Sometimes I write and lose track of time. Sometimes I can’t get myself to write for months at a time. That’s just me. We each have our own writing resistance… writing stories. What’s yours?
I procrastinate… I’m not any good… I have too many ideas… I never finish anything… I just can’t get started… That’s not really what I want (but you do).
I was always going to be a writer.
When I was little, my mother left typewriters sitting around, with paper on the platen. (If you know the word platen, you’re probably old. It’s the black rubbery cylinder that rolls a piece of paper into a typewriter.) She wanted us to be writers.
She probably didn’t realize why… She was a blocked writer, herself. And I don’t mean to make light of my mother’s struggle. She really wants to write. (Still.)
When I was about 25 I bought my first Macintosh computer – a 128K for $3000. I knew it was going to change my life and I was going to become the writer I dreamed of being. I told one of the older women in the design firm where I worked that it was going to open doors for me, change my life. She shared my excitement, and told me that’s how she felt when she bought her first fur. (These were different times, people.) “Also about $3000,” she said smiling at me, seeing her younger self in me, I suppose. EEk, I backed away slowly, that woman was not me, she yearned to open different “doors” from mine, and required very different tools.
I wanted to be a writer.
Fast forward at least 15 years, when I was 40. I was working round the clock as a brainstormer for hire, had 3 kids, a house and a husband, and I still really wanted to be a published writer. And I was trying. Writing. Hanging out with writers. Learning how to write a book proposal, reading about how to get an agent, what a “platform” was, and more.
It hadn’t dawned on me yet that my mother had really only taught us how to be blocked writers.
And then, TA-DA, I wrote and sold my first book. Huzzah. I was going to be rich and famous. (Or so I thought.) That book, Motherhood to Otherhood (Running Press, 2008) fulfilled a lifelong dream. And yet, when it was being edited, I cried and died a little. When it was on the market, I hid and failed. The book did fine – I just didn’t think so.
I was at a loss. Why had my creativity failed me? Why couldn’t I implement the last step in the book process? Don’t tell anyone, but I was so scared and tense that I ate way too much, watched a lot of TV and felt certain that any day the fraud police would show up at my door because I had posed as an author.
Of course, it makes sense: “author” is the root of the word “authority.” It’s hard to assume authority.
And I felt guilt and shame because frankly, I didn’t earn out of my advance. As for marketing the book, I felt like I had given birth to a baby and then left it out in the snow. I felt powerless and anguished.
How did I come back from such a nadir? Next week, I’ll continue my writing story. It feels almost like a drunk-a-logue at an AA meeting.
Hi, I’m Julia and I’m a writer, and that comes with drama, doubt, fear and even shame. And yet, we still want to write. Makes no sense, right?
P.S. My 90 year-old Mom just joined our Mighty Writers Club and is writing 4 days a week. I’m not sure what stories she was able to dispel, but she is writing and I am proud of her, and proud to be helping her! If there’s something you should be writing, join us.