Writing Through Troubled Times and Insecurities

Greetings All,

I hope y’all are safe and healthy. These are trying times—they were even before the coronavirus pandemic; the disease has simply magnified the fissures in a fractured society. I haven’t posted in a long time and although I’ve not joined in, I’ve stayed current on discussions. That said, be advised: This is a long post which is simply about me being open and honest regarding my struggles adjusting to a writer’s life.

Writing as catharsis…I’m not sure whether this is the proper forum for this type of discussion, but I’ve got to get this off my chest: I’m in a funk—have been for several months. It’s not the kind of funk that blocks creativity; it’s the kind that drains creativity. Although I’ve recognized my funk stems from frustration, anger, and depression, correcting the causes of these three factors has proven problematic. The latter two arise from allowing current events to pull me into a daily vortex of infuriating and depressing news emanating from our nation’s capital. I am deeply troubled by daily headlines that indicate we are slipping further and further into an authoritarian nightmare. And the divisiveness along racial lines is not only equally as troubling, but seeing my children and grandchildren experience the same kind of racist bullshit I experienced growing up in the ’50s and ’60s both infuriates and saddens me because evidently in the fifty-six years since civil rights laws were codified, we haven’t really progressed all that much.

But rather than channel my anger into negativity and violence, I chose to vent my emotions through writing. Op/Ed pieces, letters to editors, a few paragraphs for Comments sections. I have dozens of these I’d begin then abandon when I’d realize the time commitment each required because I didn’t want to simply rant, I wanted to add something substantive and thoughtful. Writing of that nature requires research, and research requires time—time I needed to spend on my projects and correspondence like posting regularly on this exchange. As well, I learned the emotions evoked by the headlines and stoked by the writing with which I intended to address them drained my creative energy. And yet the next day I’d see new headlines announcing more egregious actions and the cycle started over. I’m finally getting a handle on this by shifting my focus from daily news to daily newsletters from sources like Lit Hub, Quanta, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Writer, Publisher’s Weekly, and Aeon.

From these sources came articles that have proven inspirational and motivational. For instance, a review of Ursula K. Le Guin’s book, Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books, came at a time when I was struggling with the decision of whether to focus on socio-political essays or on my fiction projects. My struggle revolved around the question: In which genre would my writing likely have more impact? A quote in the review motivated me to check her book out from the library because it seemed to directly address my dilemma. Le Guin writes: “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality.” Her words were like directions on a map—go that way toward fiction, they said to me. The notion that people turn to fiction in times of crisis was reinforced in the March 13th newsletter from The Atlantic titled, “Turning to fiction to cope with fear.” In the introduction to the newsletter the editor says, “Readers and writers have often turned to literature to help make sense of such crises, whether in retrospect—as Daniel Defoe did with a novel about London’s 17th-century plague—or in a hypothetical future, as Emily St. John Mandel did in imagining how human life might go on after a disease devastates the globe.”

Having reset my writerly compass, I still had one more issue to deal with: Frustration. My frustration stems from what I perceive as a lack of productivity, and from questioning whether I belong in this world of writers. My lack of productivity arises from my inability to master what I called in my Vision Essay the art of starting and stopping. It’s an artform I envisioned would help me overcome daily “life happens” events—the unexpected mini-crises that pop up, like when my wife broke her foot. About three weeks ago, I started writing this post and the day after I began, my wife fell down some stairs and broke her foot. She’s been in a cast, on crutches, and, until a couple of days ago, unable to walk or stand for long periods. While we are very grateful it was the only injury she sustained, the incident illustrates why starting and stopping while writing is an artform I need to master. So far, however, my learning curve seems to have plateaued at a point slightly above zero. Which is not to say I’ve been totally unproductive. I begin most days with a stream of consciousness style writing exercise I learned from author Natalie Goldberg and write approximately 500 to 1200 words depending on how words and thoughts are flowing. I do this first thing in the morning because it’s the only time interruptions and distractions are minimal. The exercise is intended as a warm-up like stretching before a run. The problem has been I get sucked into the current events vortex afterward instead of working on my projects and this feeds the cycle: Lack of progress leads to frustration leads to putting more pressure on myself leads to more frustration and so it goes.

Additionally, frustration roused a dark insidious insecurity: Doubting myself as a writer. This is where the George Saunders interview had a similar revelatory, spirit lifting effect as Le Guin’s book. The interview spoke to me. Saunders had already become one of my newest favorite writers with the story “Home” from The Tenth of December, and from reading some of his background I learned we had both studied engineering as undergrads. So, his comment in the Paris Review article that “I wasn’t an engineer but a writer waiting to happen” resonated with me because before getting drafted, I had been accepted to CSU’s School of Journalism. In addition, Saunders’ self-evaluation in the interview struck a resonant frequency in my psyche the way he describes the key of D affecting rock star Neil Young, he says: “My view of myself is that I came in through the basement window of literature. I’m not well educated or well read enough to do things correctly.” His admission reminded me of moments during the program when I felt like I didn’t belong for exactly those reasons. My thoughts in those moments were, What the hell am I doing here thinking I can be a writer at this late stage of my life? And then in the midst of this resurgent wave of insecurity, I read this quote from Roman philosopher, Seneca: “How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!” So, I asked myself, What the hell am I doing “aiming to begin my life” as a writer in my “sixtieth years”—a point few of my friends have lived long enough to see. However, Seneca was born into wealth and privilege so, of course, it was easy for him to exhort his readers to do it now, don’t wait until your sixties to do your thing. Which is great advice except, you know, when your family needs food and your kids need shoes. Nevertheless, the many insights Saunders shared throughout the interview as well as the commonalities he and I share give me hope that I can overcome these insecurities.

Lastly, I am aware the issues of frustration, productivity, and susceptibility to the current events vortex are exacerbated by my failure to establish a routine. At times I feel like Kurt Vonnegut: “In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me.” I’ve said before that the universe sends reading material when I need it most, so in the past few weeks I’ve come across articles (including Vonnegut’s) by famous writers giving tips on writing and routine. Henry Miller says, “Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand,” and “Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.” By pressuring myself, I’ve diminished the joy and calm I usually feel when I write, instead, at times I’ve felt like a draught horse pulling a heavy plow through a muddy field. But Miller also gave tips on how to bring back joy and calm, he says, “Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.” As well, he shared his daily routine of which the article’s author says, “featured the following wonderful blueprint for productivity, inspiration, and mental health”; the points I found most helpful were: “See friends. Read in cafés”; “Explore unfamiliar sections — on foot if wet, on bicycle if dry”; and “Allow sufficient time during daylight to make an occasional visit to museums or an occasional sketch or an occasional bike ride.” Reading Miller’s routine, I realized pressuring myself and working like a draught horse were causing me to miss these kinds of relaxing activities. Miller’s advice is essentially telling me it’s okay to set a time at which to walk away from my laptop and re-energize. The final piece of advice I’ll share comes from John Steinbeck. He says, “If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader.”

Inspiration and motivation are all around us, all we have to do is teach ourselves how to see them. I’m still learning.

Addendum: In the first paragraph I wrote about my unease that we are slipping into an authoritarian nightmare. A few days ago, I read “Love Letter,” George Saunders’ latest story in The New Yorker, in which he writes about many of the same concerns I have about where this country may be headed. Thank you, universe.

Also, I highly recommend Le Guin’s book, Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books. It’s not sci-fi, it’s a collection of speeches, essays, and book critiques. On the back cover, the publisher describes the book as “a vision of a better reality, fueled by the power and might and hope of language and literature.” One of the most insightful, entertaining, and (for me) relatable speeches was, “Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love.”