Do you ever want to be a little kid again, nestled deep in the universe of your mother’s arms, content in the knowledge that she’ll look after you, nurture, comfort, and help you so you don’t have to do it on your own? Best of all, she’ll figure out what you want to eat and prepare it for you. I have such fond memories of savoring my thermos of pea soup at preschool.
I often wish I could go back in time for this exact reason: to have my mom in charge, making all the important decisions. No doubt about it, I have a great mom and have been unusually lucky in that respect. But I wonder whether other people with big love for their parents yearn to return to those early days. I also wonder whether the difference between then and now is particularly harsh for writers.
To explain what I mean, I need to specify: I’m talking about the past/present difference for aspiring writers—those without an agent, editor, or publicist urging them to usher a new work into the world. If that is you, welcome to my Unagented Writers’ Club! We have no one directing our career, guiding us forward, or validating our writing from the perspective of a mentor in traditional publishing. Every day we have to choose what to work on all by ourselves. In fact, we have to choose whether to work at all. Would anyone notice if we stopped?
Sadly, no. No literary professional, anyway. And this is what is suddenly stopping all my forward momentum.
This stuck status is weird for me. For so many years now, I’ve done what all the writing craft books tell us to do. I’ve written a story, sought outside critiques, taken it to workshops, polished the thing to a shine, submitted it, and, while waiting for the replies (if any) to my submissions, begun another one. I’ve lost count how many unpublished novels I’ve got at this point. Nine, I think? After completing the last one, I’ve found myself reluctant to start again. I can hardly stand the thought of birthing yet another story that will never find its way to readers.
Worse, this feeling has bled into other parts of my life as well. Or maybe without the constant writing I used to do, I’ve noticed the other bits more. Every day I wake up at the same time, eat the same breakfast, go on the same walk with my dog, and proceed to fill my day with the same things I did yesterday. When I crawl into bed at the usual time, I think to myself, “Well, that’s another day done.”
Do you ever feel like this? Totally stuck in your life, as if each breath inhaled, each minute lived is simply another one to get through, on the way to some distant goal that, realistically, may never happen? Your tires are spinning, and you’ve finally realized that all this engine revving is just making you sink deeper.
I’m tired, I guess. Tired of pouring my soul into something that only my critique partners will see. Tired of a sinking feeling in my gut that this story will progress no further than any of its forebears. Tired of wondering what the point to all of it is. I’m stuck in a hole of my own making—one no one would even know about if I didn’t mention it here. The worst of it is, I can’t seem to dig my way out!
Hold on. I need to stop my rant here, because I do in fact have a way out. It’s so obvious I’m embarrassed to have overlooked it.
I have a shovel.
Not the metaphorical one I thought I needed, but an actual steel shovel. All I need to do is fetch it from the garden shed, grip its smooth wooden handle and start to dig. This will get me away from my computer and my dark thoughts, first of all. Second, it’ll take me to the garden, which desperately needs weeding and turning over before the first frost. Third, and most important, as I use the blade to dig beneath the grass roots and excavate the rich loam, maybe something in my mind will loosen as well. It might pull me further away from writing … or it might pitch me back into it. I don’t know, but I have to try.
As I dig, I remember how last year in this same garden, my shovel turned up my grandmother’s ring. I thought I’d lost it in the woods months earlier, and spent many days scouring the part of the trail where I was sure it had fallen. That time wasted was nothing compared to my joy at spotting a golden shine through the dirt. An unexpected treasure!
As I dig, I think about Stephen King’s wonderful craft book “On Writing,” and how he likened finding a story to digging for fossils. You have to chip away and away with tremendous patience, never certain what you’ll find—or whether you’ll find anything at all. If you’re lucky, a form will gradually begin to reveal itself, and if you’re even luckier, it’ll turn out to be so special that you won’t stop digging until it’s been completely unearthed.
As I dig, the shovelfuls of soil turn to clumps and then to grains, the weeds to root wads to thin white hairs. The deeper I go, the more I see. A worm, a beetle, an acorn, a tiny green tomato. I’ve written before about focusing on detail, for other reasons, but I realize that it’s key to working through my publishing woes. I need to let go of my big-picture writing goals for now, and focus on the very small.
I can do this. On a walk I’ve been on hundreds of times, for instance, I spot tiny changes every day. A leaf turning gold here, a fallen branch there, a tendril of algae in the pool, a kingfisher swooping low over the water. The same goes for writing. There’s always a nugget of a tale to nourish, whether or not it’s developed into a complete book. There’s always something to revise, whether or not it’s ever submitted.
And on it goes. I give my shovel a pat when I put it away. It doesn’t confer the comforting guidance of my mother, nor the professional structure and motivating deadlines of a literary agent. Nevertheless, it’s prodded my brain out of its rut. My creative work isn’t done, should I choose to continue it. I guess the best I can say to myself for now is “stay tuned.”
Happy Tales!
Photo credit for opening image: Janusz Maniak
Flights of Fancy 