What would happen if you felt free?
In order to write what's true, you have to know what you want. That's my theory, anyway.
Is one of your goals for 2024 to write more, or to finish that book draft? I work 1:1 with writers in all sorts of ways. If you have a manuscript that needs an edit, a writing project that’s stuck, a query letter or book proposal you want eyes on, or if you could simply use some more accountability to keep you focused and inspired, put some time on my calendar for a free 15-minute phone chat or write to me here.
Like all of the most daring and dauntless people on Earth, by which I mean freelancers who have neglected to pay their taxes quarterly, I celebrated the year’s end by doing some accounting. Not the creative/spiritual/resolutiony kind, just plain old money accounting. And I was forced to ask myself some real English-major questions, such as, Amy, why did you think you could afford so much totally optional and truly-non-tax-deductible travel? and Amy, dear, why did you take a month off of paid work to attend a writing residency and noodle around on a novel draft? and Amy, my darling, you do understand how credit card interest works, right?
The more I interrogated myself, however, the clearer it became to me why I conducted my 2023 in the way that I did. I really hadn’t been able to articulate it while it was happening, as is so often the case with life. Quick backstory: As some of you may know (I’ve written about it some in various places), I got divorced riiiiiigght before the pandemic (well the actual divorce of it takes some time but what’s relevant here is that I moved out into my own place in February of 2020, so… you get it).
Getting divorced is terrible, even if you’re choosing it, and generally what immediately proceeded it was not much fun either. And soon as my personal life’s dust had settled, there was a global pandemic that you may have heard about. While I got used to being a divorced mom supporting myself in an expensive city, I had some small adventures, mostly of the romantic variety (they’re free! and easy to fit in to a busy schedule!). Then I lost my full-time job in company-wide layoffs, and started freelancing.
Now on one hand, it’s all sort of a nightmare, especially if you’re a person who is into things like “financial stability” and “planning for the future.” But on the other hand, I suddenly found myself in a position I had actually never experienced before, which is to say, I had a lot of freedom. I mean, I guess I had a lot of freedom when I was in my early 20s, but I didn’t fully exploit it at the time, distracted as I was by those sexy twin demons of youth, Suspense and Penury.
The point is, last year, for the first time in my adult life, I had neither a full-time partner nor a full-time job nor full-time parenting responsibilities. The pandemic had quelled to a low boil. I have been known to tend toward the restless, to become bored-to-the-point-of-tortured-or-at-least-whiny when feeling stagnant. In a 9-to-5-less life, would I call my own bluff?
It turns out, given a whiff of freedom, here’s what I did: I traveled to Paris alone and had some extremely interesting dating-app-induced escapades. Instead of our usual low-key beach vacation during the summer, I took my teenaged children to explore Montreal and Quebec. I spent a week on the Greek island of Corfu with a magical group of women, skinny-dipping in a mountainside villa’s private pool. I ended the year visiting Mexico City with my mother, climbing pyramids and eating delicious things and seeing so much art our eyes almost exploded. I spent nearly a month at a residency in the woods, being a novel-writing art monster every day and then partying with the other artists (and occasionally a black bear or two) each night.
Maybe this is how some people always live their lives, but I’ve never before been able to. It kind of blows my mind even just to look back on it now. I also want to note that I travel quite cheaply — it’s not like any of these were luxury trips — and that when I wasn’t traveling I was busting my ass freelancing and teaching and parenting — just to be clear.
What’s interesting to me is the urgency I felt, the hunger for experience and novelty. It was as if I’d been saving up various desires for a long time — during the pandemic, before the pandemic — and they all exploded out at once. A desire volcano, or something like it. I said yes, all year, to everything.
How is any of this related to writing?
Well for one thing, writing isn’t always just about writing; one has to do some living, too. One has to interact with different kinds of people. One has to see the world, or at least leave the house now and then. One has to read widely, look at art, watch things, eat things, feel things, take long pointless walks or whatever it is that wakes you up to the world. Have sex. Skinny dip. Do things you’re not supposed to do, at least a few. If not now, when, etc.
But also. I think it has to do with freedom, and its relationship with desire. For me, this current chapter of my life has been about getting unstuck, or more accurately, what happens after you wrench yourself free from a stuck place. And sometimes when we’re stuck it’s hard to even remember what we want.
I have a theory that staying stuck is easier than getting free. Feeling stuck is annoying and uncomfortable, but also, annoying and uncomfortable are often familiar feelings. We turn our complaints into little jokes. We chat with our coworkers in the office kitchen about how much we hate our jobs and then go but well what can ya do! We simmer in stale relationships, choosing the devil we know (boredom) over the devils we don’t (loneliness? heartbreak? dating apps?). We try to hypnotize ourselves by making Gratitude Lists and Looking on the Bright Side.
In our creative lives, too, it’s easy to say, Yes I want to write but I’m so busy and life and etc and well you know how it goes.
But could it be that sometimes, staying stuck is subconsciously self-protective? (I wrote about this, sort of, in a more writing-craft-focused way, in
’s great here.) To stop being stuck, you start having to make decisions, and to make decisions, you have to know what it is that you want.When was the last time you were really honest with yourself about what you desired?
Like living, writing is in so many ways about desire. What is it you really want? What is the story you want to tell?
I often see novel drafts that start off so promising, brimming with great ideas and complex characters and lovely language, and then flag midway, because the writer does not yet know what it is the characters want. When I was getting my MFA, one of my professors always said that your characters need to be driven by secret fears and desires that are revealed in moments of stress. I think about this advice all the time. Your characters need to want things, in high stakes ways. This is hard to access if you, the writer, are totally out of touch with your own wants, your own secret fears and desires.
When we are more in touch with our own desires, we can be more in touch with our character’s desires; when we allow ourselves to know what we want, then we understand how our characters are driven by their wants.
It's annoying, and a lot of work, but I really do think it’s true that we have to know ourselves in order to be honest on the page.
I wish I had this all sorted out. In the end, I’m just another writer trying to write some good and real and true things, just another freelancer who probably needs to be a little less adventurous and a little more fiscally responsible in 2024, just another human being trying to live this one life on Earth well, despite despite despite. But I also think it’s good to say yes, to reach for what we desire. To know, even, what that is.
A writing prompt I often give my students is: What would you write if you weren’t afraid? Another good question: What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
Well?
PS: My next novel, Dear Edna Sloane, coming out from Red Hen Press in 2024, is available for preorder (here! and at the bad place too! and elsewhere!) It’s about a WRITER! I think you will like it!
PPS: Writing Co-Lab, the educational cooperative I co-founded, has a ton of great classes open now in all genres. Find out more and register here.
Getting stuck is so much easier than freedom. Stuck is easy in strange way. Freedom is f*cking hard. I’m getting on the freedom train in 2024. I will continually challenge myself “what are you so afraid of?”
From one Amy to another..
I am lost..and sitting here trying to think of something eloquent to write but I have to say, this was the piece I needed to read on a gloomy Saturday morning. All I have ever wanted to do is to write, but have been held back, discouraged..by my own damn self, and life. I am not a writer, and yeah, I feel stuck. I've raised 5 kids and kept a damn clean house for the past 25 years..now what? This article shed some light, lifted my heavy head, and shifted my focus to what could be brighter days. Thank you.