My Writer Brain Bids Adieu
A missive in which I have been trying to write you for weeks and just have not been able to complete an essay.
There is only practice or pattern. –Jaymin J Patel
Let’s everyone take a deep breath in through the nose for 1—2—3—4 and hold for 1—2—3—4 and slowly now, through a straw sized-hole in your mouth, breathe out for 1—2—3—4—5—6—7—8 and hold for 1—2—3—4.
Repeat three to five times.
This calms the nervous system. I don’t know about you, but I’ve needed a bit of that lately.
It’s Tuesday afternoon: 87°F (31°C) and windy. Despite my aversion to sweating, I am sitting outside. I have been trying to acclimate myself to heat and expose my skin to the sun so that I might be less of a vampire (I have a diagnosed sun allergy, it’s called solar urticaria. I break out in hives on any sun-exposed skin. It used to last only the first month or so of spring, but the less time I spend in the sun as an adult, the longer it sticks around. My left foot is ghastly looking and itchy).
It’s 46% humidity, so as long as I sit in the shade and am v, v still, I’m not—completely—miserable. I’m told the elements give us energy, but sweat runs down my side body and I’ve been napping a lot.
Y’all, I have to be perfectly honest: I fried my Writer Brain writing emails.
It seems impossible that a person who doesn’t work a normal job could become burnt out, but as it is, my neurodivergent brain has the ability to hyperfocus. I gave all my attention to these emails until I was depleted. I haven’t mastered my energy systems yet and before I knew what was happening it was too late.
I lost myself to old patterns.
I slowly neglected my practices. I forgot to check in with myself. And to be frank, now that I’m recovering, which I only partly understand how to do, things are coming along a bit slower than I thought they might.
However, a few fun things have happened: One) In retrospect, I’m aware enough to observe what happened in a way that’s new for me. Two) I’ve re-dedicated myself to meditation and learning more about energy work; as I understand it, the more capable I become at working with energy the more I’ll generally have and the easier it’ll become to transmute blocks (yes, this is where I’m at in life, everything is energy).
Three) I’ve had more energy in the direction of tactile and visual activities. In fact, outside of writing, I have more general energy, which of course could be the longer days and all that elemental energy I’m soaking up, but I’ve been drawing a bit, unraveling crochet projects that didn’t work out (I find this soothing and metaphoric), exploring some painting and stamping projects I started months ago, and am very nearly ready to dig into the bolster sewing projects I’ve had on the backlog (every meditating energy worker needs a zafu, right?).
And of course, the birds. I think I heard my first oriole the other day! It was the most exquisite sound. It’s hard to describe what it did to my body and brain, but it was transformative.
Essay ideas and drafts have happened in the last few weeks, but they’ve been a struggle. I mean a real struggle. I mean pulling perfectly healthy teeth with a rusty needlenose not particularly equipped for the job. They’ve got no flow or ease. They just don’t feel right. I sit down to write and every single word I put on the screen just doesn’t fit. Even the Morning Pages are dragging in their nonsense. So I’m setting it all aside for at least the remainder of the week while I put my attention where it actually wants to go hoping that this helps me to move through whatever blocks and shortages remain.
It wasn’t that long ago that I might have felt like this was the end. Prior to a few years ago, I was in a continual state of this kind of disconnect from my Writer Brain to the point that I wondered if I was a writer at all (and, if I’m honest, I’ve asked myself that question recently, that’s how deep the well goes). I’d get little snippets of interesting language and maybe I’d note them down, only to find the note months or years later and feel no energy or connection to it. I had absolutely no idea why it sparked a need to be saved.
Liz Gilbert, and others, have written and talked about creative ideas sort of happening to them rather than being something they actively thought up. And this feels like evidence of that. Of course, one has to create the environment that lets these ideas in. We have to recognize them when they happen, but it also seems, given the loss of those ideas I did jot down, they can leave us.
Gilbert, in, I believe, Big Magic, suggests that the ideas’ll find someone else who’s ready to work with them if we don’t heed them. And, I have read a number of essays that were ideas I’d been sitting on for years. I didn’t think I was qualified to write them for one reason or another and they left me to find the next available and willing writer. Those moments were always humbling and infuriating. It makes me shiver for the hundreds of drafts I’ve not been able to come back to. The book ideas that are laying waste.
On the up side, there are a hundred more ideas where those hundred came from, and sometimes letting go of an idea makes space for a better one.
I’m not as worried as I might have been. Through practices, like Morning Pages, which I put into place in 2020, I learned to trust that these kinds of dips are only temporary, no matter how long they last.
In a recent essay on loss and trust,
at Creative Attention, explores the relationship between trust and practice:If you ask me (tell me!) to trust before I even begin, then I have already lost.
What I really believe: Trust flows out of practice.
Let it never be the prerequisite to practice.
It is through these practices that I have, and continue to, build a trust with my Writer Brain that provides a sense of security. Without them, I would feel completely unmoored. Even writing this brief essay, which has become much longer than I suspected it could be, seems a sign of light in that direction. A clearing, I suspect.
And I must be on the right track as a small butterfly has been, off and on, circling my head since I started writing. A sign of growth and transformation.
Now, it’s bloody hot out here, so I’m going inside.
With love and light,
PS. If you have any info on free resources for learning about energy work, I’d love to hear about them. I watched a webinar today for a course that I’d love to take but just can’t swing it financially!
Invitation for Reflection
Maintaining my practices, both creatively and emotionally (though they seem to go hand-in-hand the more I explore), is clearly imperative for me to maintain balance, even when, and maybe especially when, things feel good and it becomes easier for me to let them slip. What practices in your life (creative or otherwise) have been necessarily stabilizing? When are they hardest to maintain? How do you get yourself back to them?
Not that long ago, on this creative healing journey I’ve been on, I developed the notion (or maybe it was more of a hope) that there would come a day in which I wouldn’t need practice. I’d be completely zen and pain free 100% of the time, no meditation, yoga, or Morning Pages required! I eventually came to an understanding that healing is a practice. Every day I had to wake up and choose to practice healing.
And as I reduced resistance to that concept it became easier and less painful. The same might be said for creative practice: it’s a choice we have to make every day but from my own experience and the experiences of those I love, there are so many blocks that pop up around creative practice (and I’ve experienced a number of them, including TIME: practice takes time I didn’t feel I had when I was already burnt out and pushed to my edges). I invite you today to consider, if you’re feeling stuck creatively (or emotionally), if you couldn’t integrate just five or ten minutes of non-negotiable creative practice into your routine?
Here are some ideas: free writing nonsense, draw something you see, doodle nonsense, play a riff on the uke, color!, etc., you get the point.
Thanks for including me in this letter, Libby, which hit home in so many ways... energy work is part of my practice too, although it's been harder during the pandemic. One practice I've been able to remember easily/return to on my own is the Arvigo technique... I like how tactile it is compared to meditation, for instance, which tends to send me even more "away." Just thought I'd mention it in case it sparks something for you!