Today is day one. I’m rededicating myself to daily time spent on the work of writing. I am still trying to break through the writer’s block and bring back that fondly remembered flow when I set my mind to writing. Making it a non-negotiable piece of daily life has been the goal for a long while and the Lord has nudged me in recent weeks to recognize that I’m ready.
In the realm of the obvious, the one thing I know will help the matter is actually sitting down at my desk with my work. I know this just as certainly as I know procrastinating out of fear will not help the matter.
Today ought to be day three but yesterday the avoidance got the best of me. So, day one it is, again. The avoidance gave a strong effort at derailing me today too. In fact, I even played my saxophone for the first time months. Did I really want to play my saxophone? Not especially. There have been other days I wanted to play my saxophone, but today it was all about procrastination. I played for half an hour before I asked myself what the heck I was doing, and put the instrument away. I pulled out my notebook and queued up a Bach playlist exactly as I used to do. As it was long enough since I worked on the novel that I couldn’t jump back in without some rereading, I decided to type and revise the chapters written many months ago. It seemed like the best chance at productivity.
And it was! I typed and edited and rewrote sentences. I added dialogue and tightened up descriptions. A familiar satisfaction settled into my chest. I can still do this! It’s not gone! With each paragraph, my confidence solidified. It became easier to believe in a payoff to the months of patience while I waited for my mind and emotions to regain the capacity for creativity — something of which I have worked at convincing myself for a painfully long time. I am not defeated.
Two hours and one and a half chapters into the happy task, Microsoft Word closed itself down in the middle of supposedly saving my progress. I might as well have heard a maniacal laugh coming from the computer as I stared at the screen in disbelief. With great haste, I reopened the draft. Word launched like it didn’t have a clue what disaster it had just wrought; not a restored file in sight.
Gone. All of it.
I stared a little longer, hovering between the options of tears, anger, or laughter. I chose laughter. Sad, shaking-my-head laughter. Thankfully, I had a spark of clarity that no matter what, I had to redo my work. Being angry or crying over that discouraging reality would not make it less real, and might even make me less likely to get back at it again. It had taken so much to get to this point of writing with any sort of flow or steadiness for more than a few minutes. I couldn’t concede the progress I’d accomplished in those two hours.
I would not concede it.
Instead, I walked away from my desk. I poured a glass of wine, switched over to my favorite confidence inducing playlist, and danced around my kitchen. In between each song, I felt all the feels of disappointment, then shook it off a little more with the next tune. When the shaking off was adequate, I cooked dinner and read a few chapters of a book.
Today was a victory; a bittersweet victory. I’ll take it and celebrate. I’ll also shake it off and move on to day two, which I suspect will feel laughably similar to day one.
Carrie In Writing 