I haven’t written about my writing for a while. Call it a combination of fallowness (fallosity?) and despair. I hate to call it despair but there’s definitely an element of that. It’s much nicer to think of it as a field laid fallow, a ground being prepared for the next season’s bounty.
I’m just coming out of a rough period, as I’ve mentioned before. Hence the despair part of it. But I take comfort in the fact that I’m feeling driven again. I’m feeling inspired. Not that you need inspiration to get the work done. But when you’ve been to that dark place, Pandora’s hope comes very sweet.
As I write this, my good girl insists I mention that I have been writing. I write for my job, I write this blog, I write all kinds of things. But my honest answer is that I haven’t been writing what matters to me most which is my fiction, and increasingly my memoir. Despair-causing, in and of itself.
But I take the metaphor of the fallow field seriously. One thing that has gotten me through my writing in small ways and large is faith in the process. I may feel like I suck, but I know that it’ll get better. I can make it better. I just have to do the work, put in the time, and I will be rewarded by something. It may not be great, or even good, but I will have accomplished something, and even if it’s not good it’ll contribute to something better down the line.
Faith in the process. Putting in your time. Butt in the chair, brain to the task, pen to the paper, fingers to the keyboard. When all else fails, including and especially inspiration, this will get me through.
All this to say I have a little more than a week off from my job, and I hope to get a lot of writing done. I have an exciting new project I want to get off the ground. I’m not going to say much about it. It’s not the memoir ~ I don’t believe I have quite that much faith yet ~ but instead a YA novel, potentially a series of novels. So it’ll be fun, in addition to everything else. Cast it all to wind and write!
Wishing you the gift of faith in your process.
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