Writer, heal thyself

If I could just learn to take my own advice...

Dear Writer,

I remember this feeling, but it’s been so long since I’ve been between books that I was surprised when the feeling ambled up, took a seat next to me, and said, “Didja miss me?”

Writer… I did not.

It’s a strange kind of restlessness, a sense that I need desperately to do something I don’t have the tools to do. I am in discovery for this book, this nascent idea that I must sit and wait for, two things that I am notoriously shit at doing. So I’m jotting down ideas and the book is shifting in form as I go and I know that’s the process, that’s how it works, but it’s been so long since I’ve done this that I forgot how goddamn annoying it all is.

The fear, of course, is that I’m done. Maybe I waited too long to write again and I’ve lost my mojo. Maybe I’ve changed too much and can’t write anymore. Maybe whatever talent I had required all the trauma and emotional baggage that I spent the last six years getting rid of, and now that I’m happy and predominantly healed, I won’t be able to do it anymore.

All of that, of course, is bullshit, and if I were my own client, I know exactly what I would say. Make a collage. Create a soundtrack. Do the discovery work. Discovery is always the first step. Start where you start and then stare out windows. That’s how it works.

Which is great advice and I know it’s right but not unlike Ian’s advice from last week to do the blindfold journaling, my inner response is a very whiny I don’t wanna.

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Collage. Soundtrack. Discovery writing. Staring out windows. That is the prescription, my prescription and I know it works and yet here I am, with the two angels of Toxic Productivity and Toxic Positivity perching on either shoulder, one telling me that I need to actually do something and the other saying that everything will be okay, it’ll be fine, no worries, #blessed. Meanwhile, I sit and ruminate on seemingly nothing and then suddenly realize that Ian has been talking to me for five full minutes and I didn’t hear a word of what he said because my brain was… I don’t know. Doing something, although I’d be hard-pressed to say what.

I remember this place. I’ve been here, a number of times. It’s so familiar that it should be a comfort, a reassurance that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, once again, at the beginning. I have been saying for years that Discovery is my favorite of the three phases of writing (Discovery, Drafting, Revision) but now that I’m here, deep in the unsettling I don’t know-ness of Discovery, I feel like one of those women who suffer greatly in giving birth, and then forget how painful it was as soon as they’re out of the hospital.

Collage. Soundtrack. Discovery writing. Staring out windows. Why does the playful part of storytelling give me such trouble? This is the fun part. Casting the characters with actors or people I know in real life; building the soundtrack with music. Writing little bits and pieces until I finally land on the starting point and then I’m off to the races. I remember how each book I’ve written caught fire during Discovery, and how excited I would get, how little attention I would have for anything but The Book as it took up most of my brain on any given day.

I have the matches in my hand.

Collage.

Soundtrack.

Discovery writing.

Staring out windows.

But these moments between striking the match and the book catching fire and burning to where I can see the story play out in the smoke… those are agonizing days, weeks, sometimes even months. I am doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, exactly what I would tell myself to do if I hired myself to be my own writing coach.

The first time you get on a dusty old bicycle you haven’t ridden for way too long, it’s going to naturally feel a little unnatural. In that case, the only thing to do, if you’re not willing to get off, is pedal.

So here I go.

Everything,

L