The Doldrums
Jan 12, 2012 
Writers like writing about how hard it is to write. As a newly full-time writer myself, I’m constantly astonished by how tough it is. On the one hand, not having to get up and get dressed and drive in the traffic and sit at a desk and listen to the office chatter and so forth is pretty awesome. Getting to play video games whenever is pretty awesome. Dictating my own schedule and getting to do my grocery shopping midday is pretty awesome.
But on the other hand: writing is pretty hard.
Often I find myself thinking on the same day, sometimes within just hours of each other, “This is the BEST GIG EVER” and “How is any one person expected to do this?”
But anyway, this post is about how hard it is to go nowhere. Like I said, writers love writing about the trials of writing, and because misery loves company, I get a perverse pleasure out of reading about other writers’ struggling when I, myself, am struggling.
Because I am. Some books write themselves. Some books take a little tender loving care, a nurturing hand, a patient muse. Some books need to be hacked into the page, letter by letter, tempered by sweat and blood and all that good stuff.
THE PAPER BIRD is one of those. At least, it is right now. I’m trying to be okay with that. Pretty much every author’s second book is a trial by fire—it’s not just me. And throughout this whole process of being published, the one thing that has been constantly the greatest source of comfort is that I’m not alone.
So in honor of struggle, of those books full of blood and sweat and tears, of muses neglectful and that hateful, incessantly blinking cursor, I give you some of my favorite few lines about writer’s block.
(Okay, it’s not at all a poem about writer’s block. But to me there’s no better metaphor for writer’s block than the doldrums, because writing a book is like a voyage—some parts are easy, fun, exciting. Some parts are an excruciating climb uphill in the snow. Some parts are just you sitting there, wanting nothing more than to move ahead, forced to watch the skies and wait for the wind.)
Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Here’s to a stiff breeze to come.
In the meantime, I’m getting out some oars.
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SECOND BOOKS ARE THE HARDEST. WOE WOE WOE.
I KNOW, RIGHT? D: D:
Woe indeed. But it is comforting to know that this happens to EVERYONE. And somehow they get through it.
lol, grocery shopping in the middle of the day is definitely one of the perks of self-employment. But yeah, it can be tough. But you can do it!! Good luck with book 2, and also we should do that lunch soon 🙂
It totally is! And things like going to the post office and the bank are soooo much quicker when you aren’t doing it with the ten thousand other people after work.
And yes to lunch! Just say when. 🙂
Did you Jumble today? It might clear your head and make writing on this day easier.
If only it were so simple! 🙂 Thanks for the advice though.
Yes, yes, yes, Meg, to all of the above! Sometimes I’ll go days and days or even weeks and weeks without actually writing new words, and then I’ll start psyching myself out and freaking out and inertia sets in – and I finally have to force myself to just write a few lines, just a paragraph, or a page – but amazingly the mind and the well will open and it starts to come again. A lot of it is just plain faith! Faith that it will come.
Kimberley, you are just the sweetest. Seriously. Words I really needed to hear!
The worst for me is when I’m forcing myself to write, and I’m doing the words, but nothing worthwhile is coming out. But sometimes I think there’s just some dust and gunk clogging the creativity pipes, and you’ve got to wash that out with some throwaway words before the good stuff can run clear again!