It took the wind out of my sails. That's how my mother described discouragement. Smart woman. That empty, saggy, can't-catch-the-breeze feeling? Mom nailed it.
In a recent post (find it here) I literally started at the beginning of my writing experience. Well, not as far back as learning my letters on wide-ruled paper with a dotted line marking the middle, but far enough back that you'd get the pertinent facts. In Part Two, we're going to talk about discouragement; not to the degree that we'll all begin to feel life is futile, but enough to realize we are ALL susceptible to dreary bouts of it once in a while, and, most importantly, that we also have the capacity to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off.
Part One left off as I admitted to my children, and to myself, that I was writing, and I was writing because I wanted to write. Let me be blunt here--I'm no Shakespeare, nor do I have any illusions that I'll ever amount to that.
I'm telling my writing story because it is an average tale.
I now call myself a writer because I recognized the desire for it, burning in my chest. I wanted to write. I felt compelled to write. For whatever reason, fitting words together into sentences, and paragraphs into pages, and chapters into manuscripts, gives me all the FEELS. Contentment. Relief. Accomplishment. So, if YOU have a desire smoldering in your rib cage that won't be squelched, do something about it.
Step One: Don't wait for an invitation.
Take control of the smoldering. Accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish. If I can do it, ANYBODY can do it. I mean it.
After I had confessed to my family that I was writing a story, the questions began, and suddenly I was supposed to have the answers. "What's the story about? What kind of story is it? Who gets to read it? Are we in it? Is it about us?"
Sheesh! I was still muddling through the process and I didn't know most of the answers, so I played the mom card and told them I wasn't ready to disclose any of that information yet, which, it turns out, is like catnip to nosy teenagers. I had just barely accomplished Step One. I admitted I was a writer. And in the next minute, I was faced with Step Two - defining my writing style.
Here's the kicker: I was already a full-time wife to a busy husband, a full-time mom to four teenagers, and a full-time program assistant at work, along with service assignments and church obligations and managing a home. Discouragement set in when I realized I had no business inserting writing into my schedule. Was I naive to think it could even be done? Probably. But what about that bothersome smoldering going on in my chest?
I reviewed the last year to see if I could identify a pattern that could serve to define my writing style. It didn't take much research to realize I was writing in spare moments--in every spare moment I could find. That led to coining the term "midster writing" because I was writing amidst everything else. My family didn't need to know it wasn't a real term, and it got them off my back for a while. Bonus!
Step Two: Only YOU Can Define YOU.
The thing about defining yourself is that you have then been defined. What if something happens and you no longer fit into your own definition? What becomes of you, then?
As soon as I had announced I was writing, some things happened. Crummy things. My thyroid sprouted a mass the size of a chicken egg, which was growing around my carotid artery. There was surgery and recovery, and not much time to "write in the midst". Don't Google total thyroidectomy. It's not pretty.
When I finally got my mojo back and felt like I was making headway on my story, my retina detached while I was in Jerusalem for work. Note to self: Do not let retinas detach overseas. Surgery included sucking the fluid (vitreous gel) from my eye and replacing it with thicker manmade gel and a gas bubble. (Medical terms - vitrectomy and retinal re-attachment.) Recuperation included facing the floor for ten days. Nonstop. My sweet husband borrowed a massage table from a therapist friend so I could lodge my face in its hole. Using several mirrors, he jimmy-rigged it so I could watch television while staring straight down at the floor. The man could work in Vegas for one of those magic shows. The setup was impressively complex.
I couldn't read. I couldn't write. I couldn't drive. I couldn't go to work. Heck, I couldn't stand up straight. When I walked, I was bent at the waist with my torso and head parallel to the floor and ceiling. I began identifying everyone by their shoes. I was blind in my left eye. I was a blind, slow-moving, downtrodden sloth. A discouraged sloth.
I abandoned my two main characters. I left them sitting on a mountainside overlooking Jackson Hole in the middle of a very serious conversation. They ended up sitting there for months. Why? My slothfulness had eased some, but I didn't feel defined, anymore. I felt like an impostor. My niece died unexpectedly. Fiction didn't feel appropriate. My heart hurt. I didn't feel like imagining.
I would fleetingly think of my characters, sitting there with their chins propped in their hands, waiting for a discouraged sloth to give them words and bring them down from the mountain.
I had just begun to write again, using a gigantic magnifying sheet that covered the entirety of my computer screen, when it happened again. My other eye must've become tired of doing the work of two, and detached its retina. Luckily, this time I was stateside. I still had surgery, still had recovery, only this time I had to face forward for ten days. No looking up or down. No lying down. No reading. No writing. I slept sitting up. I did everything sitting up. And, eventually, my eye healed enough to pick up the slack for my Jerusalem eye.
I won't lie. I'm glossing over A LOT of discouragement. I couldn't see well, even with grossly humongous fonts and grossly humongous magnifying glasses. The situation had most definitely taken the wind out of my sails. I couldn't see well enough to write for over a year. Luckily, my imagination didn't buy into the sloth-like tendencies the rest of me had embraced. It was still firing on full cylinders, waiting for the rest of me to do something about it. Waiting for redefinition. Something only I could do.
Step Three: Roll with the punches and re-define.
My eyesight will never be 20/20, but I'm not blind. I can see. I can write. Do I still use big fonts? Eye drops? Assistance threading a needle? Yup. I redefined. I rolled with the punches.
I returned to writing, knowing I was the only one whispering impostor.
Since I returned to writing, we've endured the loss of my husband's parents and our baby grandson. Health concerns have sprung up. Church and work responsibilities have increased. And when I finally made it to the publishing stage, well, suffice it to say that there are many many opportunities for discouragement to rear its ugly head. Refusals. Rejections. Re-writes. Re-submissions. Apparently, all the Re- words.
But, the thing is, I'm not an impostor. I'm a writer. That smoldering in my chest won't be doused. I couldn't leave my characters to sit on the mountainside, forever. It was time to share them, even if the route was rutted.
Sails, sloths, and smoldering chests. Learn from them.
Leave your discouragement sitting on the mountainside with its chin in its hands. Don't let it take the wind out of your sails for long. Don't let it turn you into a sloth. Take the rutted route. Work around the setbacks. We are capable. We can do this.
Step Three: Get up. Dust yourself off. Go looking for whaterever it is that's causing the smoldering in your chest.
Comments