Somewhere between 2009 (when my mother passed) and 2011 (when I finally admitted it to myself), I completely lost the ability to write.
And I don’t mean no ideas, or terror at the blank page. What I mean is I could not type. I would hover my fingers over the page, and I would be blindsided by an anxiety attack.
I couldn’t return emails. Even opening the inbox required deep breathing.
When it was at its worst, I could not even write longhand. No pen. No paper. Nothing.
A dear friend, Madeline, asked me what it was like. I told her, It’s like my arm is suddenly gone. And there is a cup of coffee on the table, and I want to drink it. I can remember what it was like to pick up the coffee, and to drink it.
But I can’t pick up the coffee.
For the better part of a decade, the writing was gone. It was a wall of anxiety. It drove me out of the academy. It got me into radio (I couldn’t write, but I could talk). It created a hunger, deep inside of me, to get the writing back.
And then one day, in 2018, there it was.
Over the summer, my wife had mentioned a website, 750words.com. I opened an account, and it sat there for a month, and then another, unused.
One morning in the fall, I met my friend John for breakfast. He made a random comment about simulations and virtual reality. It fired off a connection in my brain with a journal article I had read. Then some more connections began to cascade.
Suddenly, I had an idea for a novel.
That night, I opened up 750words.com, and began writing. Nobody was going to see it, and it was fiction, for goodness sakes. I kept telling myself none of the words mattered - they were just words.
Day after day, like a switch had flipped, I was writing. From nothing, to a torrent of words, just like that.
Each day, for nearly two years, I would rack up an average of a thousand words a day. Along the way, I began writing a monthly column for a magazine, and I got renewed hope that some of the books I had under contract (two, at that point, with prospects on a third) might actually get finished.
The novel was the key to an invisible lock. It’s on its third draft, and it clocks in at about 70,000 words—though I don’t know if anybody but me will ever see it. More than that, though, since the writing came back, I have a running count of my progress overall. That daily practice yielded nearly three quarters of a million words, in total (750words.com keeps track).
But there has always been the fear, in the back of my head. I have always been completely terrified that I would wake up one morning, and the writing would be gone again.
Over the past few months, with a lot of life changes, and then all of the craziness of the pandemic, my writing has become sporadic. I’m not writing my thousand words a day. I’m not tending to revisions or seeing things through to the finish line.
I have been erratic.
And then, over these past two weeks, the well pretty much dried up. The old fears returned, and I was finding any and all excuse not to type. Even the email inbox was raising the same old anxieties.
But I have learned some things. I am not the same person I was when the writing first left.
Losing something as vital as writing affects you profoundly. Even more profound, however, is realizing that it comes back. You grieve it when it is gone, but you also have hope it can be recovered.
Recovery is a discipline. I have learned, from watching loved ones in recovery, and in my own experience, that it comes one day at a time. You show up, you do the best work you can, and you leave the rest. Then you come back the next day, and you work it again.
So for the past few days, I have been showing up, even though the writing hasn’t been getting done. I’ve been doing other, non-writing things. I’ve been talking (and doing interviews for the radio). I’ve been drawing pictures. I’ve been exercising. i’ve been making lists.
Most importantly, as much as possible, I have been trying not to beat myself up.
Not too much, anyway.
I love words. More than anything, I want to craft them and shape them and have people read them. But the process—for now, at least—really terrifies me sometimes.
You show up, and you do the best you can. You show up the next day, and you try again.
Sometimes, you fall off the wagon.
That’s recovery talk for “having a relapse.” And whether your drug of choice is a narcotic, or (as in my present circumstance) crippling anxiety and avoidance, or something else entirely, having a relapse is no fun.
I feel ashamed, when it happens.
But shame can also be an intoxicant. The serenity and sobriety that I seek in my life is not found in my shame, but in the small and daily work of creating: keep showing back up, keep doing what I can, and coming back again tomorrow.
That’s the best I can do, for now. But it’s something.
Courage.
A couple years back I saw a list floating around on the internet called Reminders for the Anxious/Depressed Creatives. I have searched for the original source, and I still have not found it (if you know, please leave a comment)—but I have found the list incredibly helpful as I struggle with these issues. Hopefully, you will, too.
The creative process is not a sprint. It is an ultra-marathon. At any given moment, we have limited energy and resources. Our call is to manage those limitations toward the greater goal of the greater good, and some days work better than others.
I am so grateful to be on this journey with you.
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Thanks again
"The creative process is not a sprint. It is an ultra-marathon." Wow, thank you for that metaphor.