A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~Thomas Mann
‘Morning, all –
I just had my scrumptious crispy, gluten-free ginger crepes for breakfast, so there’s nothing to interrupt a good writing session. Except laundry, which needs doing. And the carpet is horrible and really needs vacuuming. And the kitchen floor is filthy. And there are dishes to be done, blah blah blah. On crutches, of course.
But if I don’t write while the keyboard is hot, I’ll lose my train of thought and never get back to it. What to do?
I am constantly torn between writing and the things that fall apart while I’m writing. Sometimes it feels like they are opposing sides in the tug of war called Resistance. When I clean, I am resisting writing. When I write, I am resisting cleaning. When I get in a good flow with either one, the other one suffers. There’s got to be a better way.
Well, I think there is. Ben Franklin was right: “Moderation in all things (including moderation).”
The truth is that when I truly get in a good flow, both sides balance automatically. I’ll be cooking a healthy breakfast, and thoughts for a blog post will come to me. I’ll be doing good work on a post but I need to stretch for a minute, so I start a load of laundry. When I keep up with the dishes, I eat healthier, because cooking is easier. When I eat healthier, I have the mental and physical energy to pound out 2500 words in a day.
It’s the back and forth, the balance, that works for me — on a good day.
On a bad day, when I’m stuck and can’t think of a thing to write, I force myself to sit here and type babble about all the things I’m not getting done. And nothing meaningful gets written OR done. I’m not balanced. Of course, getting balanced was the whole point of starting The Complete Flake and look how far that got me. [I kid -- it got me YOU, silly!]
When I was an obstinate, very messy kid, my mother would try to make me clean my room. She wouldn’t let me do anything else until the job was done. Which meant I didn’t do ANYTHING. I remember lying on my bed, engrossed in daydreams, perfectly happy to do nothing. I didn’t even need the radio [no TV in bedrooms back then], which of course, Mom had turned off. Once, after dark, she even turned out the light; it didn’t bother me a bit.
My room? I remember it being tidy only twice. There’s a reason certain relatives [not my mother] said I was irredeemably lazy.
It feels the same now — only I’m the mom: I don’t let myself do anything else until I finish what I’m supposed to be doing. Right now, I’m stuck on 2500 words, which means I’m not getting blog posts written because I have this weird idea in my head that I am only allowed to write 2500 words of useless crap first, before I’m allowed to write anything useful like a blog post. I don’t know where I got that idea, but of course, we know that it’s just another avoidance technique.
Catherine Caine is the Queen of Awesome? I am the Queen of Avoidance.
The trouble is, I don’t like writing — not when it’s hard, like this.
I love it when I get in the flow of it, when everything’s going right and it’s easy. Going back and reading some of the previous paragraphs, I was struck by how unpleasant it all sounded, as if I regard writing as an onerous task that must be endured, like high school homework. And you know what? I do — when it’s not going well.
That sounds awful! Who would want to do that, day after day? Certainly not me.
My Resistance is going full throttle whenever something is hard. Should I just get over it and learn to do hard things? Well, of course I do hard things, when I have to. But I don’t want writing to be a “have to” thing. I want to love it. So maybe the solution is to find ways to make writing easier instead of trying to force it. I need to lighten up, take the burden off, and find ways to make writing fun again.
I’ve read that’s the difference between a pro and an amateur: The pro writes whether s/he wants to or not; the amateur waits for inspiration. I want to be a pro, but I don’t want to subject myself to torture on a regular basis either.
Somebody, please tell me what you LIKE about writing. What makes it fun for you? How do you push through when it’s hard?
Image credit: kirainet
