If you stopped writing for a long time

[pegkerr]

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?

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I started writing when I was 12 or 13. I wrote all through high school and well into college.

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.