Elation & Doubt, A Writer's Process
Antidotes: Awareness, Permission & Community
I've often been struck by how afraid I am of what I might write. What might come out. I see my colleagues and students wondering about what they just wrote. “Is this a thing?” they ask. I also have this strange elation when I write something. I often think it's the best thing in the entire world. For about ten minutes. Maybe an hour. And then it starts to turn, and I decide I should probably burn it, destroy it, at the very least hide it away where no one will ever find it. These strange fluctuations seem to be the norm. Do you have them too?
There is a rise and fall, a kind of tidal relationship to the work I'm trying to do. The more I notice this, the more ease enters my system. When I'm aware of my habitual doubts, I can dismiss them. When I notice how I can feel elated one day, depressed the next, I can begin to regulate how seriously I take those responses.
I am not talking about bipolar disorder. I was misdiagnosed with that in the early 90s. I took all the available meds on offer only to discover that the way psychiatry works is through trial and error. If you respond to the drugs, then they give you the label/diagnosis. If the drugs don't work, if your boss says she'll have to put you on disability if you don't start acting like the person she hired, then the psychiatrist says, "I guess you're not bipolar then!" As if the year he played games with my brain was worth that discovery.
There are reasons writers are writers. We each have our own. Things we are trying to do. Dreams, goals and ambitions. And those are good. Important. Valuable. Necessary. Life-affirming.
The tug we feel to do the work is a great impulse. We should be honoring it. And yet I have wasted years of my life feeling as if I had nothing to offer. As if I didn't know what I should be doing. As if what I'd done had no merit. And this upsets me because it's so simply and easily remedied.
What has been the cure? I think it begins with Awareness. If you are reading this, it means you too have writing you want to be doing. So be aware of that as a thing. In your heart, whether you have a writing practice or not yet, you're a writer. We squash so much of our aliveness! Let’s not. Let’s give ourselves permission to follow the impulses to create. You are allowed to be a writer. (See this post if you are arguing with me.)
The next step is Permission to try. This is scary. When we are aware we want something, and we try to get it, we open ourselves up to the vulnerability of potential failure. What if we try and suck? Everyone sucks in the beginning. That equalizes all of us. That's a good thing. No one writes a great first draft. It doesn't matter what you start with. It's how you keep going, how you revise that matters.
So then we have this awful thing we love and adore and simultaneously despise. What is it? Is it good? How will I ever know? What's the point? Quickly we are discouraged by parts of us that fear. What do we fear? Ridicule. Humiliation. Shame. These are hard things that can set us up for all kinds of negative spirals. It's hard to manage all this well without a Community.
Community might seem counter-intuitive to writers. Isn't writing a solitary act? Don’t I want to write because I want to be alone? Not necessarily! Finding a community of like-minded people who are doing the hard work of showing up at the blank screen helps.
I watch daily as people share the struggles they face while writing, and other people in the zoom room light up with recognition and relief. The palpable feeling that we understand each other. The idea that we are not alone.
If you are having a hard time getting to your writing If you have an underlying anxiety about your writing If you wonder if what you're doing is worth it If you worry that you are wasting your time If you are besieged by negative self-talk If you struggle to get past the idea that you have nothing to say If you struggle with moving deeper into the work you really want to do If you struggle with getting started If you struggle with the commitment to finish the project Come to Brave Space.
There are 5 sessions/most weeks including a new All Human Brave Space at 7pm ET Wednesdays. There are also weekly workshops and monthly sharing salons so you can get nourishing feedback on your work.
Show up for yourself. You can ask about craft. You can ask about process. There's lots of support. It's also neurodivergent friendly, welcoming and kind. You can attend on- or off-camera. It's easier than you think.
all the art by Scott Sherman at ScottShermanStudio on instagram
WRITING PROMPT: Embodied Writing
Try this at home…
As you sit at your desk trying to write, set a timer for 30 seconds. Stand up and do some jumping jacks or burpees or whatever you might do safely (and without injuring yourself) to raise your heart rate (if it's ok with your doctor). Or do some cat-cows if that's your thing. I want you to notice what it feels like to be more aware of your body while you write in order to write from a more embodied place.
If we live from a disembodied place for a long time, it can be hard to become embodied. One 30-second exercise doesn't always do it. My autistic and post-traumatized self still has parts of my body that don't always arrive, numb places, but this is a practice, not a perfection. (Surgeons need perfection; writers, not so much.)
Why embodiment? We are creating 3-dimensional, embodied characters who have digestive systems and allergies, aches and anxiety. And the lucky ones get surges of desire, and maybe even a tongue ecstatic with chocolate. All of that is worthy of noticing. It helps to be embodied to write characters with bodies or else we end up with a lot of talking heads.
This is a great thing to do if you know your characters have to go from X to Y starting from a surprise event moving to a revelation and finishing the scene with a decision (or other events - up to you). So you might raise your heart rate, pick your events, write your embodied writing, using your events as the rocks that help you cross the river of the scene. Enjoy looking back from the mossy far bank to see if you managed to bring in some sensory details.
If you didn't, pick some and put them in there. Does one character notice colors and shapes? Does another character filter everything through sounds?
Writing is a kind of layering. We don't often get it all in on the first pass. So let's not judge the first or the fifth pass. What's missing for you? Put it in there.
Think about it when you're running if you run. Or when you are doing whatever you do. Sitting in your favorite chair gazing at the sky can be an embodied activity if you're in your body. Notice. We're writers. We are observers. How present are you? Can you be more there? Wiggle your toes. Let me know how it goes!
Brave Space Schedule:
For the week of 5/6 - 5/10/24: Monday 12pm ET Tuesday 12pm ET w/wkshp Wednesday 7pm ET for All Humans Thursday 11am ET Friday 3pm ET For the week of 5/13 - 5/17/24: Monday Memorial for Carrie Robbins at Brotherhood Synagogue in Gramercy Park Tuesday 12pm ET w/wkshp Thursday 11am ET Thursday 7pm ET for All Humans Friday 12pm ET For the week of 5/20 - 5/24/24 Monday 12pm ET Tuesday 12pm ET Wednesday 7pm ET for All Humans Thursday 11am ET Friday 12pm ET For the week of 5/27 - 5/31/24 Monday 12pm ET Tuesday 12pm ET w/wkshp Wednesday 7pm ET for All Humans Thursday 11am ET Friday 12pm ET Friday Brave Sharing Salon at 3pm ET (sign up to share!) Accountability is now available at any session!
Announcements:
GET YOUR TICKETS my newest play, WINNERS, will be presented as a staged reading with a stellar cast directed by Kate Trammell at The Tank NYC as part of PRIDEFEST 2024 on Tuesday, June 25th at 7pm ET.
WINNERS will be read (cold) in-house at New Circle Theatre Company, on Monday, May 13th at 7pm (doors open at 630pm). If you want to come as my guest, I need to let you in (it’s private). So let me know if you want to come. Very limited seating.
Also in NYC, Scott Sickles’ new play Marianas Trench directed by Janet Bentley runs 4/27 - 5/11. Tickets here!
The fantastically talented Carole Forman is appearing in Bring Them Back at Theatre for the New City, a meta dark comedy running 5/9 - 5/19. Go see it! Meet me opening night!
Epic Theatre Company will present Spring Awakening at ART/NY in a neuro-inclusive production this May 9-19th. Meet me there on 5/10!
If you’re in St. Louis, MO, my play “Neighbors by the Sea” will be seen alongside work by the very talented Joan Lipkin in Social Justice Shorts produced by Bread and Roses and A Call to Conscience, May 17-19th at the Greenfinch Theatre.
If you’re in Asheville, NC, my short piece, “Different.” will be performed in the Different Strokes Performing Arts Festival, June 20-23rd.
This is it. "If you wonder if what you're doing is worth it." Sometimes the desire to write feels like such a burden. Does it matter?