Writing Through Adversity

Okay, we’ve all had really crummy, absolutely rotten days or weeks or months where writing seems totally inconceivable.  We’ve ALL had them!  If you haven’t, you simply have not been writing long enough – it will happen, trust me.  You’ll be happily going along, living life and scraping out that writing time each day or whenever you have it chiseled into your schedule, and then – BAM!!!

You get sick.  The kid(s) (or animal(s) – same difference in some families) get sick.  Your parent(s) get sick.  Your spouse/significant other (hopefully no plural form needed) gets sick.

Your kid(s) is (are) having a hard time in school.  You and/or your spouse loose their job.  The home needs major work – externally and/or internally.  Or you have to move.  You have marital or relationship problems.

Financial problems rear their ugly head.  You have to take on additional respon-sibilities you’d rather not handle for various reasons.

Of the above, most have happened to me personally over the last two years.  Really.  So, I write of what I know.  There will be times when it seems the fates are conspiring against you and specifically against your writing.  But, believe me, that is not really true, no matter how much it seems to be the case.  It is simply LIFE. 

Yes, things happen that make you want to through your hands up in the air (figuratively speaking, not literally <g>), and call it all quits.  But – we just can’t do that, can we?  No, we are writers, whether we like it or not is after the fact.  Most of us did not set out to be writers, the calling just came to us after years of struggling to find out why we heard “voices” in our heads – voices that were not even real people (okay some hear Joan d’Arc, Napoleon, etc. but most hear John or Beth or Steele <g>).  We write because we have to.  It is our personal creative outlet and helps to make us feel whole, to feel like a true individual, to feel somehow special.  While it would be nice to have the New York Times validate us by making us best sellers, or at least to have a house buy our work, even if this never

happens, we still feel the need to write, to create, to entertain – if only ourselves and our friends.  We simply have to tell THE STORY burning inside us.

So, what can we do to help ourselves?  What can we do to keep the voices in context and appease the Gods of lit-eracy?  How can we make sure that the men with the white jackets don’t come and grab us (before we are truly insane)?

Good questions, which I struggle with each and every day, believe me.

No matter how much difficulty you are having, you must keep writing.  Or at least be thinking about writing.  Jot down those ideas that always seems to come to you in the shower.  Scribble out those characterizations, which form in the calm space just between sleeping and waking.  Record your observations of scenes that make you think of a “good” dark moment.  Write an article about some aspect of the craft you are struggling with and help give yourself ideas to overcome it.  Take a class or go to a workshop to help jump start your creative juices.  Do some judging or critiquing to lead yourself into thinking about character motivation or plot lines or scene and sequel.  Read your favorite, or a completely new, author.  Ask questions on the links.  Sign up for a BIAW, if only to cheer others and hope-fully get yourself motivated.  Volunteer to help your chapter or at National or at a school or to read to the elderly or at the library.

I honestly know how tough it can be some days.  There are times when it seems as if making a reader suspend disbelief, or writing a synopsis, or completing that draft, or working out those troublesome plot points appears just too overwhelming.  You have insurance issues or you have job issues or you have relationship issues to deal with.  I know, really.  But you need the mental relief of writing.  If you ignore your craft, your own personal creative skill/outlet, you will be stifling a big part of yourself – and you will regret it later.

So, look at your schedule every so often and if need be, revise your time so that you at least allow yourself a few hours a week to shut yourself off from the “out-side world” and concentrate on your craft.  Maybe for a short stint you will have to make do with less time, and maybe sometimes you will have a plethora. You, and by association your family and/or friends and/or co-work-ers, will be the better off for you making the time for your creativity.