THE DECISION AUDIT: HOW TO UNSTICK ANY CREATIVE PROJECT

There’s a specific feeling that shows up when a creative project stalls. The energy quietly drains out of the thing, session by session, until opening the file feels like a chore. You still care about the idea. You just can’t seem to move it forward.

The usual explanation is that you’re blocked, or that you’ve lost motivation, or that the idea wasn’t as strong as you thought. And sometimes that’s true. But more often, the project isn’t stuck because the idea is bad. It’s stuck because somewhere inside it, there’s a decision you haven’t made.

A fork in the road you drove past without choosing a direction. Everything you’ve built after that point feels slightly off, and you can’t quite figure out why, because the problem isn’t in what you’ve written. It’s in what you haven’t decided.

This post is a tool for finding that decision and making it. Five types of decisions that creative projects avoid, a method for identifying which one is hiding in yours, and a concrete process for committing to it on the page so you can actually move forward.

Deep Writing is a working library, organised into six stages that give every kind of storyteller something useful.

1 Giving yourself permission to start.

2 Finding an idea worth pursuing.

3 Drafting it.

4 Sharpening your craft through writing.

5 Applying it to your own creative work.

6 Revising it into something finished.

FULL CURRICULUM

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