It occurred to me during a recent bout of creative drought that I’m most involved and even prolific when I’m writing about things that are difficult to talk about or for which I lack the right audience. Morbid as it may be, the more whatever I’m working on seems capable of making somebody else squirm on account of its Truth, the more I have to say on the matter. The fact that I shouldn’t say it becomes fuel to the fire. Realizing this, my writer’s block lifted and I started writing again.

The thing is, conversations important to us not only deserve an outlet, often they require one. For peace of mind. For closure. For [insert need]. But what do you do when there’s nobody to talk to? Or when loved ones who you can usually go to for anything might be hurt, offended, or alienated by what you have to say? Bottle it up and never talk about it? That’s not a good enough answer.

And yet, most of the time it’s the collective weight of such unresolved conversations—and the associated suffering—that keeps us from writing. The equation looks like this: How can I work on X when all I can think about is Y? However, by employing the right poet math, the answer is actually quite obvious: just write about Y. In this way, the situation is a Zen paradox. The answer was always there, a vast forest of possibilities we couldn’t see for the trees.

When you have a lot on your mind, empty it onto the page and let things breathe. Take a breath, yourself. Or, if you’re experiencing creative drought, try writing about something you firmly believe but can’t imagine yourself actually saying to somebody. Write about that dream you had the other night, the one that might as well have been a nightmare for how cruelly real it was, how vivid, how it recalled another time in your life you thought you’d come to terms with. Write about that annoying thing your husband does; write about your wife. Perhaps there’s something important you’ve been putting off telling someone because you can’t find the right words. Practice. Find a way to tell that story. Exercise your demons. Make them do pushups and sit-ups and jump over all kinds of hurdles. We might all learn something.