Making Yourself Write

When I was in college, I had no trouble whatsoever making time to write. In four years I wrote four novels, had a paying newspaper job, was active with the theatre group, and graduated with three majors (my university didn't offer minors). One of those novels was even ultimately published, once I had learned a good deal more about novel writing. But the point is that I must have known how to manage my time - taking all those classes successfully and enjoying myself with the theatre crowd and doing a great deal of writing.

When I got out of college, I took part time jobs, lived cheaply, and kept on writing both fiction and journalism. After I became a full-time writer, I usually managed to produce more than one book a year, balancing the novels with shorter nonfiction books. But somewhere along the way I discovered I was having trouble getting the writing done.

First it was because I was in a terrible auto wreck, and my right wrist was seriously damaged. (I am very right-handed.) It took almost four years to find the right surgeon (who had just gotten FDA approval for a prosthetic wrist joint) to repair the damage. During those years I struggled to write, and was generously helped by writer friends who gifted me with dictation software for my Mac. That software got me through the crisis of deadlines that had to be met despite the injury. Several of my editors were more than understanding, but publishers can't wait forever, and I refused to be permanently sidelined by my wrist. Fortunately, after the surgery, my wrist is back to typing energetically, at all hours of the day or night.

But since then I've found it more and more difficult to overcome writing complications. Case in point: I am on a writer's retreat to make serious headway on my new novel. I got out of bed yesterday morning with a swollen, painful left ankle. It had been fine when I went to bed and dreamed about my characters. But sometime in the night, I (or my teddy bear) did something to it. Yesterday, I barely managed a page of usable writing, because my ankle hurt enough to make me sick to my stomach. I tried taking Advil, I tried propping it up (a pillow on the top of a cooler makes a very nice ankle support), I tried to lose myself in the book, but it just wouldn't work. I went to bed hoping the ankle pain would disappear as mysteriously as it had appeared. 

But when I woke up this morning - I think you can guess what I found. That's right - I hobbled to my computer with my ankle still hurting. And I asked myself: what magic had I employed back in college to accomplish everything? I distinctly remember taking some rather serious spills off my bike (just a ten-speed, but you can still fall hard when you're pedalling full out and hit a city pothole). I'm sure I was sick, and I know I slept in and missed many a morning class. But I never missed a deadline for either a paper or a newspaper article, and I finished one novel for each year I was there. What did I do?

I honestly can't remember, but today I decided that, with that sublime confidence that only a teenager can possess, I must simply not have cared whether I was sick or injured. I had writing to do, so I did it. And today I did just that. I told my ankle to just sit there and be glad I wasn't walking on it, and I wrote. And I produced 8 good pages today. And this blog entry.

Of course, I'm going to have to hobble to bed, and I know I hope again that the pain will miraculously disappear, but even if it doesn't, I'm determined to rise and write again. That's the only way to finish a book.

And an ankle has very little to do with the writing process, after all.

Retreating to Write

Sometimes, no matter how enthusiastic you are about the book you want to write, life gets in the way. Distractions from other (paying) work and stress about family crises get in the way of creativity - not to mention in the way of time to write! So this summer I decided to take some time off for a one-woman writing retreat.

I headed down to Wyoming to combine writing time with a few necessary visits to my chiropractor. The drive went well, I had all my reference materials and all my plotting notebooks, I felt inspired and excited. And when I arrived and set up in my distraction-free workspace, I discovered two things: the air conditioning was dead, and that part of Wyoming was on track for near-record-breaking temperatures. Oh - and the air conditioning repair people were booked solid due to the temperatures and the fact that most people had neglected their air conditioning repairs until the summer heat got to be a really big problem.

The idea of my writing retreat had been to get away from distractions. To my surprise, heat can be as much of a distraction as other work and stress. When you feel as if you're melting away at 85 degrees in your office (yes, I got a room thermometer to confirm just how hot it was), it's hard to concentrate on the fates of your characters. Fortunately my husband (who'd been the cause of some of the stress, and work, and other previous distractions) pulled some strings from afar and arranged for an air conditioning repairman to come work some magic later today to give me some cool air. Ah, if only I could wave my wand, say Reparo! and do the job myself. But clearly, not attending Hogwarts has left me at a disadvantage here. So I shall just keep my fingers crossed and hope that the repairman has more practice with Reparo, and that the house will cool down by evening.

Oh, and I should add that I'd intended for my book to take place in the fall, but I'm beginning to think that setting it in the spring, with the threat of summer heat coming on, will be a more intense time of year. After all, you can light fires, pile on extra clothes, pad yourself with newspapers, and find shelter to stay warm in winter. There's a limit to how many clothes you can take off in the heat, and you'll still feel wilted and sweaty and cranky. See? My writing retreat has yielded results already.