Welcome to the Creative Rescue Kit 👋

This space was created by me, Mary Lanham, host of the Inspirited Word podcast. In addition to being a fellow anxious writer, I’m also an editor and creative coach.

I started the pod as a community container where it’s okay to acknowledge the presence of anxiety in creative practice (hello, doom spiral🌀) without buying into the ideal of the Melancholy Genius. You know, the celebrated trope that the creative life is supposed to be a constant existential bummer, and if you aren’t churning out 2000 words every day anyway then you are not a real writer.

Inside this space, it is officially okay to feel both anxious and enlivened, both disenchanted and visionary, both ambitious and self-nurturing. I hope the tools and resources in this kit will become part of how you imagine, create, and thrive.

What’s inside the kit:

Panic to Possibility guided audio practice
Panic Remedies journal
Writing Record interactive tracker
Going deeper

Panic to Possibility guided audio 🎧

When an anxiety block takes over a writing session (or your whole writing life!), what’s really blocked isn’t your creative capacity. It’s your sense wonder, play, and possibility.

To break the block, you need to short-circuit your stress response and get back in touch with the living story lost under the words on the page.

One of the most effective ways I’ve found to do this is by directly engaging the senses. Grounding in our senses helps move us away from anxious analysis and into a relaxed, receptive state of curiosity—where our deepest creativity can emerge.

This short guided experience will bring you back to center, and it will help you uncover immediate, tangible threads of inspiration to get the words flowing again.

Use it to open your writing time, or at any point during a session when a doom spiral has blocked your way.

Panic to Possibility guided audio

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Panic to Possibility download

Panic to Possibility.mp3

10 MB

Panic Remedies journal 🌈

These three prompts will help unpack the specific behaviors and beliefs that are feeding the doom spiral during your writing sessions—so you can make changes to sidestep anxiety and create room for flow instead of panic.

Each prompt builds on the previous one, going a bit deeper into your creative experiences. So I’d recommend doing them in order and giving yourself at least a day between them to let things settle and percolate.

But there’s no right or wrong way to respond to each prompt! Scribble on scratch paper and then throw it away, make a stream-of-consciousness voice memo, or whatever lets you dive in without perfectionism coming along for the ride.

Prompt 1

Recall the last “bad” writing session you had (or take note of what happens the next time you have one). In the moment when things first start to take a turn, when you first realize this going to be one of those days... what specifically are you doing or thinking that captures the feeling of being blocked or cut off from your creativity and from the story?

This might be a physical embodiment like hunching or clenching, or even banging around your desk and the keyboard. It might be a recurrent thought like “I don’t have what it takes to do this” or “I’m a fraud.” It might be remembering an embarrassing moment or hurtful piece of feedback. Maybe it’s shallow breathing, or a certain type of sentence coming up on the page.

Whatever the outward symptom is — how can you take that symptom of being blocked and begin to shift and open it? What specific words or physical actions can you use to subvert and reverse the outward symptom?

Prompt 2

Think about some moments when you've felt deeply tapped into creative flow and possibility, in your writing or in any other area of your life. Jot down some descriptions of what you were thinking and how you felt physically during these experiences. Get as specific and tangible as you can.

Next, consider what made those moments different from your typical experience of creative anxiety or panic (you can refer to your responses to the first prompt here if you like).

What restrictive expectations, judgements, or habits were you able to let go of in those moments of flow? And how can you adapt these insights to make room for more flow in your writing practice?

Prompt 3

This prompt will help you explore what you’ve been taught about creativity and writing, and how those inherited beliefs may be feeding anxiety in your work (either consciously or unconsciously).

Here are some potential settings where you might have heard people express opinions and beliefs about creativity:

School and academia
Religion and spirituality
Books and media
Home and family
Work and career

For each setting (and any others that are meaningful to you), ask yourself:

What have I heard people say about creativity in this setting?
Who said it (individuals or groups)?
What did they say about my creativity?
In this setting, what were the collective rules or values around creativity?
What was/is at risk for going against those rules and values?

And finally, ask yourself:

How have my experiences in these settings shaped my beliefs about my own writing?
How do those beliefs show up in my specific writing habits and practices?
How can I support myself in letting go of those beliefs and practices? What tangible actions can I take to shift away from them and into my own creative beliefs? This might look like performing a ritual, forming a new habit, or enjoying media that aligns with your desired approach to your creative life.

After working through these prompts, make note of any specific new behaviors and habits you’d like to try implementing in your writing practice. These words, actions, or rituals are your own personalized panic remedies.

There’s no way to fail with this journal or with your new practices. Think of them as playful experiments that will evolve freely alongside your creative work.

Writing Record tracker 🖋️

This interactive online tracker is easy to customize for a simple but insightful record of your writing moods. It’s great for spotting patterns that contribute to anxiety or blocks during drafting sessions—and for discovering which panic remedies are helping you find more flow.

Note: I’ve built this tracker using the Notion platform. But if you prefer not to use Notion, the tracker can serve as a guide for creating a similar spreadsheet in your app of choice (or just for tracking your sessions in a notebook!).

Ready to go deeper? ✨

Each month, the Inspirited Word podcast explores new ways to breathe life, spirit, and a bit of deep magic back into your writing craft.

As a member of the newsletter circle, you’ll receive actionable tools and prompts to put each episode of the pod into practice, so you can keep reinventing your writing life and melding your deep creative vision with actually Doing the Thing.

In the meantime, these past episodes are great companions to the Creative Rescue Kit. And if you have any questions or feedback for me, I’d love to hear from you!

** If this kit was shared with you by a subscriber, join the newsletter circle here to get access to future subscriber-only resources right in your inbox. **