Forgive the interuptions that keep you from writing
“When you finally find yourself ready to sit down at your desk to write, or in that studio to paint, or in that sanctuary to speak, or at that sunrise wedding to photograph … or wherever it is that you stand or kneel or walk or sit to create and cause beauty to be and beam from the hollow of your hands - you will find that everything, and I mean everything, will rise up against you.” — Rachel Marie Kang
This quote from the book Let There Be Art brought tears to my eyes. In the ten years I’ve been trying to successfully write and publish a book, it feels like there has been so much to fend off, just to make a little space for my creativity. Somedays I feel so tired of this journey, that I wish I had chosen something else or rather that something else had chosen me.
One of the things that kept me from writing was illness. When I was in my early 30s, I developed endometriosis that was at the latest, largest and most painful stage. Stomach pain, infection and surgeries left my brain too focussed on my pain and too foggy to create. Thankfully, although it is a chronic illness, my symptoms are not bad anymore.
Another thing that kept me from writing was being a single mom of a young child. That stage of my life was so difficult. My daughter - God bless her - was a cranky baby who didn’t sleep. In those years, all I could manage was to keep my head above water. Exhaustion was the key word for that time in my life. There was no space for creativity when I could barely get through my daily tasks. Now - thankfully - things are easier. I have a partner who helps and supports me and my daughter is an independent teen.
Finances have also been a constant worry. For years I have had to balance my desire to write and my desire to find a career that would help support our family. Working as a communications manager over the pandemic was a demanding job. Every day there was a new emergency, closure or government announcement. We had to rally and pivot quickly, work outside work hours, answer email questions from upset and angry people to make sure audiences felt supported and had the information they needed. Burn out. Overworked and burnt out, I couldn’t muster an ounce of creativity.
Looking back at these things: pain, exhaustion and burnout, it’s kind of incredible that my creativity and desire to write fiction survived. But, it was always there under the surface, whispering don’t forget about me.
It wasn’t the interuptions to my writing that were so wrong. There’s going to be many more interuptions as I go and I’ve accepted an imperfect writing life. It was how I still managed to beat myself up daily for not accomplishing enough with my writing. The refrain, not enough echoed in the back of my mind. I had thoughts like, I should have done this sooner, or I’m too old to be chasing dreams or why didn’t I work harder, faster, longer? Or, I would compare my journey to someone else’s: she’s so young and look how much she’s accomplished! I realize now how unkind and unproductive these thoughts were. Not only that, they were damaging my ability to write joyfully. I shouldn’t have been so hard on myself.
Life will interupt our writing in joyful and painful ways. That is just the way it is. Things will move much slower than we expected or wanted them to. This broken world is not set up for our creativity to bloom and thrive. So when it does, it’s actually quite miraculous. If you can let go of the guilt and blame, the unrealistic expectations, the lies about being too late or not enough, and just keep going, even when life forces you to pause, I think there will be some beautiful results for your writing and creativity. There certainly was for me. Keep going, writer. Step by step, pausing for interuptions, just keep going.
