look neither left nor right to your peers; there is no comparison for who you are or where you should be.
• Realise that it’s okay if the Grow Your Productivity/ War on Art tips for artists don’t work for you right now. These works and techniques have their place, but sometimes more fundamental issues hold you back no matter what methods you try.
• Tend to your foundations else they’ll show up in your work or manifest elsewhere.

As part of my process of growth, I’ve returned to the unfinished projects stacked up in the computer’s file marked, “Backburner.” They weren’t simmering in a pan; they were festering. Or so I thought.

More recently, I’ve come to think that they were waiting for me to discover them with an objective eye.

In those old files are half-baked characters in search of themselves. Absolved of identity, they go in search for who they are and dissolve, for they are that insubstantial that once they left the parameters of the life surrounding them; they had nothing to hold them in, so they escaped themselves, proving as insubstantial as the half-considered idea I’d used to form them.

I wrote as I was experiencing.

In those pages were characters that were an impulse, a spark that caused no fire. But for now. As I return to them, the characters and their unfinished stories have assumed merit and importance.

These characters have been waiting in the margins. Emerging, they reflect aspects of my personality. I sewed those seeds in the past and I find them transmuted into lessons and reminders. There is the character who denied her needs. There is the character with the death-wish who went in search of an identity that she failed to discover. There is the invisible girl who’s only seen when people invest financially in her — then she takes on worth and meaning.

As I study them, I can understand myself, my flaws, my shadow-self better.

I scattered my psyche across those sheaves of paper.

They’ve taught me, and now it’s time for me to plant them into stories so they can complete their arc. Because, now that I know myself, I have the means to finish.

I’ve come to a place of being able to reach the finishing line; have arrived at respecting and committing to the creative act without the pursuit of an end goal or attachment, such as, “When I’ve written this, my life will be awesome.” The intention, yes, is to complete, is to publish, is to share, is to find an audience — but most significantly, I’m honouring each step of the creative process, remaining present, mindful of the ego coming in to say its piece, to tear the project off course. Aware, I will finish and that my writing life is awesome in and of itself.

I am letting myself be a writer. I am assuming the mantle.

If you’re writing and getting nowhere or if you’re trying the advice from well-intentioned folk only to discover your anxiety levels rising, it could be time to check in with you.

As with life, writing is a process; it requires your attention and presence, your healthy Being. So, by all means, carve pockets of time into your day; have your ritual and your schedule; get a coach who’ll ensure you hit your targets, but for a happier writing life, settle what’s within you, too.