You can see that my last two posts have been passionate by way of extrapolating the hardest things in life and effectively working through them. The hardest things in life aren’t writing, or parenting, or breathing. They’re the fabricated perceptions we’ve made of ourselves.
What do you want to do, write? Then write. I feel like this message is conducted through Facebook and Twitter and any given Bohemian book on writing technique, so the sentiment is at risk of losing its value. But it’s true.
I’m writing this from the vast irony of having not gotten up to write this morning. What was the excuse? My alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. as usual and I even got up to go to the bathroom when it did. I was up. But the conversation between the window overlooking the back patio and me was conflicted. “Stay up,” I told myself. “It’s pretty early,” the air said through the window. “And your wife’s gone for the weekend. Weird schedule. Might as well sleep.” “No,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. If it’s my career, it’s just something I do. Right here, right now, and if I can get as far as the coffee, I won’t look back.” “I’m still warm,” the bed said. “What?” I asked. “You don’t talk. You’re low-thread-count sheets. You have no voice.” “Allegedly. But what now?” “Touche.”
And so it goes. But I have already set the coffee timer for 5:30 a.m. as of 10 this morning. And I will set my alarm again. Being ruled by the moment is human. I’ve been watching a Discovery Channel series on “The Human Body,” in the last couple of days, and the human brain is amazing. It takes over when we have no choice. But perhaps we have too much choice.
When I was a teacher, I had no choice. I learned pretty early in my career that my personality needed to get up 30 minutes early to drink coffee and deal with the reality that would become imminent for each day. I maintained that mantra for all my educational years, gearing up for the sociological hell that would ensue, since I’m an introvert that can live just inside the extrovert line when forced. But personality doesn’t matter. I had no choice. And so I did.
Nothing is easy. There aren’t enough times you can hear it. Nothing is easy. Nothing will be easy. Life is not easy. Where did we hear it was? Doesn’t matter – it’s not. So….what? Fight. You’re able. There’s no other choice. Again, I find no comfort in those feature stories that talk about best-selling authors sneaking in writing hours in early hours or odd time frames. I know it’s supposed to make me feel an affinity for them, but it doesn’t. No one else can be you.
I’m 254 pages into my second novel. Hand-written. That’s just what I do. And what I do, as an individual, is what I do best. Because no one else is me. I’ve found my way. How did I get here? Sometimes I can force myself to get up in the morning, and sometimes I can’t. That’s just the way it is. But I’ve found what I would consider moderate success in the process of daily flagellation, that is, when I write, I’m glad, when I don’t, I resolve to do it next time. And there is always a next time.
You write a novel word by word. It’s not even thought by thought, because you get to a place where it’s without conscious thought, and pregnant with what you’ve conditioned as your creative unconscious. It knows you have a story, and it gave you most of it. I’m steering dangerously close to the category of “you either have it, or you don’t” and I think that’s half-true. But it’s not that you either have writing skills or you don’t. It’s that you either are tough, or you’re not.
What’s keeping this post from being narcissistic? Probably nothing. This is my own battle. But experience tells me it’s the battle of others, the minute details of which have not been told. It’s easy enough to say “writing is hard.” Simple to explain why writing is hard. Quite elementary to pontificate about how writing is hard. I believe another thing altogether to regroup and get in the face of writing’s hardness. You don’t own me. I created you.
So here are my lessons, admittedly inspired by Mayo Clinic physician Amit Sood’s book: Train Your Brain….Engage Your Heart….Transform Your Life: A Course in Attention & Interpretation Therapy (AIT).
When faced with a writing crisis in which you feel immobilized to do your art, go through these questions:
1) What am I feeling? (reflection)
2) What is making me feel like this? (recognition)
3) Will the cause of this feeling kill me? (examination)
4) Can this be resolved? (innovation)
5) What steps can I take to resolve it? (solution)
In my tedious non-fiction writing, which is what funds my literary ventures, these are what I’ve found to get me through.
At the end of the day, being a writing master isn’t about housing a dram of whisky (it’s the correct spelling, trust me) at your side, or wearing Warby Parkers and bolstering your persona with that mandatory cafe Americano. It’s about naming your demons (in Latin if necessary), and annulling their clout. Then it’s about becoming a demon of sorts yourself (working in the dark, accessing the forbidden places for the things you know are real) and not apologizing for it.
