Anyone who’s ever taken pen to paper, brush to canvas or song to a microphone knows that sometimes, nothing comes out.

It’s not that we have nothing to say, but because of that terrible voice whispering that what we do have to say is really dumb. Amy L. Bernstein gets it. And she wants you to take it old school — as in preschool.

“As a child, you played with crayons,” she said, conjuring that precious time where there were no rules to your creativity. The sky could be green and rain meatballs. Zebras were purple. Dogs drove a bus. But at some point, we were taught to put our creativity aside to do more serious and potentially grown-up things. Soon, ”that part of you is no longer being fed. Your creative soul is starving.”

As a coach who works with authors to craft their books and a creative consultant in the Baltimore area, Bernstein has helped people reconnect with that malnourished artist within. In her new book, “Wrangling The Doubt Monster,” out Jan. 28 from Bancroft Press, she offers advice and encouragement to shut up that uncertainty and manifest those words, paintings and purple zebras.

“I was walking with a lot of self-doubt on my own part, coming out of hardcore full-time work and becoming a full-time writer,” Bernstein explained. “I thought ‘What the hell are you doing? What made you think you could do this?’ I was riddled with self-doubt. That voice is always with us. This is about the ability to continue to take those creative risks, even though the doubts don’t completely go away. It’s a mindset mind game.”

Bernstein runs creativity workshops here in Baltimore, helping both professionals who make their living with their passion and those just beginning to explore that part of themselves. I am lucky enough to have paid my bills exclusively with my writing for three decades, initially shocking some of my relatives who thought I should get a good stable government job. Even in my success, I’ve fought that insidious whisper that my words were garbage and I should do anything else, even though I suspect I’m not good at anything else.

This is normal, Bernstein said. Work that comes so intimately from your heart involves a “vulnerability that we don’t acknowledge enough in creative communities. Let’s give writers and creative people the ability to be seen and heard and to recognize that they’re not alone in feeling this.”

Heck yes! But we also need to remind ourselves why we’re exploring this part of ourselves in the first place. One of the Doubt Monster’s biggest champions is the cultural tendency to equate creative worth with financial gain, deciding that if our output is not lucrative, it’s pointless. I mentioned to Bernstein the amusingly twisted 2022 film “The Menu,” in which the hugely popular and filthy rich Chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) cracks, in a deadly way, when he can no longer connect to the artistic joy that made him want to cook in the first place.

“That’s a brilliant metaphor for how commerce corrupts, that he allowed himself to be corrupted and hated himself for it,” Bernstein agreed. If only he’d been able to take one of her workshops!

There’s also the belief in so-called instant stardom, a la “American Idol.” About two decades later, TikTok and Instagram seem to suggest everyone is just one viral video away from making it big. “One of the most horrible things about social media is to hold a false notion of what success looks like, like ‘Why aren’t you achieving like these people are?’ But it’s so fake. It’s not real life,” Bernstein said. Remember that “American Idol” presented inaugural winner Kelly Clarkson as some unknown Texas waitress when she had already worked on a demo with legendary producer Gerry Goffin before appearing on the show.

As deafening as our inner doubt can be, Bernstein said it can sometimes actually be instructive, both as a mode of self-preservation and as a signal “to take a long look at what we’re working on, if that first draft is nowhere near where it needs to be. That nagging doubt, that voice, can make you dig back in.”

I’ve experienced that myself, when my columns just aren’t coming together, or while writing my upcoming novel when I could not figure out what the characters were supposed to say next. In my case, I have deadlines and money I’ve accepted for these words that I don’t want to give back. So I might as well write the best darn thing I can.

So how do we start? I was reminded of “Sing,” the encouraging Sesame Street classic from my Gen-X childhood that’s been interpreted by everyone from The Carpenters to Patti LaBelle to R.E.M. (I may be sobbing as I write this because I can’t stop watching Big Bird emoting.) The most relevant lyric here is, “Don’t worry that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sing.”

Sing that song. Write that poem. Paint that portrait. Knit the heck out of that sweater, because it gives your creativity somewhere to go and to grow.

“Do the thing that makes us happy,” Bernstein said. “We’re so terrified that it’s not good enough by someone else’s standards. It’s not related to outcome, and it’s not necessarily about getting good at something. It has nothing to do with external validation. You have to give yourself permission to say that you love to do this thing, that you want to do this thing, and take the creative risk.”