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sabbatical
Jun. 19th, 2007 04:12 pmI've started to post about this maybe four or five times already but never could quite bring myself to until now. You see, I decided about a week and a half ago to take a sabbatical from writing.
The cumulative stresses from the past year and a half (death of my brother, dealing with my parents, the sudden and unexpected implosion of one of my closest friendships that took about half my already stunted social life with it, as well as various other miscellaneous crap) have left me struggling in terms of creativity. Generally I could manage to find ways of being creative even if I was in a coma, so the lack of inspiration is not far off from finding myself suddenly blind or deaf. For months now I've been sitting evening after evening in front of my computer like a deer caught in the headlights, panicking that I wasn't writing, panicking that I wasn't getting anything else done either, panicking that maybe this past year had indeed managed to break me for good, and thus not getting anything done at all. Meanwhile the house has turned to the dark side, the gardens are more weed than flower, Cthulhu the Wisteria is slowly strangling my viburnum, and I'm just not getting *anything* done at all, writing or otherwise.
So I decided to just let go of the writing. For a little while.
It's been a tremendous weight off my shoulders. The house is starting to emerge again from the clutter. I spent the entire day yesterday (Bunker Hill Day, a special Massachusetts holiday for me) raking leaves out of a patch of garden that's been buried under 'em for two years. I may even be able to put down grass seed this afternoon. I reattached the small trellis to my mailbox post that was taken out by the drunk driver on Christmas Eve, and picked my sadly wandering clematis vine from the ground and got it pointed in the right direction at long last. I've watched some tv. I've cooked actual *meals*. I've read some books -- last week Sarah Monette's Melusine and The Virtu, and now I'm halfway through Liz Williams' Snake Agent -- and I've also just sat on my couch and listened to music and petted the cats and done nothing.
And I'm starting to believe I might someday be okay again, and that's not seemed possible for a long, long time.
It's funny, but stepping back from the writing has given me a much stronger sense of what writing means to me, how much of my life it has become (for good or ill). I'd had this tremendous amount of fear that if I took a break, ANY break, maybe I wouldn't be able to go back, that maybe I wasn't a real writer if I couldn't tough it through every single day and manage to put some sort of meaningful words down. The anxiety was incredible. I don't believe any of that is true any more. For one thing, once I was able to unclench my hands from the keyboard and walk away, the ideas that had eluded me as I stared at that damned screen for hours and hours are now peering around the corner asking what's up, when I'm gonna come back for them.
And despite all, I've done some writing. I added about 1k to the Aztec story and got down the first 1.5k of "the mountain thing" which has been living in the back of my head for three years now. And when I decided I was stuck or felt like I was starting to pressure myself again I got up and walked away, because I'm on sabbatical and I don't have to do this right now.
On Friday I go on vacation for two weeks, off to the southwestern US to stomp around in the desert a bit, and I'm not taking my laptop. (Damned thing weighs 11 lb anyway!) I expect that by the time I get back I'm going to be itching to write so badly I'll be at the keyboard before I've even tipped the sand out of my shoes.
And that'll be exactly when I should start being a writer again.
See ya then (-:
The cumulative stresses from the past year and a half (death of my brother, dealing with my parents, the sudden and unexpected implosion of one of my closest friendships that took about half my already stunted social life with it, as well as various other miscellaneous crap) have left me struggling in terms of creativity. Generally I could manage to find ways of being creative even if I was in a coma, so the lack of inspiration is not far off from finding myself suddenly blind or deaf. For months now I've been sitting evening after evening in front of my computer like a deer caught in the headlights, panicking that I wasn't writing, panicking that I wasn't getting anything else done either, panicking that maybe this past year had indeed managed to break me for good, and thus not getting anything done at all. Meanwhile the house has turned to the dark side, the gardens are more weed than flower, Cthulhu the Wisteria is slowly strangling my viburnum, and I'm just not getting *anything* done at all, writing or otherwise.
So I decided to just let go of the writing. For a little while.
It's been a tremendous weight off my shoulders. The house is starting to emerge again from the clutter. I spent the entire day yesterday (Bunker Hill Day, a special Massachusetts holiday for me) raking leaves out of a patch of garden that's been buried under 'em for two years. I may even be able to put down grass seed this afternoon. I reattached the small trellis to my mailbox post that was taken out by the drunk driver on Christmas Eve, and picked my sadly wandering clematis vine from the ground and got it pointed in the right direction at long last. I've watched some tv. I've cooked actual *meals*. I've read some books -- last week Sarah Monette's Melusine and The Virtu, and now I'm halfway through Liz Williams' Snake Agent -- and I've also just sat on my couch and listened to music and petted the cats and done nothing.
And I'm starting to believe I might someday be okay again, and that's not seemed possible for a long, long time.
It's funny, but stepping back from the writing has given me a much stronger sense of what writing means to me, how much of my life it has become (for good or ill). I'd had this tremendous amount of fear that if I took a break, ANY break, maybe I wouldn't be able to go back, that maybe I wasn't a real writer if I couldn't tough it through every single day and manage to put some sort of meaningful words down. The anxiety was incredible. I don't believe any of that is true any more. For one thing, once I was able to unclench my hands from the keyboard and walk away, the ideas that had eluded me as I stared at that damned screen for hours and hours are now peering around the corner asking what's up, when I'm gonna come back for them.
And despite all, I've done some writing. I added about 1k to the Aztec story and got down the first 1.5k of "the mountain thing" which has been living in the back of my head for three years now. And when I decided I was stuck or felt like I was starting to pressure myself again I got up and walked away, because I'm on sabbatical and I don't have to do this right now.
On Friday I go on vacation for two weeks, off to the southwestern US to stomp around in the desert a bit, and I'm not taking my laptop. (Damned thing weighs 11 lb anyway!) I expect that by the time I get back I'm going to be itching to write so badly I'll be at the keyboard before I've even tipped the sand out of my shoes.
And that'll be exactly when I should start being a writer again.
See ya then (-:
