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Drought

n.

When attributed to writing, a drought is the prolonged lack of creative inspiration that makes squeezing out two words difficult. Also known as creative blockage, or writers block, this can be attributed to many factors. Stress, change in lifestyle, issues with work, or plain being off your feed. In my case, it was a very stressful creative enterprise in March that has put me off my creative vibe as it were and left me in the weeds.

I was working on putting together a game for a convention in March, a huge game for thirty-five people in which I had to write character backstories for all thirty-five characters. It was stressful, and unpleasant, and I didn’t get a chance to enjoy any of it. What I ended up doing instead was driving myself plum insane trying to get it done and when it was over? I felt like an overused matchstick. I said to myself, “I’ll just take a break for a little bit, and then get back into the saddle.”

That was over a month ago and I haven’t written a damn thing.

On the heels of this creative burnout came stress like I’ve never hit before and concerns about my living situation among a number of other insanities. All of this amounted to me not feeling like I had enough time to do anything, forget about anything creative. So I haven’t written anything in over a month.

This last week, I’ve been sick with flu-like nonsense. Today is the last of it, I think, with the ‘aching-stuffyhead-mildfever-Ineedtorest’ part giving way to the ‘IneedtoleavethehouseOMG’ part right now. Since I’ll be home today, and resting, I want to try to pry something out of myself. And why? Because I believe that writer’s block is an invention of the writer’s subconscious, not any sort of departure of the ‘writing spirit’ or anything so mystical. We put it there. We create it. We get it in our heads that we can’t do anything and so we don’t.

So today, I’m saying ‘Yes, I can.’

So I’m riffing off Obama. So what? Off I go. Geronimo.

So I got my response from Sarah Lawrence the other day – I have been wait listed by Sarah Lawrence for their MFA Writing program. It isn’t a rejection. In fact, it was a very impressive letter that said that they liked me but because of the size of the class, they didn’t have room for me.

I admit, I freaked out a little bit. I was disappointed – until everyone I knew pointed out that being wait-listed is quite a big deal too, since it means they like me. I spoke to my creative writings professor, who has served as my advisor on these matters, and she was extremely happy about it. She said that it’s amazing considering how many people are applying for things this year that I even got wait-listed. So I guess… it’s a big deal!

Life goes on, though. Once I knew for sure which way it was going, I felt a hell of a lot better. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Now I can go on and relax. And even if I don’t get in for the Fall semester, I will reapply for next year. In the meantime, would it be so bad to work and have some time off at the same time? No. I think it would be amazing. I would have days off during the week to just write or spend time with friends and take photographs… I could use some time to take a break and develop my writing anyway.

So there’s an up side and a downside to everything.

Meanwhile, on a more personal level – my health has taken a turn for the worse in the last few months due to the stress and problems with chronic migraines. Due to the new medication my doctor has given me, I’m finally starting to get functional again. (Yay!) It means I’ve missed a good deal of work, but now I’m on the way towards being on track again. Which is a big YAY.

Life can be stressful. Life can make you insane. And what it does to your writing is even worse.

Writing for me has always been a fun, sort of theraputic thing to do. Whenever I was getting too stressed, the world would just go away for a little while and I could get something on paper. But I noticed a curious thing lately – when I tried to put my writing to the grindstone, it became bad. Not awful but I was getting blocked completely. My writing became stunted, ideas became tough to find, and I ground to a halt. When I did produce something, it was awful.

I learned a valuable lesson: my writing muse is not a draft horse. It cannot be saddled to any cart you want to pull it along. You need to have passion for your work. You need to care. Recently, I picked up a creative project which I just didn’t care for entirely and now? I’m saddled with it. I’m turning the old writing instinct into the draft horse, and I hate it. It’s going very badly too.

In that case, it’s  a matter of ‘well you just have to do it’ kind of thing. But what it inspired in me was a desperate sort of hatred of my own work and kicked in one of those lovely periods every creative person has in their lives: the self-doubt phase. We all go through our moments of ‘my God, is my work shite or what?’ Some people take it further than others. My roommate told me about a time when a friend of hers hated all her writing, so she went ahead and burned manuscripts. I would rather sit in frigid water humming the Macarena for hours before dropping my work on a fire. I am not THAT self-destructive yet. However, that doesn’t mean that for the last few weeks I haven’t wanted to lock all my stuff up in a drawer somewhere and not look at it ever again. And where does that all come from?

Inner insecurity. There are a million people out there trying to write, I said to myself. Does that mean I’m any good, good enough to make it? What makes me better? Am I better? What if my stuff is just awful and I’m one of those people who can’t see it?

And so on. And so forth.

It just kept going from there. Thankfully, I got workshopped last night in my writing class for a new short story I put out, a little quick thing I put together called “Of Ghosts and Skies.” The story is a departure for me because its something that does NOT have anything supernatural in it, at all, and I don’t intend to add anything supernatural. (Funny thing, of course, I used an analogy about a ghost in it and automatically people who have read my stuff started to assume the character I was talking about actually WAS a ghost… grumble grumble pigeon-holing). I gave it over and there were  a lot of positive responses. There was a lot of critiques about what to work on, of course, but there was a lot of positive response.

Afterwards, I spoke to my professor. She said that stress is the killer of all creative things and that, perhaps for a little while, I have to at least just let my writing be fun. The trick, she said, was to allow yourself to be imperfect, because in that imperfect process you can achieve something great.So I’m going to set the goal for myself: Don’t demand gold, just dig for a few crystals and arrowheads in the ground. If you hit gold, cool. If not, go forward with what you’re doing. And so that’s what I’m going to do.

Postscript: So I’ll also admit something here… the class has asked me to try poetry and I am. I am intensely reticent to share any of that poetry. Most poetry I find from people is just angsty high school emo crud that should be scraped off the proverbial shoe at the door. Yet there is something cool about giving this a shot. I just don’t know if I can ever show any of it to anyone. We shall see.

The insomnia continued all night and I got NO rest last night. Yet this morning I did manage to revise my story – which is now, with page breaks and some edits, twenty-eight pages of solid writing. Solid  by which I mean solid prose. In the end, I realized in the reread that it was a liiiiiiittle too derivative of other things I’ve read/watched before and will probably need a good brushing to get all the ‘reminds me too much of’ away from it.

In the meantime though… yikes. Twenty-eight pages in a very short period of time. And it’s not bad either! A solid short story in one sitting. I’m really proud of this one.

Though… heh, one problem? Main character’s name? Javi. Main girl? Nava. Na+vi = AVATAR. That movie is too much in my head. Name changes ahoy!