Writing Through the Bad Spots

I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m just making it all up as I go along.

Photo by Leighann Blackwood on Unsplash

I stare at the screen and wish I could conjure something from nothing.

The particles would coalesce in the air, swirling and entwining, as they accumulated into a book that dropped into my lap. (Is there a Harry Potter spell for that?)

I keep telling myself I’m just biding my time, waiting for the right ideas to percolate, yet for years I have watched the long-haulers go past the finish line of completed manuscripts, agent accruals, book deals, and all the glitz of what it means to be published.

For another day, I sigh and close my laptop. I’ve been playing this game with myself for ten years. The words, “It would have happened by now if it was meant to happen,” have followed me for years. I’ve danced through 10,000 and 20,000 words only to become bored with what I have. I tried to tell myself that I was busy, that I had college classes and a job, that I just needed to give myself the space to let a book grow organically.

Then 2020 happened…and I watched how productive other people were. They baked banana bread and sourdough bread, they found new hobbies to embrace, they wrote music and collaborated on projects and created meaning for themselves in a world that had shut down in a lot of ways.