Writing Through the Storm
I can still vividly remember sitting on a hotel couch with my laptop open sobbing because I couldn’t seem to get a single decent word down onto the electronic page. My child had been in the hospital for several weeks and our whole world had been turned on its head. I couldn’t write; I couldn’t even stay at the computer for very long. All I seemed capable of was sleeping; reading; and driving to/from the hospital. Eventually, I had to accept that amidst the chaos and fear, my novel was going to have to exist imperfect and sometimes neglected. And that was okay—it had to be because I am indeed a human with limitations. Writing may be my healthiest coping mechanism, but that doesn’t mean it’s always good. Sometimes, it’s just for me. I learned to throw perfection out the window at the time and simply write what and when I was able.
So why am I sitting here now brooding and frustrated, nearly glaring at my current incomplete manuscript and fighting off self-loathing? We’ve been through this before, right? I’m human, right?
My creativity isn’t dead just because I’m struggling now . . . RIGHT?
I’m back here again, trying to remember what I thought I’d already learned back in 2020. Evidently, I’m not immune to writing blocks even as my debut novel approaches its release this year. Life’s challenges sometimes gum up the works, including my craft.
2023 was a hell of a ride, and 2024 promises the same . . . maybe even more so. I’m currently sitting amongst boxes, trying my hardest to pack up a house that now feels more haunted than any place I’ve dreamt up in my writing. My marriage of ten years fell apart at the end of last summer, and now is the time the wreckage is being cleared. It’s hard and terrifying work. Sorting through finances with a knot in my belly; scrambling to snatch up a reasonably priced house for my kids, pets, and I while keeping the kids in their school district; dealing with the current landlord’s nonsense; processing grief while still trying to balance everyday life as if nothing has happened—as if the world as I knew it is not in shattered pieces. It’s like chewing on glass while trying to smile.
And here I am, bathing in self-loathing because I can’t spin the worlds I love to create in the way I want. The words just aren’t translating from my brain to the manuscript. When I read what I wrote the day before, it feels like someone else’s work . . . and not in a good way.
These are the days I’m lamenting that blockage morning, day, and night. I wake up and stare at the screen feeling paralyzed; I go to sleep ticked off at myself for insufficiently representing what my main character is feeling. I text friends to bemoan my failure. I avoid my family’s questions about how my writing is going. I ramble on to those closest to me about the manuscript, desperately trying to iron out plot holes and character motivations.
And I continue to be reminded by those same people what I already know: creativity can’t be forced, and sometimes, all you can do is hunker down and wait for the storm to pass.
I’ve always said that writing is my therapy. It is, but just as in actual therapy, sometimes it’s hard and doesn’t make sense. It’s not a magical cure; it takes work. In the midst of the raging hurricane, it’s enough for the words to just exist even if they aren’t the best. Yes; it’s important to keep writing, but it’s equally important to give myself enough grace to accept that it’s not going to be as snappy or eloquent as it usually is. Some days (okay; maybe a lot of days right now), journaling or scribbling notes is going to have to suffice. It’s damn near killing me, but I can’t escape that hard fact.
But when I stop to reflect, I remember why stormy moments in my life such as these are actually valuable—maybe even critical—for creating.
My debut novel, NOWHERE, wasn’t written during a crisis. It came after one. A particularly painful chapter in my life closed before the novel came tumbling out of my head. The book is heavily influenced by that period and that shines through in every single scene, my life back then reflected back at me in ~90k words that mean more to me than most accomplishments I’ve ever achieved.
The same is true for most of the manuscripts I love: THE HIEROPHANT was heavily influenced by an assault that happened years before the novel was ever begun. Even as I wrote it, I knew the book was helping me process pain I hadn’t unearthed from the horrible experience. I couldn’t have written it at any point before then and certainly not in the months immediately following that day.
Another manuscript was crafted many months after my grandmother passed and the last home I ever had as a child was subsequently lost. Yet another came flowing out the year following my child’s hospitalization as I built a world where highly flawed characters somehow bumbled their way through rescuing a little one not so very different from my own.
I wouldn’t have been able to write these manuscripts in the middle of crises. Yet, they are undeniably born from those moments. The pain, fear, and struggle associated with life’s difficulties shaped the stories I love the most, in large part because after the storm passed, I was different. I’d learned and grown through trial by fire. That’s when I was able to pour out art that best represented the version of me that emerged following the disaster. In short, those stories are the ones that display the most human, authentic pieces of me.
And the same will be true this time. Perhaps what I write in between packing boxes and making phone calls won’t be my greatest. That’s alright; stories can be revised later and journals are meant to capture the messiest bits of ourselves to begin with. After the dust settles and the broken glass is cleared, the words I’m looking for will return with new insights and force behind them.
For now, the maelstrom is still bearing down. That’s life, and that is okay. Creatives are not perfectly creative all the time. That is okay too. The sun will return eventually, and so will inspiration.
