First, a reminder: We still have some spots available at the Red Clover Writing Retreat this fall! Join me and Sarah McColl at the beautiful Red Clover Ranch in the Driftless region of Wisconsin. If you're feeling stuck in your writing process, stalled on your fiction or memoir project, hungry for creative community, or just ready for a revitalizing break, this long weekend is for you. More information is here.
It’s probably revealing too much to share that I have a post-it on my desk that says “Remember, you are a human animal, not a machine.” I don’t know about you, but this is a reminder I often need. Some unholy combination of Protestant work ethic, Jewish guilt, and American productivity bro has resulted in me, a writer who never feels like she is writing enough.
Objectively, I know this is hogwash. I write a lot. And also… how much of my writing needs to exist? It’s not like I’m producing semiconductors, or beehives, or lipsticks that stay put even when you eat a burrito, or other things the world truly needs. But my need to produce work isn’t, of course, rational, and it’s not even really about the end result — it’s about feeling like, if I am not writing, then what is even the point of me? Like… just a… human being on Earth?
I know, I know, I need to go back to therapy BUT the point here is my creative demons are not procrastination or distraction but rather the opposite—having an expectation of myself that when I have writing time I will spew out reams of pages, and that only this counts as creative work.
Now. This is part of it, yes! I often think about the long-ago New Yorker profile of prolific page-spewer Nora Roberts in which she says her one key commandment of writing is “ass in the chair.” Maybe you are the kind of writer who needs to hear this. Maybe this is your desk post-it: Ass in the chair. Stay there until some pages have been spewed. Do this instead of (or at least, before) thinking about writing, talking about writing, googling about writing, sharing memes about writing.
But maybe you are a writer like me, whose tendency is to be too much in the chair. You sit there, so well-behaved, in said chair. You have all your nice supplies: your computer and favorite word processing program, or your perfect notebook and perfect pens. You have set aside the time. You stare at the page. And…nothing.
This might be because your well is dry. I don’t know a ton about rural water systems — as intimated above, I lack most practical knowledge of the world — but I’m pretty sure you can’t share water from a dry well. And I do know that to produce creative work, you have to feed yourself first.
I have more than once had some variation of this conversation:
Writer: I just don’t know what kind of [essay/story/book] I want to write!
Me: Well, what do you most like to read?
Writer: Um
Me: You do… read, don’t you?
Writer: Of course! I mean, I used to. I used to love reading. But now I just don’t seem to have the time… I feel guilty if I just sit with a book…
Me: < dissolves into a puddle of goo >
Set aside the fact that I cannot comprehend a life without reading — my god, do you exist in the REAL WORLD at ALL TIMES? — the point is, reading will help you write. Read widely. Read promiscuously. Read to your own pleasure. Not what your college literature professor said you had to read, or what you think Real Writers read. Read what delights you. And then take a look at what has delighted you. Look at how it was made. Write the kind of thing you’d like to read. Reading will feed you.
Here’s another conversation I find myself having frequently:
Writer: Writing is so lonely. I want to write this novel, but to just be alone with it for years at a time?
Me: Well, you could talk to your writer friends, that makes the process a little less lonely.
Writer: I don’t really have a creative community. And anyway, why would I want to consort with my competition?
Me: < dissolves into a puddle of goo >
Creative community is really important. Take a workshop. Join a writing group. Go to literary events in your area. Support other writers even when there’s nothing in it for you. Go to a reading to listen and clap and tell the writer you love their work. Don’t be afraid. As I once heard Karen Russell memorably say at a reading, “most writers are just nice people in sweaters.” They don’t bite. Usually.
Oh, and competition is an unhelpful concept. A more helpful concept: We’re all in this together.
In other words: be around. Show up. In the brilliant and useful The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron recommends filling the creative well by taking yourself on a weekly artist’s date. I think this is super useful, too — go see visual art; go hear music. As the kids today say, touch grass. Be a human being on Earth. This will feed you, and fill you ideas and inspiration, and remind you of the context for what you’re wanting to do.
And then — eventually! — get that ass back in the chair.
Exercise: Read something for pleasure. Take a paragraph from this work that you really loved, and write it out, longhand. Then take your favorite line from this paragraph, and use it as the first sentence for something. Try to imitate the writer’s style, just to stretch your literary muscles. See where this takes you.
If you have a writing project you want support on, or a manuscript that needs an edit, or if you’re looking for a regular writing coach or accountability partner, head to my website and book some time to chat. I’m currently booking new clients for September.
"How much of my writing needs to exist? It’s not like I’m producing semiconductors, or beehives, or lipsticks that stay put even when you eat a burrito, or other things the world truly needs..." THIS. What a reframe I needed today. I have been in a phase of first draft-hording lately - generating a ton of writing that goes... nowhere. What a great reminder to look at some of my recent drafts with a mind for quality over quantity.
Thank you for this!