The Witch Who Forgot How to Fly: Burnout, Block, and Rediscovering the Spark

Kiki's Delivery Service is the artist's film I didn't know I needed.

May 23, 2025

It’s been a strange season in my creative life. If you’ve been following, you know.

It’s the season where the silence in my own head has becomes heavier than any noise. I’ve been wrestling with a long, frustrating stretch of writer’s block (if that’s what we’d like to call it). Burnout has a way of sneaking up on you like that, especially when writing isn't just a craft but a way you understand yourself.

It’s like losing the language that lets you explain the world and how you view yourself.

Recently, I was recommended by

Rachel

to watch Kiki’s Delivery Service.

I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest. I had seen one or two other Studio Ghibli films before, though not this one. I was expecting a cute, classic Studio Ghibli, maybe a bit of whimsical escapism to let my mind rest for a bit. But, what I watched ended up hitting deeper than maybe I was ready for.

Kiki’s Delivery Service was the film I didn’t know I needed.

If you’ve seen it, you know that Kiki’s Delivery Service is about a 13-year-old witch who is in training. There’s a tradition in her family for her to set out on her own for one year, so she leaves home to find a coastal town in need of a witch. She’s eager to find her place in the world. She’s determined, and full of heart. But eventually, she hits her own kind of burnout. Her magic, the very thing that defines her and her purpose in life, suddenly disappears. She’s lost and scared and doesn’t know how to get it back.

Sound familiar?

What moved me most wasn’t just Kiki’s loss of her powers, but how she reacts. She doesn’t push through with brute force. She doesn't fake it. She withdraws. She doubts herself. And eventually, with rest, honesty, and a little unexpected joy, something begins to return.

That… hit hard. A little too hard honestly when I started to realize exactly why I had been recommended this film to watch.

Because when writing is part of who you are— your creative “magic,” if you will — losing it doesn’t feel like a small thing. It’s not just a big frustration. It’s identity. It’s disconnection from something sacred. It’s terrifying, especially not knowing if you’ll ever get it back.

But Kiki reminds me that maybe that kind of fear is part of the process. That losing the spark isn’t the end. Maybe it’s a quiet invitation to remember why you started. To return to curiosity. To breathe.

There’s a line in the film where Kiki says,

“Without even thinking about it, I used to be able to fly. Now I’m trying to look inside myself to find out how I did it.”

This quote might as well have been ripped straight from my own journal. Kiki says it after she’s lost her powers, a magical burnout, if you will. Her flying, which used to come so naturally, has disappeared. And now she’s grasping, questioning, spiraling.

Yet again, sound familiar?

Because that’s where I’m at.

I’m trying to look inward. I’m trying remember the feeling of effortless flight, when the words just came and I almost fell into a state of just those words and just writing. Stars, that was the most magical kind of feeling when you lost track of time. My version, I suppose, of flying again.

It reminded me so much of how writing once felt. Writing has always been who I am and like a natural extension of who I wanted to be. It was never something I had to force so brutishly. But somewhere along the way, over the past year or two, something shifted.

The joy dimmed. The pressure crept in.

And now? I sit down and the page just stares back. Like I forgot how to fly.

Later on in the film, when Kiki is completely depleted and unsure of who she is anymore, she goes to visit Ursula’s cottage after she comes to visit her in town. Ursula is a young painter living alone in the woods, free-spirited and grounded in her own way of being an artist.

Ursula, more than anyone else in the story, sees the heart of what Kiki is going through. Not just the surface-level struggle of “why can’t I fly?” but the deeper, scarier question underneath it all:

What if I’ve lost myself?

“We fly with our spirit.”

When we create. This could be when we write, paint, sing, take photographs to post online even, we’re not just producing. We’re expressing something internal, something deeply rooted within ourselves.

When that inner world is out of alignment, ie. when we’re exhausted, anxious, or doubting ourselves? The art doesn’t flow.

Ursula goes on to say, “Once you’ve found your spirit, you’ll be able to fly again.”

Not “try harder.” Not “push through.”

For a long time, I thought the answer was brute force. Just sit your butt down at the desk and write. That’s what we’re told, right? Show up. Do the work. Discipline over inspiration.

But lately, sheer willpower has only made the frustration and fear thicker. I’ve been trying to write my way out of the block, when maybe what I really need is to feel my way back in perhaps.

To reconnect with myself. With why I write. Who I am when I write. And how I want it to feel, not just on the page, but in my body.

Of course, as always, that realization comes with an unwelcome companion: patience.

Ugh.

Because growth takes time. Healing isn’t immediate. And like Kiki...

“Sometimes I feel like I’m just... not cut out for this.”

She says it in a moment of total vulnerability, when nothing is working, and she feels like she’s lost everything that made her her. Her powers are gone. Her confidence is gone.

She’s tired, disoriented, and unsure she belongs anywhere at all now.

I’ve had that moment too. In fact, I’ve had it a lot more than once lately. It’s not just as a passing thought either. It’s a deep, anxious knot in my chest that makes me feel like writing as well as not writing is burying me alive.

What if I’m not really a writer anymore? What if I never was or never would be again?

It’s imposter syndrome in its rawest form— the idea that you’re a fraud, that whatever spark you once had has burned out for good, and soon everyone else will figure it out too. It’s not rational, but it feels real, especially when the creative silence stretches on longer than you ever expected.

And part of the reason that moment hits so hard? It’s, of course, also from he culture we live in.

Because, really, when isn’t it?

We’re taught to value constant output. That if you’re not producing, you’re not a “real” artist or writer. If you’re not building something measurable, then you must be wasting time.

Currently, from my own viewpoint, indie authors especially are producing full-length novels (and very good ones, don’t get me wrong) at more than impressive rates of approximately 4-12 novels a year if they are writing full time.

I certainly can’t and couldn’t keep up with it, even while watching it happen and work for other writers all around me.

It’s a system that leaves no space for recovery, for burnout, for the natural flow of creativity. We absorb this need to create and produce no matter the quality or enjoyment without even realizing it, and then when we do need rest. So, when our spirit starts to lag, we treat it like a complete failure as to who we are and what we dream of accomplishing.

But Kiki’s Delivery Service offers a quieter truth, however hard it may be to hear in the moment of struggle. Sometimes losing your gift is part of the journey. Sometimes doubt is a signpost, not a dead end.

Kiki didn’t lose her powers because she was lazy or not talented enough. She lost them because she was growing. She was entering a new stage of herself, and her magic hadn’t caught up yet.

That’s how it works for us, too, perhaps. We outgrow old ways of creating. Old rhythms, old goals, old motivations. And for a while, everything feels like it breaks. But maybe that breaking is sacred. Maybe it’s necessary.

And maybe rest isn’t the opposite of creativity. Maybe it’s the beginning of it.

Still, it’s a lonely, dark space where imposter syndrome thrives internally. Where your inner critic whispers that maybe you’re not meant to do this after all. That maybe you never really had it. That the people who believed in you were just being kind. Or worse, wrong.

I’ve had those thoughts. Often. More times than I want to admit, I’ve thought, well, maybe it would be easier if I just stopped writing.

Just like that. Quietly. Let it slip away.

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But then I remember Kiki, doubting herself completely and still continuing. Not in some heroic, flashy, movie-moment way, but in a gentle, stumbling, very human way. That, honestly, was the balm I didn’t know I needed. She doesn’t reclaim her magic in a grand montage of productivity or some sudden return to perfection. She rests. She steps away. She allows herself to feel lost. And slowly, uncertainly, the spark begins to return.

Admittedly, the film’s climax— where she flies again to rescue someone in danger— felt a little too convenient to me. Too magical, too quick. I wanted a slower resolution, something closer to my own pace of healing.

But the story anticipates that too in a way, through Ursula, our creative mentor. She admits:

“You know, I always thought if I had a chance to paint something really great, it’d just come to me, like inspiration would just flow out of me... but it didn’t.”

That moment was a bit of a relief. Even Ursula, our independent, assured, doing her own thing out in the woods, faces creative blocks. She struggles. She waits. She doubts. And suddenly, I wasn’t so alone anymore.

Even if I wish I too had the lifestyle of being able to take naps at noon in order to refresh my creative well as she suggests.

Yet still, that’s the truth, isn’t it? Even the people who seem like they have it all figured out still wrestle with the same shadows.

Inspiration doesn’t always arrive like lightning. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it doesn’t come until after long stretches of rest and doubt and wandering however much we need it to be right by outsides and tell us this is going to be great or everything is going to be perfect once you hit The End.

But that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever.

Maybe the magic isn’t gone. Maybe it’s just sleeping. However long of a nap.

As I move forward, or at least try to, I keep turning over this thought, especially when I reflect on what I’ve been trying to write these past few years. Ever since writing and publishing Call You Mine, I’ve been chasing a voice, a feeling, a kind of spark I used to trust without question.

Then I remember this moment in the film, another quiet confession from Ursula:

“I loved to paint so much. I’d paint all day until I fell asleep right at my easel. And then one day, for some reason, I just couldn’t paint anymore. I tried and tried, but nothing I did seemed any good. They were copies of paintings I’d seen somewhere before… and not very good copies either. I just felt like I’d lost my ability.”

Because that’s exactly how it’s felt lately. It feels like I’m circling ideas I’ve already written or even others have written. I’m chasing shapes I’ve seen before, trying to recreate a feeling that now feels distant or diluted. I’ve put so much pressure on myself to “make it” — to succeed, to become a bestseller, to finally write full-time and build the version of a writer’s life I keep picturing in my head.

The magical one. The one where the words come easily and the books are loved and the path is clear.

But if I’m being honest, sometimes that dream starts to warp the joy of the writing itself. It shifts the focus from expression to achievement. From exploration to expectation. And that’s when everything starts to feel like a copy.

I think a big part of that has been trying to write for the market. Or, at least, anticipate what might please the market of voracious readers. What might hook readers. What might sell.

It’s advice I’ve seen everywhere: Know your audience. Write what the people want. Pay attention to what’s trending.

I don’t think it’s all bad advice. It can be useful. Strategic, even.

But lately, I’ve started to feel like that mindset has pulled me further away from myself as a writer. Somewhere along the way, the work became less about what I needed to write in my head and more about what I thought others wanted to hear. Less about expression and more about fitting into something.

And when I’m being really honest with myself, I don’t think that’s how I’m meant to write, at least, not only that way. It might work for others. It might even work better. But when I try to shape my writing around what I think the market wants, something in me goes quiet. It’s like the story loses its color. The voice dulls. I start second-guessing every choice before it’s even made.

The joy I remember from when I first started to write and create something out of nothing starts to disappear.

And maybe that’s what I’ve been brushing up against all this time. All of this frustration might not just be burnout, but misalignment. Writing not just from exhaustion, but from disconnection.

What I want, moving forward, is to figure out how to return to writing from a place of truth again. Even if I don’t fully know what that looks like yet. Even if it means starting slower, or stepping outside of trends, or writing something that doesn’t neatly fit a genre.

I want to write what feels alive to me. What is it that stirs something real? Even if I’m still figuring out how to get there. Even if I still want, someday, to reach readers and build that sustainable, magical writer’s life.

Or maybe they will accepted me as I am?