Featured Writer: Ella Capek

On creating space to write and writing advice.

Sep 23, 2025

Welcome to Women Writing, a biweekly interview series about creative practices. In this week’s feature, Ella writes about how she finds her creative ideas. Where do you find your ideas? How do you rekindle your creativity?

About the author…

Ella Capek is the author of The Source Of The Wind, her debut novel which was self-published in June 2025. She works as a music teacher for kids in a variety of settings by day, and works on satisfying creative endeavours in a variety of mediums by night. After running the independent travel blog Wide-Eyed Wanderer for six years, she broadened her focus to include creativity, spirituality and self-expression on her Substack newsletter Wide Eyed Ella, where she also shares her self-publishing journey.

On a writing routine …

My writing routine changes based on where I am in life and where I'm living, so I'm constantly re-inventing my routine. I happened to be in India whilst working on the majority of the first draft of The Source of The Wind and I had a very fun daily routine that supported my writing. Each weekday, I would have a Classical Indian voice class that would finish around 12:00 pm, spend a few hours at a neighbouring cafe where I would eat lunch and write around 2000 words, before going to a Djembe drum class at around 4:00 pm. These days, I'm not travelling and I have a busy schedule as a music teacher, but three days a week, I take an hour-long bus ride to work and I whip my laptop out to write. I'm typically a night owl, my creative juices flowing more freely and abundantly after the sun goes down. But working in education has forced me to become an early bird and I find that taking advantage of this vacant time and starting the day with writing, gives me a lot of energy and joy for the rest of my day. Other than those scheduled sessions, I will write whenever I feel like it and I have extra time on my hands.

On writing spaces …

Aside from writing on the bus, I will write at my little dining room table that's located by a large window where a lot of light gets in. I have a cute desk that I used to like to write at, but in our current apartment it's located against a wall in a very busy and uninspiring spot. I need to feel like I can be somewhat secluded in my writing space, at least when I’m writing at home. If I’m at home, I find my loved ones' presence in the room quite distracting and I can't connect to what I'm writing as much. Because there’s a part of me that wants to be present with them, I end up being more disconnected from my writing. If I’m only doing line edits and proofreading, then it’s okay, and I don’t have this problem at cafes, where I have no emotional connection to the people around me, and therefore no need or want to interact with them. However, wherever I am, I almost always listen to music—even now, as I’m writing these answers! If I’m only doing line edits and proofreading, I can listen to anything I enjoy. But if I’m in the earlier phases of working on a piece and I need to put down or edit words in the document, I pick instrumental music to listen to, so that I can concentrate better on my own words without getting distracted by song lyrics I’m hearing. Usually it’s music that’s mellow and melodic.

On writing communities …

I don't currently belong to a writing group or organization, but many years ago I attended a writing workshop with Pink Pangea and I had kept in touch with them for a few years. It's a week-long workshop filled with writing exercises and travel excursions and the women I met there were incredibly inspiring and supportive. I have pieces that I wrote from that workshop, around eight years ago, that I still hold dear to my heart and would love to publish. After the workshop, we stayed in touch and started doing The Artist's Way together, which I also found very helpful and liberating (even if I barely took myself on any artist dates). Having a community of women who all had something to express and lovingly critiqued and supported my work was wonderful. I think it was the first time when I realized that I’m allowed to call myself a writer, even if I was still only at the beginning of my journey. I think it’s being with like-minded people and having sets of eyes that can lovingly mirror your work to you, that’s very helpful and expansive about being a part of a writing community. I’m not a part of a defined writing community these days and I’m mostly okay with that. But I do miss the built-in camaraderie, the bouncing of ideas and the mutual inspiration. Getting to know other writers on Substack has been wonderful for my sense of belonging as a writer and I’m loving getting to form new friendships with fellow writers. There are lots of very inspiring writers there.

“Having a community of women who all had something to express and lovingly critiqued and supported my work was wonderful. I think it was the first time when I realized that I’m allowed to call myself a writer, even if I was still only at the beginning of my journey.”

On challenges …

Yes, there was a period of my life when I was working 6 days a week. I definitely don't recommend this, but at the time I really needed the work and they really needed all of those days, so I agreed to it temporarily. During that time, I had no capacity whatsoever to write, even though I really wanted to. There was simply no energy, time or mental space left. I gave myself compassion for not being able to write and I set the intention of writing regularly again, once I could. My schedule this year is a lot saner, but I'm still very busy which is why I take advantage of whenever I'm on buses or have some free time by myself at home to write. Another period of time where I struggled to make space for writing, was when I was finishing the first draft of my novel. I was in the middle of completing my music education degree and between classes, assignments, lesson planning, teaching, rehearsals and performances each semester, I barely had any time to write. Exam periods were actually when I would find time to write again. So I would create for myself a chart ahead of those exam periods and breaks, where I could document how many words I would complete each day. Having that chart wait for me, for when I could officially start a new, focused writing period and document my progress, was incredibly motivating and kept me working towards completing the novel.

On the best writing advice …

The best piece of writing advice I received was that the first draft is not meant to be good, it’s just meant to be done. I’ve been writing for over a decade but my debut novel is actually the first time I really attempted a full length novel and I really wanted to do it right. So as someone who has perfectionistic tendencies and was embarking on her first novel, this helped me so much when I first started the project. When you’re first writing, done is better than good. You can always edit your writing later, but you can’t edit an empty draft. That might be an obvious piece of advice, but for me it was incredibly helpful. The other piece of advice I received is that there are seasons for actively writing, and there are seasons that are for reflecting and letting the work breathe. Obviously, if you’re done with a draft and need to start editing, you need to give yourself a proper break, to let the words breathe and return to them with fresh eyes later. But even when you’re in the middle of writing a draft and you’re struggling with a scene or a chapter - I sometimes give us both some space and let myself work through whatever might be blocking me. It could take days, weeks or months. This would happen with particularly emotional chapters that hit too close to home for me. I just wasn’t ready to write them, until I eventually was. Until I had processed enough of my emotions and was ready to face the rest with my words.

On the worst writing advice …

I have this really good habit of not remembering bad advice I was given. If I don’t like it, it doesn’t resonate with me or I think it’s ridiculous and unhelpful - I immediately discard it and forget it. So I don’t have a ready answer to this one. But there is a piece of advice that I keep coming across and I'm not a fan of, which is to write to market. Obviously, if you’re wanting to make money off of your writing, at some point you will be thinking about your writing from a business standpoint too. Thinking about the market and creating a business plan is wise and appropriate. But I would never start a new project, thinking that I should write it, just because that’s what the market wants. I would never be able to sustain the creative force and energy it takes to complete a novel, if I wasn’t truly interested or excited about the story and was only trying to please the market. I much prefer to let my curiosity and excitement determine the story I want to write and having faith that the right people, at the right time will buy it and enjoy it. If I’m genuinely excited by my story idea AND the market will love it - great! But I won’t force myself to write a story where the only motivation is to please the market. The idea for a story has to come from the depths of my heart and out of my cells, and not from the mental place of “shoulds.”

On advice from personal experiences …

I hope that in all of these answers there are little nuggets of wisdom and advice that women can take with them. But, in order to not repeat something I've already said, I'll say that my biggest advice is to have trust. Trust your voice, even if you're worried about others' reactions to your work. Trust your skills and abilities, we women tend to be extra hard on ourselves for no real reason. And trust your process, even if writing conditions aren't ideal or the path isn't a straight line. From conception to publication, The Source of The Wind took me six years, in total. I had been working on it diligently, never forgetting about it even when I couldn't work on it, but there was a year and a half where the spark that had guided my novel's journey just vanished. I had done a couple of rounds of querying agents, felt that this wasn't the path for me, and then *poof*— I couldn't feel the spirit of the novel anymore. In retrospect, I can say that this was because while I had recognized that going through the traditional publishing route wasn't authentically for me, I wasn't ready yet to go down the self-publishing route either. It may sound funny, but there was a part of me that felt abandoned. Rather than believing that all of my work had been for nothing and that the novel had "abandoned" me, I chose to trust that it will come back to me when we're both ready. And it did, once I began to feel like I could self-publish my novel. Which only happened a year and a half later. If you intend to publish your writing, it will find the right home and the right avenue, at the right time. Be in tune with yourself as a writer and as the stewardess of your work in the world.

On rekindling creativity …

I have a very wild and vivid imagination and I reckon I'm always in a creative mindset —it doesn't take much for me to come up with ideas and get creative. Ideas for stories and essays come from a deep need to express myself and the big ones often come about in very magical ways. The idea for my debut novel came after I was pondering a question about my life at night before bed, and I woke up with the idea for the novel as the surprising answer. Another novel idea came to me out of a dream that played like a vivid feature film. In both cases, I feverishly wrote down everything upon waking. I woke up with so much excitement and there was no way I could let these ideas go. But in truth, anything and everything can spark my imagination. I let ideas come to me whenever I'm able to be in a relaxed enough state to receive them. Meditating is perfect for that, although I don't meditate often these days. But I'm always inspired to have a writing session when I'm traveling or after I've moved my body via yoga, walking or going to the gym. Moving my body gets me out of my mind enough for the words to flow out of me cleanly and clearly. The new stimuli from being in new environments while travelling, also helps me to reach new insights which then sparks new ideas.

On a recent publication …

My most recent publication is my debut novel The Source of the Wind, which has been published this summer. It's a heartwarming yet emotional women's fiction novel about a young woman who is forced to confront her own traumatic childhood, when she discovers a student of hers is facing similar trauma in the home. However, what she doesn’t know is that there’s always help available—including from a more “magical" source. I’m currently writing essays about spirituality, creativity, travel and more on my Substack newsletter Wide Eyed Ella, but I’m hoping to get started soon on a coming of age YA novel soon. I’ve had the idea for this story for years, but I’m still working out the plot kinks.

Ella Capek’s online spaces …