Sit down and stay awhile.
The title of this post may sound harsh and unfeeling. I’m not beating up my fellow writers, I’m just stating the facts.
Just like living, writing (or creating any sort of art or endeavor) is a monumental struggle, to begin a project, to maintain enthusiasm, to power through depression and self-doubt, to complete. Completion is the end goal. Believe me, I know. It took four years of struggle to complete the first draft of my first novel, and I’ve heard from others it could take much longer. For me, the first goal was The End. I’d passionately started plenty of projects only to have them fall to the wayside. (Example: somewhere in my house is a crazy quilt I started in 1984, the intent was to give the finished product to my in-laws for Christmas. I got to the point where it is 4′ by 4′, but not big enough to cover a bed. I think my first child derailed this project, but someday I will locate it and finish it.)
My work on my first novel ebbed and flowed over four years. Sometimes I’d be hit with surfer-wave intensity and would ride that wave for days, writing like a crazy person on meth. Other times, the desire to write would dry up to nothing, the edge of the ocean way, way, way out there, practically to China and unreachable, and I’d go weeks without thinking about writing, or I’d think about it and panic because I had basically become unproductive.
Dry spells are made of dread. During one particularly onerous dry spell, a good friend of mine (now gone, RIP) admonished me to at least sit down for 15 minutes and write something, anything. I even tried Write or Die, which did work in my case, eventually. (Why my tag line for the longest time was “I’m writing as fast as I can!”) I went from a hundred words in 15 minutes to sometimes over 500.
I’ll have to admit the obvious: the finished first-draft product was horrible! It was full of broken rules and too many words, bad grammar and head hopping and every wrong turn imaginable. I put it away for two years, because I couldn’t believe I had created a literary disaster. I went on to other novels in other genres (which I finished! it gets easier the more you write), tried flash fiction in an effort to tighten up my stories, and began to put my typewritten poems into digital form. I later came back to the story because it was a good one – just terribly executed. After I got over the stinging in my eyes from reading the draft a few times (I’m not kidding, it was ammonia awful), I set out to edit, and edit again, and again, and yes, a couple of more agains. When it felt right to me, I entered it into contests where I received positive feedback (YAY ME!) so I knew I was on the right track.
Every so often, I’ll pull a copy of the book out, open it to a random page, and read a page or two. While I’ve improved my skills since I published it, I can honestly say it’s actually not horrible! I still feel good about it.
What I have learned along the way is that writing is much like life. It’s not easy. There are days when you don’t want to get out of bed. (Writers seem to be depressed – a lot!) There are obstacles along the way: day jobs, downers in the personal life, struggles with health issues, things that are thrown at you that you can’t predict and sometimes are out of your control to alleviate. You’re tired, your head is full of negative thoughts and fears, your days are too full to sit down for a minute, much less 15 of them strung together, with enough corresponding peace and quiet in order to type.
What I’ve also learned is I need heartache and struggle in order to write. If things were a lollypop and gumdrop heaven all the time, I’d have nothing to write about.
I know what it feels like to have a total loss of words. In those cases, I resign myself to baby steps and give myself a break, because I know this will pass. So writers, give yourself room to stumble. Remember this: your writing life, like your real life, will not always be full of obstacles. It won’t be all rain, or God forbid, a bomb cyclone (like the one we experienced in Colorado last week – I might have to use that in a story). Eventually the clouds will clear and the sun will come out and life will be good and words will flow.
Trust me.
