Bleeding, Crying, and Doubting

It's been awhile since I've blogged but wanted to follow up on my last post Writer's Wall.

So I fell into the even more debilitating state shortly after that post—Writer's Depression. Some psychotherapy to lift my spirit and some acupuncture to deal with chronic pain coupled with overall being nicer to myself, and in a few months—presto!

Well, not quite.

I'm MUCH better spiritually and emotionally. Writer's block is over. Writer's Depression is being kept at bay. I'm thigh-deep into revisions on a new manuscript and working on putting together Sucker Volume 3. My day job is fantastic and the kids and hub are healthy.

My world is in as much balance as possible. . . knock on wood.

To sum up what I've learned, I will share with you a thought that I had about a month ago as I was composing this new manuscript. This is a thought that I've put on my computer scribbled onto a green sticky note:

If you aren't bleeding and crying and doubting, then you aren't creating art.

So now when the critic inside starts yelling at me I yell back, THIS MEANS I'M AN ARTIST! and then continue on my way.

Happy doubting and bleeding everyone.

Writer’s Wall

This blog post is a simul-post on Henandinkbytes.com 

My writer’s block has been going on awhile. When I visualize this “block”, I see myself in a 4-sided brick structure that I’ve resurrected myself, all alone, no assistance. And I always see a brick or two, unsteady at the stop, about to fall right on me. While I’ve never been literally struck in the head and fallen into a coma, my writer’s block feels like one of those precarious bricks at the very top has fallen on my head and struck me unconscious, rendering me silent.

Go ahead and head-shrink me. Clearly, I have some issues.

****

I had an “awakening” recently when Sharon Creech gave her keynote speech at the NESCBWI, 2013 conference I attended a few weeks ago. As Ms.Creech spoke to us, an audience that filled a giant ballroom of the Hilton, I jotted snippets of her speech into my notebook. Each nugget of wisdom jolted me, and by the end, I woke from my writer’s block induced comma. 

“. . . frantic excitement. . . ”

The story she opened with contained the words “frantic excitement”. Those words were from a young reader who wrote to  Ms.Creech  about her own work being published and how she felt this “frantic excitement” about her work being out there for the world. Those words moved  Ms.Creech   but more importantly, they moved me. When  Ms.Creech  spoke them, this flicker inside me, a memory-flame of myself, age 11. Frantically writing in a yellow five-subject notebook, the spark of an idea so crackling, I wrote dozens of pages with “frantic excitement” in just a few days. . .

“. . . intense need . . . ”

I scribbled those words in my notebook but without any context. I don’t remember what the words are connected to in  Ms.Creech  s speech. But I heard them, and another flicker crackled inside me. Another, more recent memory. . .This past November during NaNoWriMo. Racing to my computer between all the duties of a working-from-home-mother, just to type the words to a new novel. Each day of that month I rode this internal, intense, aching need to GET THE STORY OUT. No judgment. No evaluation. No worry. The intense need so scorching, that I couldn’t hear the voices in my head of doubt and fear, I was so distracted by the burn of needing to write.  

“It’s okay to be inspired by another, but we need to find out own voice.”

The only full sentence of all the notes I scribbled onto the lined pages of my composition pad. And these words filled my entire body with an energy that glowed warm and soft inside. The deadness of my creative mind plumping up with life. The energy pouring out of me and easily vaporizing the brick wall of writer’s block.

As  Ms.Creech  came to her final words, we all stood up and clapped, and that’s when the grip of fear inside released completely, manifesting in some salty tears dotting the corners of my eyes. When we took our seats after, I jotted in my notebook: “Thank you, Sharon Creech. Thank you.”

***

That afternoon and evening, I wrote. I went into the current three WIPS I’ve been working on and started to revise the opening pages. The energy from Sharon’s speech stayed with me, and I typed, feeling a surge of simpatico with myself with what was happening in my head and on the computer screen.

It was, in a word, lovely.

After I returned home, I watched myself put bricks up, one by one, with each passing day. Once again, I was walled in on all sides.

This time I called upon the words from Sharon Creech:

“. . . frantic excitement. . . ”

“. . . intense need . . . ”

“It’s okay to be inspired by another, but we need to find out own voice.”

Like a silent prayer, I say the words to myself as I remove each brick, one by one. Soon the only walls that surround me are walls of words, inspiring me.

Thank you, Sharon Creech. Thank you.

P.S. Thank you to my agent, Erzsi Deak, who asked me to write about why Sharon Creech made me cry. 

The Burden of Expectation on the Creative Life

I’ve had writer’s block since November 22^nd 2012. It began after I finished an exuberant first run in NaNoWriMo, whereby I completed a manuscript—start to finish—in less than 21 days. A record for me.

I spent some time trying to write after I finished NaNoWriMo, not the manuscript I had completed during the NaNoWriMo month, but a different one. By the New Year, I was really depressed so I did something I have never done since I made the commitment to be a writer decades ago:

I gave up writing fiction. . . completely. Since that time I have been journaling in that messy, self-pitying/angry/ranting way that is ultimately very healthy but not good for creating a world, a story nor is it good for public consumption.

The good news is that after these 4 months of journaling, I have identified what’s up with me.

It’s so f-king simple that you are going to probably stop reading this blog right after you hear it.

Drum roll, please:

I expected that after 16 years of writing, submitting, receiving awards, and even achieving agented status, I would, by now, be further along in my writing career.

This is almost funny. I mean what writer trying to “make it” hasn’t had that feeling? What writer doesn’t expect, want, pray, hope for more? So the thing that blocks me now, that makes writing bone-crushingly painful is the burden of expectation.

***

Since childhood I’ve dreamed of being a writer. I’ve always had the dream. Not only that, but in all parts of my life, I am a dreamer. I believe, in my bones, that dreaming actualizes reality. I have lived that Truth; that is how I have made everything in my life happen. My books, my business, the literary anthology I founded, even my marriage, my children. . . all began with delicious, lovely dreams.

BUT

The dream of writer once felt lovely, empowering, and it drove me. Lately, though, my dreams to write fiction feel more like extra weight, like I put on about thirty pounds. My cadence has slowed. I’m lumbering. I’m pulled to closer to the earth. Why? Because what was once a dream, became—somewhere along the way—an expectation. Expectations are heavy. Dreams are not.  

***

I have tried to go back into my manuscripts, but I second-guess every stroke of the keyboard. I delete more than I write. The word-counts of each current WIP—healthy 60,000 plus—only burden rather than motivate me.  

I just keep questioning the big picture. It’s not just the specific book I am working on; it’s this path of being a writer that I am on.

I used to like to work hard just for the adrenaline-high of it. The burn of it, like a fast run outside. I was very committed to that feeling of nose-to-the-grindstone with my writing, revising until I felt sweaty and tired. Whether it was writing books or getting an MFA in writing, the process of hard work was enough for me. I was in love with the process of creating fiction. I enjoyed every single moment, losing myself deeply in each project.

But now the process of the hard work has felt bone-crushingly painful. Because what was once an airy, ethereal dream is now a feet firmly planted expectation.

And I really just don’t know what to do except, well. . . write about it.

*** 

My dreams as a writer are probably similar to yours. (I assume mainly writers are reading this, but you can apply it to any dream).

I dreamt that I would have a book deal by 25. Then when 25 hit and it didn’t happen, I just worked harder and dreamt it would be 30. Then, you guessed it, when 30 hit, I worked even harder and aimed for 35.

I turn 38 this year. You know what the new dream is?

To be able to sit down and write a book with ease, with joy, with a sense of fun.

  

My oldest daughter is the same age I was when I decided that when I grow up, I was going to be an author, like Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary. My fourth grade teacher, although very surly and liked to knock down my over-confidence with remarks like “You are the second best reader in the class, not the first”, awarded me with a badge at the end of the year: “Ambition Is To Be An Author”. Not Best Writer. No, my “award” was for my ambition. Pretty telling.

My dreams and ambition fuel me and the burden of expectation kills the creative dream.

I need to go back to dreaming and let go of expectations.