Figuring Out How To Use Your Gift

I'm trying to write every day now that I've restarted the engine. And some days I don't know exactly what I'm going to write about. But I figure, I've been trying to do this writing thing for like 10 years. Even when I quit for a long while - and swear that I'm not a writer and never will be - something brings me back to it. So I try once again not to give up.

I think it's what you have to do with most things in life - not give up. Although maybe there are appropriate times to give up, or times to give up on elements of the thing you were chasing after. But if you have a skill or a talent, I would say, don't give up until you can figure out how you're supposed to use it. What you end up using your talent for could be very different than what you were originally chasing. Or even, the first 10 things you tried to chase.

Let's suppose you are a really good actor and you want to be in the movies. And you've chased that dream for a long while - 10 or 20 years perhaps. You even moved to LA. You take classes. You audition. You do everything you're supposed to do to achieve your dream.

Is it possible that maybe you're supposed to be a really awesome acting teacher? That you're supposed to use your talent for some other purpose than what you keep chasing after?

This is sort of how I'm viewing my writing lately. I know I'm good at writing because I've gotten feedback to that effect since I was 16 years old. But after a lot of failures, I know I'm not good at certain types of writing (or at the type of writing - fiction novels - I had been chasing after). And this was quite devastating to me for a really long time. It still is, I suppose.

But maybe there's a different way I'm supposed to use this gift I have. And maybe it's not anything glamorous, and maybe it won't affect millions of people. Maybe, though, it will affect a few.

From age 18 to about 35 I kept wanting to be something "important" like a teacher or a scientist or an activist or a nonprofit director. Or, you know, a bestselling writer. And I was chasing that idea of "being great" for so long that I couldn't look at what was available to me, right in front of my face.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I began to see things more clearly, left my corporate job, and struck out on my own because I knew I wasn't going in the right direction anymore. And even then it took me a while to abandon the "importance" ship and just go with whatever the flow might be.

I think life can surprise you if you're just open to what comes. I'm a writing business of four now, and I only wanted to be a business of me (and only to support my "real" pursuits of being something great). This has been a surprise. It is also what allows me to tend to my health issues without being destitute.

So I say, carry on with what you're doing. But don't be afraid to open yourself to the different ways your unique talent might be used by the world. It's probably not the way you wish it was, but it might turn out to be better than you could have imagined.

Writing Without Restriction

I've been thinking lately of picking up that book manuscript I finished before I got really sick. The one that was "done" enough to actually send to an editor. To be returned with red marks and some feedback for improvement, but not a "this really sucks ass, change course before you embarrass yourself for eternity."

But I can't seem to make myself open the file yet. I'm avoiding. I'm procrastinating. I'm tip-toeing around in fear. (Although to be fair I've only thought about it for a few days, so perhaps I'm being dramatic.)

I think part of the reason I haven't opened it is because I'm gathering the energy I need to tackle the work. And because I'm rewrite rusty.

For those who think writing is easy, ha! I laugh. I chuckle. I weep. It's simultaneously gratifying and absolutely exhausting when you've been doing it for more than 30 minutes. And trying to resolve problems in a 260 page, 65k word manuscript? It's more than daunting.

My counselor reminded me today that sometimes people work on books for years. And if that's the case, then I can slouch down in my chair and sip on my sparkling water. Because it's definitely been years.

Although during that time I've learned some important things about self-confidence, and seeking out your own unique contribution to the world, and being you, and being ok with whatever that is. So perhaps it's been non-writing time well spent. I think I'm just now starting to put it all into practice.

I started with rewriting parts of my business website yesterday, because what I had on my homepage just wasn't working. There was nothing special about it. There was nothing catchy about it. There was nothing particularly unique about it. And I decided to treat it like my personal creative work and see what might come out. I had nothing to lose, really, because I haven't scored any new business with what I've had available.

Up until now I'd tried to emulate other websites, other styles. Other things that seemed to be "successful" but honestly who really knows what's going on behind the scenes. And I just abandoned that need to conform and compete, to fit within a particular mold. I let the restrictions fly away in the wind and I just let myself write.

And I sat back at the end of it all, nodded, and liked it. I think it was the first time I've ever let my own ideas shine through without being contaminated by what already exists.

So maybe what I'm going to do as I move forward with my craft is to stop thinking so hard about what my writing should be and just try to keep writing the way I want to write. Because nobody enjoys reading something they've already read. Nobody seeks out a copy.

The first step with this book of mine is pulling out the manuscript, taking a look, and removing any restrictions in my psyche. Then I can grab a machete and either start all over, or clear out the weeds so something more beautiful can grow. Something that's truly all mine, that doesn't conform to what's considered "traditional" or "good."

Maybe I'll start tomorrow.

(Because this blog post was an absolute bear to write, which doesn't happen too often. I guess it was good preparation, eh?)

Don't Interrupt Me

Last night I grabbed my black spiral bound notebook off my nightstand, sat cross-legged on my bed, and pulled out a pen. My intent was to write some poetry because I wanted to be creative - and because I wanted to ride my new writing motivation while it was still spinning.

I opened a blank page and prepped my right hand.

Pen - ready.
Brain - ready.
Room - not bad. I'm a little cold but it's ok.
Intent - a glimmer of something.
Distractions - uhhhh...

I decided to make a go of it in the usual manner, scribbling whatever came into my head. I'm generally given a moment of inspiration, an idea, a flash that spurs me to sit down to write. Or sometimes it's just a feeling or a desire to get something out. And then I just let my brain meander along.

And when this process is working perfectly, what I write down is pretty good without excessive rewriting. Unless...

Interruptions

I've heard writers (usually fiction writers, you know the "real" writers) say that they don't know what they're going to write before they write it. I've always thought it was a bunch of witchcrafty hogwash to be honest. How can you not know what you're going to write about?

But I do this often when I write my poems and blogs. What comes will come while the pen is moving or the hands are typing. In fact, as of this moment I don't know exactly what I'm going to write next.

But the thing is that this magical process can only happen without interruptions. I've heard other writers say this before too - that if they are writing, they must NOT be interrupted for any reason.

I got this last night.

As I sat there trying to spit words through ink, I kept hearing the creak of the living room sofa. The sound it makes when my husband is about to get up and move about the room.

(Yes, we have a creaky sofa. One day when I'm independently wealthy we will have a non-creaky sofa.)

That river of creativity that normally runs from my brain and through my fingertips kept hitting little dams. Dams in the form of, "is he getting up?" and "is he going to come in here?"

Now I love my husband. I adore him. He's the single greatest blessing I have in this life and without him I probably would have jumped off a bridge. Twice.

But when I kept hearing that creaking noise over and over again, the spell in my body kept breaking. My pen kept stopping. I'd stare at the page without feeling, the flow shut off. I'd try to hit a reset button but I couldn't find one.

Suddenly there was a dam every five seconds.

"Is he coming in here?" "I think he's coming in here." "What's that noise?" "Is he getting up or sitting down?" "Maybe he's going to the kitchen to get some popcorn" And on and on and on.

Eventually he did walk by...on his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth. And at that point I felt like he'd walked into my cloud and disintegrated it. Poof.

The last words I wrote in my notebook last night were, "I'm frustrated because I'm writing crap." And then I went and played with my cat for a while.

Revisiting the Crap

I kept thinking about that "crap" while I was playing with my rescue cat, Jack. Was it really all crap? I went back once and re-read the three poems I'd spit out. Then I put the notebook down and went back to the living room.

About 30 minutes later, when my husband was safely absorbed in iTunes and sports watching, I meandered back. I sat once again, cross-legged, and got out my pen. Then I slashed and burned.

I salvaged what was sprouting life and put a big black line through everything else. Then I re-read what I'd written. Still kind of crap, but maybe not so bad after all.

As a writer I'm tuning into the fact that I can't be interrupted. When I'm working on a tough creative piece for work, or a blog post, or any sort of personal expression, an interruption can derail the entire process and I have to start over.

So tonight I'm going to write while my husband is at a late basketball game. This was the first part of that process. Next? My little black notebook, with a pen in my hand. The river gushing wild and free. Ok, ok, that's a bit of a hyperbole.

It's a State of Mind

I woke up today to the sound of rain beating down on the window. I was in the living room, having tossed and turned for a better part of the night and eventually given up and moved to the couch.

As I listened with my eyes still closed (or occasionally forming slits to peek out), my brain began turning over words that I thought would describe the rain: the sound that it makes while coming down, the way the beads of water roll down a window pane, the cool splash on my skin during the inferno that is summer in Texas.

And I was also thinking about how the rain mirrored the way I felt on the inside - kind of dreary, melting, dark. Sometimes violently upset, other times quiet in my desperation. And still other times chipper and bouncing, happy to be alive.

I decided that this writing thing, this creating thing, is a state of mind before it's anything else. Yes, I can sit here and write words on paper (or, cough, a computer screen). But anyone can do that. Anyone can take words and form a sentence. After all, I've still been forming sentences over the past year for work, for emails, for social media - even though I haven't really been writing anything.

But something flipped this week such that I've begun contemplating things around me as a source of fodder. Looking at the world - and my own words - from a different perspective, just as I've done in the past during heavily creative periods.

Before I fell off the health cliff I was working through The Artist's Way for the second time (er, attempt - I hadn't made it through the first time) in my adult life. And I think the entire goal is to do the thing I'm talking about here - to change your state of mind before you can do anything else.

Now I'm not positive that this is the answer to everything. In fact, I pretty much never have the answer to everything (although sometimes I think I do ok). But I think it's an idea that I can reach for when I feel my motivation drying up. A place to start when I don't know where to begin - or when I get knocked down for a while and try to crawl my way back.

So that's mostly what I wanted to say today on this sputtering blog o' mine. It's still raining outside although the pounding has slowed to a drizzle. Every once in a while I think I hear rumbles in the distance. I'm going to go make my doctor prescribed medical food shake, sit here and watch it roll down the window pane, and maybe pick up the book I'm currently reading. Using it all as inspiration for whatever comes next.

Yesterday I Wrote a Poem

Yesterday I wrote a poem. At midnight. Lying horizontally on my living room couch. On my...cell phone (the Notes app is helpful for these sorts of things).

Today I looked at said poem and thought, ok not bad (you can read it here). But I also looked at that poem in combination with my post yesterday about not being able to write while sick, and I've decided that something has happened that's worth noting. Not something significant in the grand scheme of the world or even in my life, but something significant in my journey.

As I've worked to accept my illnesses, my new body, my limitations...it's required all of my energy most of the time. The idea that I have had the energy (or desire) to write anything this week - this blog post, that poem, yesterday's emotional vomit - makes me think that I've taken a step forward.

I had a similar feeling when I started making career goals again a month ago. It was like I'd stepped off of a hamster wheel and started walking down a path again. One that had been cloaked in darkness for a very long time.

I suppose with most things in life you have to start with a first step. Maybe I'll end up back on the hamster wheel for a while or maybe I won't. But it's been a full year since I've written anything and it's nice to create small bits to send out to the universe. Even if they only mean something to me.

One Can't Write While Sick

The last two years of my life can be summed up with one word: illness.

The last year of my life can also be summed up rather quickly, but in two words this time: abandoned dreams.

I don't write anymore. Like, at all. (That is until right this second, and I'm not sure why I'm doing so except that I'm lonely and frustrated and unfulfilled.)

And it all sounds so very silly because I'm enormously blessed and fortunate. I have a loving husband, I have food to eat and a pretty decent roof over my head. I am no longer stricken by poverty or insane amounts of drama. My old man kitty is still somehow kicking.

But even with all of those things, I have a body that won't heal. A body that prevents me from living life at least 50% of the time, and that has me resigned to existing. To surviving. To sleeping or laying on the couch waiting for the next wave of energy that will allow me to start living once again.

I wonder if I will ever write again, beyond what I have to do in my day job to survive. I gave up on writing books, and on writing poetry, and on maintaining a blog. I gave up on most things if I think about it, even though I've written some good stuff along the way.

Writing takes a lot of energy and one simply cannot write while sick. Or, maybe I just cannot write while sick. I haven't even thought of returning to writing because most of the time I can't think of anything except the following:

• Bills
• Making money to pay bills
• Taking care of people who depend on me for their income
• Maintaining my work commitments
• Keeping myself going physically/emotionally/career-wise
• Picking up the next batch of treatments from my functional medicine doctor
• Wondering if I'll ever have enough financial security to sustain me

So as I sit here and type this up, and remember why I used to write, I struggle to grasp the "thing" that used to draw me to writing to begin with. It's almost like it's vanished into the air and merged with the ether.

I need to work on my metaphors.

So I guess whether I will or will not write again largely depends on if I can ever get over the illnesses that are plaguing my body. And right now I'm just not sure.

And even so, even if I do get over it all and suddenly emerge healthy and triumphant, what the hell can I do with my writing? I've already proven to myself that I cannot write fiction. I've decided that I also don't have much to say in a non-fiction sense, and that writing is such a challenging endeavor that I just don't even want to try most of the time.

For now I'll stick to reading books. So that means I'm going to go cobble some sort of dinner together and pick up the novel I'm working on, which is full of cliches and a less than stellar writing style (my mistake, going straight from Thomas Hardy to a modern pop fiction writer), although that so far is telling a good story.

I don't think I had a point to this post today, except maybe some catharsis. Or some hope for a revelation about what I'm supposed to do next. So far no luck.