Dusting Off the Cobwebs

Lately, I feel as though I have dusted off the cobwebs of my writing mind. My writing seems to ebb and flow throughout each year. There are months where I seem to have nothing but time, I write and write and the stories just come forward and pour out like I’m a vessel and they are whispers from another universe. And there are other months where I seem to flow through each day with no ability to get a single word onto paper, where I can’t seem to find the time or carve it out from anywhere. The two contrasts- being so prolific in words and not being able to get any down are so incredibly frustrating. Why can’t I achieve some happy medium? Why can’t I just write consistently like so many of my writing friends?

I think the answer is one that I sometimes grudgingly fight against. I have to simply make the time, period. I do have time. It’s always there. Some weeks I won’t be able to write every day, but writing a day or two is still more than nothing. Life can be chaotic especially around big events or holidays, a lot of school stuff to keep track of. People get sick, things come up, life is always throwing more and more our way. We check ten things off our to do list and add ten more. It’s a cyclical thing, but writing can be too, if we let it. If I let it.

So I’m trying it. I came to the point at the end of May where I burned out on everything. I was burned out on work, writing, editing, all the things that I normally do that bring me some sense of purpose were wearing on me. I accepted that I was burned out, but I also accepted that I needed to keep writing or I was never going to write. So I gave myself a few weeks to just do whatever I wanted. Read in excess, mostly. I took days off work and rested, and when May finally ended, I sat down and I wrote.

I didn’t write every day, but I started writing a few days a week. I set my alarm an hour earlier and wrote in the morning. I started moving certain tasks to my lunch break so I could make time to write in the evening. I carved out the time. Stories started filling my mind again. I began to keep a list of ideas in my notebook of story ideas, lines I needed to get down later, brainstorming for the stories I was editing or working on. I ended up writing over 30,000 words in June which for me was incredible. I hadn’t written that much in such a long time, I was worried I had forgotten how to do it.

But I hadn’t forgotten. Writing came back to me like I imagine riding a bicycle does. Or how drawing and painting does. I’d put it to the side, but writing hadn’t put me to the side. It was still waiting for me; all I had to do was show up.

That doesn’t mean writing has been easy. I haven’t been able to make time to write every day. I would love to, but there were entire weekends I was too busy with other things and spending time with family and loved ones, and those experiences are important too. They gave me the time I needed to reset and get back to it come Monday morning. Some days I showed up to my laptop and the words poured out. Other days, it felt like a struggle to get each word down. But I still showed up. I broadened what I read a bit more and started incorporating more non-fiction into my routine which somehow made more ideas come knocking on my door. It gave my stories the ability to turn and shift in ways I hadn’t been expecting before. And then I found myself proud. Proud that I could still do this, proud that I was still trying, whether I made any success of it or not. The success for me was still there because each scene I wrote unraveled the story a bit more and I could feel it breathing and living within me.

I spent June finishing a novelette, writing a chunk of a romance novel that I had started in March and editing a short story that I’d written several years ago. I found alternating between a few projects helped keep me focused so that I didn’t get writer’s block or ‘stuck’ on any one thing in particular. I ended up doing a lot of editing for some writing friends and former clients, and that just helped me re-incorporate writing and thinking of writing into my routine in different ways. I even started journaling again, which I think is a really important part of the process for writers. Some of my stories I write for an audience, because I hope someone will read it one day. But my journal is just for me, a space that I can say anything and reflect on anything without worrying what someone will think. In my journal I’ve created some short term and long term writing goals. I’ll be honest, most of them say nothing about publication. It’s merely focused on the stories I want to write and edit and how I plan on prioritizing them. I think when publication becomes so fiercely the goal, writing becomes less of the point. And writing is the entire point. Without writing I feel so much less. Less myself. Less in touch with my creative side.

I’m really lucky to have a good support system within the writing and editing community. Writers who have been begging me to send them my work, something I kept putting off and off out of fear. Until I didn’t and it helped me get back on track. Writing is solitary by nature, but it doesn’t have to be completely solitary. There are so many people out there trying to do the same thing- pour their stories out and hope that it means something to someone. So wherever you are in your writing journey, if you are on pause, if you are writing an insane amount and can’t stop, if you haven’t written in ages, just know that there are other writers out there too, wanting to read your words and hear your stories. There are readers searching for their next favorite story, and it may be the very one you are working on right now. Don’t give up and keep going. Your story is still in your hands, and you are the one writing it.