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If you stopped writing for a long time
If you stopped writing for a long time--and I mean a LONG time, on the order of several years--and then managed to start again successfully, I would like to hear a little about your experience. Why did you stop? What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming? Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Were you afraid that you had given it up for good? When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself?
Hi...
Why did you stop?
I was going to college, and I got very sick and had to stop doing that. So thought I might die for about ten years, so I spent that decade doing nothing creative because I was pretty convinced that I had no life left.
What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming?
Well, I'm sure that it's different for everyone but for me, music saved me. In particular, a band called The Elected (http://www.myspace.com/theelected). I listened to their music, found it beautiful and felt like maybe life wasn't so bad. I started writing poetry, wrote a book of poetry and gave it to them. After that, I just kept on writing- short stories, poems, articles... still writing, though sometimes slowly. Working on a collection of short stories.
Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Were you afraid that you had given it up for good?
I thought I was done with that part of my life and I didn't have a serious need to write anymore. But I felt like I was dead, so that's pretty much why. And yeah, I thought it was forever. Writing again felt like rebirth.
When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself?
Faith is a shaky thing - some days I have faith in it, some days I don't. But I keep writing now, and I think that's what's important.
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Why did you stop? I stopped writing fiction because a professor I respected told me had no talent for it. I was devastated and, honestly, couldn't write a word for years. I'd try and nothing would land on the page.
What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming? Okay, the order is actually reversed here for me. My grandmother died February 13, 2001. I started writing fiction again in May. I had been given six weeks off from school because I was a mess, physically and mentally, and I spent that time writing. A friend
Did you fret about not writing when you were not writing? Okay, when I wasn't writing for about ten years, no, I didn't fret. I honestly thought I didn't miss it and I was okay. I had no idea how big of a chunk of my personality/life/etc., it was. I had a smallish bout of not writing last year while I was pregnant with B. I hit a four or five month dry spell where absolutely nothing was produced. That scared me to death. It was like I'd been seeing the world in technicolor and was suddenly thrown back into black and white.
Were you afraid that you'd given it up for good? The first time, I honestly thought I had. I didn't believe I could do what I was training to do, be successful, and write. I didn't think it was possible. I was terrified when I was pregnant because I didn't want to be a non-writer again. For a long time it felt like I had cut off an arm.
When you resumed, how long did it take before you had faith in yourself? Heh, that presumes that I ever did. Okay, that's not fair. I don't have a lot of confidence. Even now, I usually make my writing partner read feedback on our work before I'll look at it. I can be shaken very easily.
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I started writing again when someone I knew on usenet bewailed the fact that there wasn't more Rohirrim poetry and I laughed and wrote some and emailed it to him. He then bullied me into taking myself seriously and the subsequent re-evaluation of myself and my writing and my time priorities pretty much ended my first marriage about eighteen months before I sold my first novel.
I had got much better in the time I wasn't practicing. Maybe just being older, maybe having read more, and some skills from writing non-fiction carry over -- mostly those to do with shaping long things.
The difference between you and me there is firstly that you have already published two novels (I don't think I could ever not have faith in myself after that sort of validation), and secondly that I am not depressive (which is probably why you don't), and thirdly I am selfish and will make the writing my priority. (Did Zorinth suffer from that, compared with your girls? Probably. He didn't do any martial arts until last year when he was old enough to organise it and go by himself. There were times when his dinner would be late because I was writing, when I wasn't paying attention to him because I was writing, he couldn't assume a hundred percent of my attention whenever he wanted it, when we couldn't afford things because I didn't take a job that wouldn't have given me time to write, and he grew up knowing I wasn't going to utterly immolate myself on the pyre of what was better for him.)
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I don't think that counts as suffering: Zorinth's dinner was late sometimes, but he didn't go hungry, and frankly I don't think it's good for children to grow up knowing their mothers will immolate themselves on that pyre. Okay, so he didn't take martial arts until this year, but he's not going, five or ten years from now, to assume that any woman he's involved with will do all the boring work and put her needs ahead of his. (I suspect that what girls learn from having that sort of self-sacrificing mother is different, but possibly just as destructive. And Peg is not that sort of mother either: I know that from reading what she's written about looking for a balance.)
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I graduated in 1991 totally burned out on fiction-writing.
I still had stories, but kept them totally within my head, telling them to myself and never even attempting to put them on paper.
Honestly, it was my discovery of fanfic in 2002 that enabled me to write again. Ideas started flowing, and, well, fanfic is a less threatening playing field. When the competition includes the perpetrators of
Fanfic is also useful at providing immediate feedback and instant gratification, which helps.
I've long since given up childhood dreams of becoming a professional writer, and reading the LJs of people like you and
Does that help?
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But I used to write a lot, all the time, and then I stopped because...well, I decided I wasn't going to do it anymore. I didn't think I was good enough, and I just got dragged in other directions. I felt a little sad about it, because it felt like a big change in who I was, but I also felt confident that I had left it for the right reasons and that I had found something better for myself.
And I didn't start writing again until I was in a phd program and a pit of despair because I hated it so much and didn't entirely recognize it. I started writing fanfiction on a whim. There was no pressure, no particular goals; I just wanted to write something, and so I did. And then I realized how much I enjoyed writing, which showed me how much I didn't enjoy the phd program, so I quit. But not to write, I don't think I could ever a) make a living writing, or b) cope with having writing as a full time job. I think I would sink back into despair and hate it as much as I came to hate academic work.
I'm not sure if it's the pressure to produce something good or the aloneness that stresses me out the most at the idea of writing full time (or about being an academic). Self-imposed pressure and the solitary existance is a lot of what I didn't like about the phd program, so I try to keep away from getting too sucked into that particular lifestyle. Writing is such a solitary task, even when you can share it with others. I think, for me personally, that this particular activity needs to be checked by a real, social job where I can feel like I'm making a contribution and helping people. Then it's okay to spend a few days completely by myself with a manuscript. In fact, it's pretty relaxing and satisfying that way.
So that's the track I walk now. I work full time, and I write when I can. Now I love both things! This summer I'm taking off every Friday and calling it my writing day. Best of both worlds, in my opinion, but again, I'm not a professional. (Yet.) ;)
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Why did you stop? Work. I started a job as an editor (read: doing marketing and batting cleanup on client reports) for a healthcare consulting firm, and it consumed me. Deadlines were always looming, and when I had time off I just couldn't discipline myself to write.
What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming? Eventually, I joined the SCA, started using that as a creative outlet, and began writing articles and such for them. Having primed that creative pump, I started yearning to write again... only, catch-22, while I was in the SCA I kept so busy I didn't have (or rather make) time to write. So I quit the SCA and turned to writing.
Another thing that pushed me was pregnancy -- I realized I'd better get cracking and finish at least a first draft before my daughter was born, or I wouldn't have time. Paradoxically, I was a lot more productive after she was born (until the freelance work started picking up).
Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Yes and no. I kept thinking, "you should write, you keep saying you want to write..." but then I'd be dragged into the next major project and it would go back into the background for a while. I'd get ideas, scribble them down and lose the notebooks.
Were you afraid that you had given it up for good? Sometimes. Sometimes I thought I'd never get back into it, or that I was losing ground by not "practicing" writing. And there were times when I'd look at the accomplishments of others and think, "I'm __ years old, and here so and so already has two books published and I'm a loser who hasn't even finished one."
I'm, er, still a loser who hasn't had a book published. But at least I'm writing. And even finishing things.
When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself? I have to rediscover that all the time. Writing gets shunted aside for work; it pays the bills. It gets shunted aside for time with my daughter. And then I think, "If you were a REAL writer, you would write every day, no matter what..." But I keep trying. I gave up on short stories for a while, figuring that with limited time, I should stick to finishing the novel, but now I have two short stories in progress and it feels good to work on them. I take it day by day.
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Why did you stop?
Because I got involved with a man who was abusive. Emotionally, mostly, though there were other elements. Part of his emotional abuse was to absorb all the credit for every ounce of my creativity. Anything I wrote, anything I drew, anything I said, anything I did became his.
Out of self-defense, I cut my writing way back. Then, when I started getting some freelance work, pretty much every person who was in a position to critique the work took it to pieces in the most unproductive, unconstructive manner they could possible have used. And the good bits? My Evil Ex took credit for those. And he was getting worse. He would scream at me about ideas I had -- he had always cut my ideas to shreds, but he started doing it in front of other people.
He bludgeoned me into a hole, and I was afraid to poke my head out.
What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming?
I needed to leave. I did leave. I got into a MUCH better relationship with a group of friends who all supported me. It still took a long time for things to start again. I went into therapy to start dealing with the abusive relationship. After a year and a half, my therapist moved. Then I moved. And then I started therapy again for two reasons: I needed to get my temper under control and I needed to start writing again.
And then I started writing fanfic for Revolutionary Girl Utena. The fic started out being a giant love letter to my wife. It became a springboard into actual writing.
Then my therapist moved. And the writing stopped. So I went back into therapy and started again. I still write fanfic occasionally, and I'm still trying to finish my giant (200K+) love letter to my wife. But I'm writing a lot of original stuff now. I think (knock wood) that I've found a technique for convincing myself to write longer stories, and that my short fiction has gotten better too.
I also write for a living now -- I've been a technical writer for the last ten years and a medical writer for two and a half -- and I think it's done wonders for my craft.
Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Were you afraid that you had given it up for good?
Oh. Yes. I had screaming, weeping tantrums because my head was full of stuff and it wouldn't come out. I was terrified that I was never going to be able to make words on a page make sense again. I was terrified that I would go mad because of this insane pressure of things in my head that really really really wanted to be on a page somewhere. And when the pressure wasn't there, it wasn't any better, because I was afraid I'd lost the ideas.
When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself?
I'm still having issues with the confidence thing. Getting asked to do an editing round on a story by an editor -- even though the story was still ultimately rejected because I didn't think that what the editor wanted me to do was in the best interest of the story -- was a big boost.
very long!
I haven't sold any writing in many years, but I had the beginnings of a small lit-career going while I was in grad school, and I've never thought I'd be anything other than a writer (indeed, I'm not v good at anything other than writing). I recently finished the first short story I'd written in _years_ and have v haltingly begun working on my first novel again, so I am Back, altho it's a bit sputtering.
Why did you stop?
I wrote quite frequently until grad school, when I simultaneously suffered 1) a major depressive episode 2) real poverty 3) a major career crisis. That was in 1995-1996. I wound up dropping out of grad school and was v badly depressed for quite a while. I went on medication for the first time, and it took me quite a long time to recover. There were other stoppages, like intense college work and difficulty with personal space when first married, but that was The Big One. Up until that, I had always written and submitted work for publication regularly.
What did you need to resume?
I feel a bit funny writing this out since it is so me-specific ....I needed to quit drinking. I am an alcoholic and had been a v heavy (binge) drinker from 17-31. I also needed to be treated for my depression, with therapy and medz. I also needed to stop waiting for permission or validation that I _could_ start again. I felt v cut off from that former writer-self, from any success at all in fact, and had to sort of start all over again from rock bottom. There was also a tremendous load of guilt and expectations built up I had to simultaneously work through and learn to ignore. I needed to unsubscribe from premium cable channels (and will probably just throw out the TV). I needed to face how miserable not-writing made me. I needed to forgive myself for "failing so badly" (how I always thought of it) over 10 years ago. My husband has always understood I need time for my writing (I have no kids) and been v supportive when I've picked it back up, so in that I have been v v lucky.
What prompted your resuming?
It's v hard to answer that, which is v frustrating. It was _not_ at all a one-time miracle or a Big Spontaneous Epiphany. I started an online blog -- I have always written a journal, ever since I was a young child, and wrote that even when I wrote nothing else (altho that's slackened a bit since I started writing frequently on LJ and I'm not entirely happy about that -- I am trying to rev that back up, too) -- with the feeling that one of the big things blocking me was the idea of someone, anyone else, reading my stuff and not liking it, so I resolved to start writing publicly and it wouldn't matter if anyone else liked it or not. I then found my way to LJ, and attempted to do "NaNo" with a bunch of LJ friends on and off for about 2-3 years. I only "won" once, but their faith in my ability to do it and just the attempt were big steps for me. Finding a lot of other writers on LJ and listening to them talk about writing helped a lot, too. When I "won" NaNo, it was with half a novel-length fanfic that IIRC topped 60,000 words. It was the longest thing I'd written in years. I went on writing some more fanfic, which really rekindled my love of writing _for fun,_ writing because _I_ wanted to, not because I wanted to be published or be famous or be known as A Writer. Regaining that sense of pure play was v important for me. If not for the friendship and support of a lot of people on LJ, I might not even have ever tried again.
CONT
Re: very long!
Re: very long!
part 2
Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing?
Oh ghod yes, constantly. Daily. Every other minute. In fact, that was a big part of what drove me back to writing: just feeling that awful about not-writing. It was depressing and frustrating me. I think Samuel R. Delaney, observing his wife's writing block, said not-writing is just as strenuous and stressful, if not moreso, than actually writing.
Were you afraid that you had given it up for good?
Oh yes. I'm still terribly afraid of that. I frequently feel I missed my chance to have a career or even write all the books I have ideas for, that the rest of my life will be pointless. This is sometimes not helped by the fact that since being on LJ, I've developed close friendships with some v talented and successful writers. I love what they write, and rejoice in their success, but it makes me feel like even more of a wannabe, a failure, an amateur. Trying to learn not to compare my progress with anyone else's is v hard.
When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself?
I'm still not sure I have that, because I am a perennial Doubting Thomas type and it is difficult for me to have faith in _anything,_ which frequently causes a lot of pain. There is a sort of AA attitude that you can have hope for having hope, if that makes sense -- like even if you don't have it, the possibility of it is there -- and I sort of do that. I do not have faith that the stuff I write is good or aesthetically great or will be published and make money or even that anyone else will ever see it. I just have faith that I enjoy writing and let myself do it -- I was going to say "deserve to do it," but that's not right. I try to just go v v slowly, which is frequently v frustrating, from one stone to the next, and not think about what I should or shouldn't be doing. That is faith enough in the process for me I guess: just trying to do it daily, without a lot of expectations. Just because I like doing it and miss it terribly, feel incomplete, feel actual pain, when I don't.
just a bit more
What prompted your resuming?
I was able to think of some more specific things:
Reading and writing about writer's block, in particular books like If you Want to Write and The Midnight Disease and so on. Friends rave about The Artist's Way, but it didn't do that much for me. Attacking it like it was a _problem,_ rather than a personal moral character failing that could be instantly cured if I just sat down in front of my computer at eight ayem every day.
Seeing the movie Rent. This is going to sound miserably soppy, but the first time I heard them sing "No day but today" I cried buckets. As you may remember I had a v gifted young music teacher who died of AIDS at 36 (this Nov I'll be his age -- which feels v odd) and I just felt painfully aware that I could get hit by a bus, or something like that, and how would I feel if I hadn't at least _tried_ to start writing again?
Realizing how I was keeping myself from writing -- a lot of this was drinking, and television. I have the shameful problem of having too _much_ free time (no job, no kids), rather than the lack of free time a lot of people I know struggle with, so my time is v unstructured. Just being more aware of how much time I was spending on LJ, for example, or watching TV or reading books, and trying to be sort of -- responsible for it.
Also -- not damning myself for making v slow progress, or sometimes, making no progress. One thing I saw in AA was when people "slipped," as they say, and drank again, they'd frequently do what people who've cheated on diets do -- say "Screw it, if I've messed up all this was worth nothing," and throw all the work they'd done so far away. If I started up writing again, and then didn't write for a day or a week or whatever, I gritted my teeth against self-criticism that I was a Failure and Would Never Make It and so on. Another thing they say in AA (as you can tell AA had quite an influence on my thinking, ha) is, rather than regret what you did in your past, "It took every drink you ever had to get you here." And also, "You didn't become an alcoholic in a day, and you can't get better in a day." So just feeling like I _am_ trying, and that's progress, helped a lot.
Writing every day. I know friends who don't like the "you _must_ write every day" rule, but if I don't do it, it is v easy for me to fall silent again. Writing _something,_ no matter how short or bad. Scheduling time in my study -- even if I didn't do any writing at all -- worked too.
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