Last week I stood up in front of a group of people, most of whom I didn’t know, and spoke without a script for about three minutes. 

This may not seem like a tall order to many of you, but for me it was a big deal. It took every fibre of my being to break through my resistance and walk the few yards from seat to spotlight.

Why? Because I’m a writer. I enjoy the comfort of the written word. The spoken word is a mystery to me - or at least public speaking is. I’ve been interviewed for TV, I’ve been on the radio, and even given a speech at the famous Oxford Union debating society, but I’ve never stood up like that and spoken my truth. I’ve always had a job title, an eye-catching outfit, a face covered in make-up - and maybe even a wig - to hide behind.

That was the subject of my mini-talk: the fact that I’ve been performing since I was very young, first as entertainment for the family (I used to be wheeled out in front of relatives to sing at the age of two), then on stage with the band I sang backing vocals for in the late Seventies (that’s me above, posing in the backstage dressing room at Dingwall’s in about 1978).

I carried on putting on a good performance, first as a music journalist and then as a player on the London club scene. I performed well in all the jobs I was given to do, and focused on being whoever people wanted me to be. 

I managed to hide behind a series of masks for most of my 20s, 30s and 40s, and only started to peel them off when I hit 50. Now I don’t want to perform in that way any more. I want to be authentically me, without dressing myself up, making myself fit in or fulfilling someone else’s fantasies.

Stage one of Becoming The True Me was to qualify as a human potential coach. Stage two is about finding my voice, so I have just enrolled in a public speaking course entitled “Speak like a TED talker”.

If I can get to be even half as good and authentic a speaker as Brene Brown when she gave her TED talk on the power of vulnerability (an incredible 4,831,325 views and counting) I’ll be a happy woman. Until then I’m going to start working out exactly what it is I want to say, what I think people want to hear, stand up and just say it.

I have been a professional writer for 30 years now. There have been periods during that time when I have churned out the words; at others I have been too busy editing other people’s words to write my own; and on bad days I would wake up and realise I was a writer who wasn’t writing.

Writer’s block. We’ve all suffered from it at some point in our lives, whether or not we’re wordsmiths. I experienced the greatest block not when I was on deadline but when I was writing a book. No one had commissioned me to write this book so I was doing it for myself, ie there was no deadline.

Sometimes the words would cascade from my fingertips, but on other days I would barely be able to squeeze out half a page. As the book was a memoir, and some of it was intensely personal, I often re-experienced some of the painful emotions associated with the memories.

I now understand what George Orwell meant when he said: “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon which one can neither resist nor understand.”

In the end it took me five years to write the book. When I’d finished, there were no feelings of triumph; actually I felt rather flat. But the process had often felt like therapy, in a good way, and I always said that was more important than the book being published.

The book remains unpublished but it has given me an insight into writer’s block and what to do when you hit the brick wall. Writer’s block is a form of resistance and this can hijack you in any creative pursuit, not just writing. Here’s what I’ve learnt. 

1. Don’t sit and stare at a blank page or screen for too long. If nothing is coming to you, don’t distract yourself with displacement activities - go for a walk.

2. Give yourself permission to sit quietly and do absolutely nothing. If you rest and allow your mind to wander, to daydream, those are the moments in which you find inspiration. 

3. Be mindful of counterproductive thoughts like “I can’t do this”, “I don’t have an original idea in my head”, “who would want to look at what I’ve written/painted/made” and so on. Allow the thoughts to arise but let them go without buying into them.

4. If your head is stuffed full of thoughts and judgments about what you should or must do, get a notebook and spew them out on to paper. Don’t edit, just let it all out. This works particularly well first thing in the morning if you need to clear your head before starting to write/paint/craft.

5. If you’ve tried everything and still nothing is coming out, just leave it be. You cannot force yourself to be creative. Trust that the ideas will come in their own good time. The wisdom is there inside you.

That’s my take on it - here’s what leading coach Michael Neill has to say on the subject. Now go forth and create!

I’ve been putting off writing this post today. Mostly because I’m on the road, but also because I can be a brilliant procrastinator. However, I have fought my urge to defer it until tomorrow or occupy myself with other tasks.

So why do we procrastinate? It’s not always down to laziness or distraction, as quite often we put off the very tasks or projects that are most meaningful to us.

Procrastination is a sophisticated form of resistance, also known as creativity’s evil twin. Resistance will try anything to stop us becoming who we really are. It will pull us away from the painting, make us stare blankly at an empty page, convince us we need to spend weeks doing research before we can start a project.

Once procrastination sets in, it’s hard to shift. But here’s an idea from Gretchen Rubin, best-selling author of The Happiness Project. If you want to get yourself to do something, make the alternative to that task to do nothing.

This works well if you’re the kind of person who will clean your house, answer all your emails and surf the Internet rather than getting down to what you’re actually supposed to be doing.

If your project involves writing, take yourself out of the house to, say, a library, where you will either write or sit doing nothing. In fact, staring at a wall will help you break through your resistance because you will not be doing anything at all. Just being. And that’s when inspiration can bubble up.

The worst mistake you can make is to start telling yourself you’ve got to write, and letting your inner critic give you an ear-bashing.

So how did I beat my resistance to writing this post? I checked into a quiet hotel, waited for my husband to fall asleep, let go of the need to know what I was going to write and allowed it to gently arise while listening to the birds singing.

Today I have wrestled with the beast and won. But tomorrow is another day…