When You're Not Writing, Then What?

The path between you and your writing is the distance between you and your pen, pencil, or computer. What allows that distance to grow? Or is the better question, what allows the gap to close?

Just pick up your pen and write. Is it really just that easy? In one sense that's all there is to it. In another sense, it's overwhelming to pick up the pen, pencil or computer.

So many things get in the way of getting down to the task of writing with pen, pencil, or computer. But, the most important one is you. You get in the way of sitting down.

Csikszentmihalyi in Flow, and again in Finding Flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life, pointed out how people in flow don't notice feeling good or bad. They just do whatever they do, effortlessly. So doesn't it make sense to get the you out of the way and sit down. There really is no other way to write besides doing it. And, I know you've heard this so often that there's nothing new to it. But really, it is new when you choose to look at it as something new to do.

Write anything. Write badly. But write. Writing leads to more writing. When I've given writing assignments to students, with minimal corrections, over a period of weeks the students' writing improves. There is a built-in self-reflection process which allows the writer to write better as they gain more experience. The myth of heavy editing is just that. A myth. The natural inclination of the writer, whether novice or professional, fuels more and better writing.

The distance between you and your pen, pencil, or computer can be remarkably reduced by visualizing yourself with pen, or pencil, or with your hand on the keys of your computer. In imagination, what we do successfully sets the stage for what we can do successfully in life.

Still, I want to be completely honest. I don't think I know a writer who at times has not found the distance between themselves and their writing implement to be too huge to cross over. I have seen writers, including myself, taking unusually (whatever that means to you) long periods away from their writing. Am I advocating this? If I do, or I don't, it makes no difference. It is what it is. Times when you can't physically write do exist. And, sometimes they feel as if all hope is gone and you will never write again. This is part of the life of being a writer. Here I need to cite David Palumbo in Writing from the Inside Out. Essentially, he says there will be times when our work will disappoint us and we need to be ready for it. That is, we need to be willing to let ourselves be disappointed, and all that that means. Even if it means feeling that we'll never write again.

Ironically, you can write about that. If you can get your fingers to the pen, pencil, or computer. If not, you can feel all your feelings and trust that you are a writer. And that the writing life will re-emerge. Then, once you actively write again, you can look back and see why it was necessary to take that break. And you will write again with new vigor and commitment.

This is what writers do. And I venture to say that whether you're actively engaged in doing writing or you're dealing with the hiatus, you can feel confident that one thing is likely true. If you're reading this, you are writing, either waiting to produce or in active production.