I wrote a book last year. And then I had a baby. And then I kind of… stopped.
Not completely — there's no shortage of writing involved in running a podcast. But the kind of writing that feels like mine? That went quiet. And I told myself it was just timing. Just survival mode. Just the season I was in.
What I didn't want to look at was what else went quiet at the same time.
That's what this conversation with Charlotte Donlon cracked open for me. Charlotte is a spiritual director and author of Spiritual Direction for Writers, and she's spent 15 years watching the same pattern show up in every single client she works with: when the creativity closes, something spiritual closes too. Every time. And when one reopens, so does the other. Because we only have one soul. The creative one and the spiritual one are the same thing.
Which means if your creative block feels like more than a productivity problem — it is.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
This conversation goes well beyond “just sit down and write.” Charlotte gets into why so many people who genuinely want to create keep not doing it, and why the usual advice (write every day, find your discipline, build a routine) misses the actual problem entirely.
She talks about the absorbed rules most of us carry without realizing it — that you need credentials to call yourself a writer, that you have to hit a word count to count, that your publishing self and your writing self are supposed to show up to the page at the same time. Most people are trying to perform their way through a creative practice instead of actually having one.
She also gets into something I think a lot of people feel but can't name: that when you ignore your creative calling long enough, it doesn't just sit quietly in the corner. It starts affecting your relationships, your mood, your sense of self. Charlotte calls it making you worse at everything else. I'd say that's accurate.
Why Your Creative Block Is Actually a Spiritual Closing
Charlotte didn't set out to build a framework connecting creativity and spirituality. She was training to be a spiritual director and needed practice clients, so she went to her MFA alumni group. And what she noticed with every single person she met with one-on-one was this: whenever there was an opening in their creative life, there was an opening in their spiritual life. Whenever there was a closing in one, there was a closing in the other.
She kept seeing it. Over and over. And eventually it became obvious to her: of course, because we have one soul. The creative soul is the soul.
This matters a lot if you've been treating your creative block like a scheduling problem or a discipline problem. It's not. When your writing (or painting, or music, or whatever it is for you) dries up, something deeper is happening. And the reverse is also true: if you feel spiritually dry but you're reading a novel that's lighting you up, Charlotte says to find the paragraphs that feel like a prayer and let them be a way back in. If you feel creatively dry but something spiritually is alive in you, use it as a writing prompt. The two paths lead to the same place.
Key Insights from Charlotte Donlon
Not Writing Makes You Worse at Everything
This is the one Charlotte says directly in the episode, and I think it lands hard because most people suspect it but haven't let themselves say it out loud. When she doesn't write, she gets snappy with her husband and kids. She dips into a funk. And then she remembers — she should probably do the thing that makes her feel most like herself. This isn't a creativity tip. It's a survival observation.
Writer's Block Isn't a Block. It's a Depletion.
Charlotte doesn't love the term “writer's block” because the word implies a wall. She prefers “resistance” or “creative closing,” and the distinction matters. If you believe you're blocked, you're subtly telling yourself it's not possible to move. If you see it as depletion — as a signal that something in your body, mind, or spirit needs tending to — you have somewhere to go with it. She asks: are you exhausted? Do you need a nap? Do you need a sandwich? The answer is often that simple, and the judgment you're layering on top is making it harder.
You Belong to Yourself Before You Belong to Your Writing
Charlotte's first book was about belonging, and she's carried that thread into everything since. Her take is that writers who struggle to claim the identity — who can't say “I'm a writer” without qualifying it or shrinking — are struggling with a belonging problem, not a talent problem. You can't fully show up to a creative practice you don't believe you're entitled to have.
Write What Only You Can Write
One of the most common things she hears from people is: “nobody wants to read what I have to say about this.” Her response is that every topic has been written about before. What hasn't been written is your relationship to it — your specific entry point, your story, your angle. That's the only thing that makes any piece of writing worth reading. The personal relationship with the subject is the whole point.
Nourishing Rhythms Over Rigid Rules
Instead of “write every day,” Charlotte recommends identifying three or four things that make you feel like your fullest self and doing them most days — even if it's just ten minutes each. Hers are reading, writing, walking, praying, and putting herself in the way of art. One of her clients, going through a hard season, had her rhythms adjusted to: sing, write, nap, cry. Charlotte told her: you're already doing it. Acknowledge where you are and give yourself freedom to be there. The rhythms flex. The point is to stay nourished enough to create when the time comes.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Creative Blocks
Most advice about creative resistance is actually advice about output. More structure. More accountability. More consistency. And Charlotte's point — which I think is worth sitting with — is that all of that skips the actual question: are you nourished enough to create?
You can build the perfect writing schedule and still sit at a blank page if you're spiritually empty. You can force a thousand words a day and still feel like you're not actually writing anything. The thing most productivity-focused creative advice misses is that creativity isn't a skill you execute. It's a state you return to. And you can only return to it if you're tending to the conditions that allow it.
Charlotte also points out that a lot of people are thinking about their audience, their future readers, their social media reception — before they've written a single word. She talks about putting your “publishing self” outside the room while your “writing self” does the work. The two cannot be in the same room at the same time.
How to Apply This in Your Life
The weekly challenge from this episode is to identify your nourishing rhythms — three or four things that help you feel like your fullest self — and commit to doing them most days, even in small doses. Ten minutes counts. Five minutes counts. The goal isn't output. The goal is to stay close enough to yourself that when you sit down to create, you're not coming at it cold.
If you're not sure where to start, Charlotte recommends a simple timeline exercise for anyone wanting to write personal story: go decade by decade, brainstorm what comes up, and then just start free-writing into it. Don't worry about where it's going. Write your way into it.
And if you've been waiting until you feel “ready” or “inspired” or “good enough” — Charlotte's point is that desire is the signal. If you're drawn to writers, to writing groups, to other people who create, that pull is information. You don't have to be certain. You just have to follow what's drawing you forward.
About Charlotte Donlon
Charlotte Donlon is an author, certified life coach, and trained spiritual director who works at the intersection of creativity and contemplative spirituality. After earning an MFA in creative writing and training as a spiritual director, she began working almost exclusively with writers and artists — and spent 15 years observing the direct parallel between creative health and spiritual health. Her book Spiritual Direction for Writers is the distillation of that work. She lives with bipolar disorder and has been openly writing and speaking about mental health, faith, and creativity since her diagnosis in 2007.
Find Charlotte at spiritualdirectionforwriters.com.
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