Lately I’ve been thinking about quitting writing. Fantasizing about it, in fact.
And this fantasy is sad and confusing because writing has been my identity for 33 years. Because I don’t really know who I am without it. For a decade, whenever people asked me what I do, or what I like to do, or what I hope to do, I’ve said “writing.” So if I quit, I don’t know what’s left.
But lately writing has only brought me guilt and shame and sadness. It’s become a weight on my shoulders that I long to shed.
*
In 2015, I finished an essay that I struggled to write for a year. It was an essay about how, throughout my life, I’ve often felt like I had to censor a part of myself — my femininity and my feminine experiences. The psychosomatic toll of censorship.
In the aftermath, I was ecstatic. It was New Years Eve, and finishing that essay had been one of my only goals for the year. On the way to my sister’s, I felt it: “You are right where you’re supposed to be in your life.” That day, I was excited for 2016, for its possibilities. But ironically, putting out that essay invoked a feeling that I’d been trying to remedy by writing the thing in the first place: shame for revealing something so intimate, shame for making myself vulnerable.
So I decided to shift gears, and since January I’ve been working on an essay about a homeless person who I let sleep on my couch one very cold night. I’ve been unable to finish the piece.
*
It’s become an all-too familiar cycle. I set aside time to write, but when I don’t write I feel guilty. And when I do write I feel shame and sadness.
*
It all climaxed a week ago.
I woke at 2 a.m. and lay in bed, paralyzed with anxiety. My stomach hurt (a feeling I’ve come to associate with stress). A man I’d recently read said that when he’s stuck, he asks his heart a question. Fascinating, I’d thought, and so, at two a.m. in the dark of my bedroom, I spoke to my heart.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked it. “If I were to quit, what was the point of my life? How do I justify all that time I spent writing?”
And suddenly my heart responded with a sentence fragment that floored me with its simplicity. “None of it was a waste,” it said.
*
Once upon a time, writing was playful … just a thing I did because it made me happy.
In fact, until I was 28, I didn’t show my writing to anyone (except, on occasion, to some man I was dating or a close friend who’d inquired about my work). I wasn’t intentionally trying to keep it secret. Rather, there were no expectations, and writing was just this delicious thing I did alone. A thing that was akin to pampering myself, and therefore didn’t necessitate an audience. Like wearing a mud mask or lounging in bed or getting up in the middle of the night to eat a bowl of cereal.
While deployed to Afghanistan, I carried my writing on a thumb drive that I wore on a chain around my neck. If I was killed or injured that thumb drive would be there with my body. It was symbolic, I think: my life and my writing were synonymous, indistinguishable, one and the same. I might have been writing only for myself but I felt like it was my purpose; I knew that my writing was the first material thing I’d salvage from a burning house.
*
Perhaps the problems originated when I began sharing my writing. When I started a blog and a website. When I connected that website to social media. When I felt obligated to try to publish things. For so long, I had no expectations of writing, and suddenly I did.
And yet the contradiction in quitting writing is that writing is how I’m wired. At least to a small extent. That is, I suspect that even if I shed my condo, my belongings, my job, and my friends and family (everything, in effect) and went to live in bum-fuck-nowhere, that I’d still write sometimes. Because a major way I know how to process my life is by writing it down.
And so maybe the only way forward is to go backwards. To go back to the days when there were no expectations and writing was just this delicious thing I did alone. A thing that was akin to pampering myself. The other option is to quit writing, to find other things to love, and to build a new identity.
Today, I’m at a crossroads.
9 Responses to “A goodbye to writing”
Staci
As always, a nicely written and thoughtful piece of writing. I have had various points in my life where I have had similar thoughts. It has been my experience that this struggle is simply the nudge to get you to move on to the next phase of your life. Writing may or may not be a part of it, but where ever you end up, it is where you are meant to be.
Lori
Thanks Staci. Re: next phase of life. That is wonderful insight and I think you’re absolutely right.
Carolyn Wolff
Hello, I believe writing is an art form. Many artists throughout history have experienced a similar feeling. Writer’s, musicians, artists. Many artists seem to think on a very deep level. I played piano for years, mainly for myself. I never considered myself to be any good and my hands would turn to ice before a recital and I would completely choke. But, I was a completely different person then…a person with zero self esteem. It seems eerily ironic to me that I will think about you as I was this morning- and then I will see your writing. As for social media, it can be a place of solace, or a place of complete and udder disillusionment. People can be cruel, hurtful or just plain mean. People may also choose to praise your work and support you. I am on your side my dear. Some of your best work has been done when you confront the ugliest monsters that reside within all of us. I support you no matter what you do. I will caution against bolting on everything…no one can ever escape their own thoughts…no matter where they go.
Lori
Thanks Carolyn. Your words mean so much to me.
Megan
Hi Lori,
Reading this, several thoughts cross my mind. None of them are brilliant or original, but all of them have been relevant to me when I’ve been struggling with something. So here goes:
1. Things that help a person grow in some way are hard. They stretch you and make you uncomfortable. They present hard dilemmas that you have to figure out for yourself. They’re risky. You need to decide if writing is something you want to keep in your life, even if the only reason right now is that it makes you uncomfortable and forces you to deal with things you don’t want to deal with, internal or external.
I’ve been getting back into being around horses, my childhood passion, and I have to tell you that there have been several times over the last 16 months that I’ve asked myself why the hell I bother because it’s just too hard. I won’t go into all the issues I’ve run into, but there are lots. I’m not ready to give up, though, and when I keep slogging, something always gives and it goes better.
2. According to my personal construct about how we humans work, I surmise that one or more parts of your personality are terrified of your writing because could lead to emotional pain. Perhaps from previous bad experiences, you’ve learned that when you lay yourself out for scrutiny, you get attacked. One option is to retreat. Another is to see if there are steps you can take protect your vulnerable-feeling parts so that you can go on. My approach in such a dilemma is to create an imaginary persona for the part that’s having trouble and ask it what it needs to feel safe. Then take the needed steps.
3. Writing is hard. REALLY REALLY hard – especially the kind of writing you do. You’re incredibly courageous for choosing it as a vocation. It may become easier over time, but I doubt that it will ever be easy. Even the kind of writing that I do, which doesn’t involve any self-exposure at all, requires forcing myself to sit at my desk and experience the agony of sorting out thoughts and ideas so they make sense to a reader. There are many days that I really don’t want to do it, but I make myself anyway. I ask myself why the hell I torture myself this way, and the answer is because I’m a writer. It’s just a statement of fact. I’ve toyed with doing other things, but I always get sucked back in.
4. The middle of the night is when the most vulnerable and least rational parts of my personality hold sway. During the cool light of day when I’m feeling the most rational, I scrutinize the thoughts I’ve had in the middle of the night . Both sides–rational and irrational–are important, and are taken into account in decisions, but the daytime is when I make a them.
Warmly,
Megan
Lori
Hi Megan. #2 on the list resonated with me. You’re right — I realize that the reason why personal essay is hard for me lately is because being vulnerable and letting other people see my weaknesses, failures, hangups and such is still something I’m working on. Being “tough” was a part of my identity from childhood and beyond and I’m still trying to completely embrace the truth that being vulnerable is a strength. Thanks so much for taking the time to write to me.
Megan
We’re similar in that way, Lori. People used to call me Jane Wayne–before I learned how to relax my defenses and trust more.
Tyler
I have a number of reflections after reading this latest story, but here is just one:
Writing is something that you have a lot of love for, and though I agree that there is some importance to knowing how to soldier through the rough patches, procrastination, writer’s block, frustrations, apathy, and assorted other stumbling blocks; once this attitude becomes more central that your love of writing itself, and the pleasures it brings you and others, then it is time to reconsider what truly matters again.
“The stumbling block in the path of the weak, becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong.”
This is a remarkable aphorism, with soooo much application in life.
But I don’t think it is that simple all the time.
Some times, the strongest thing to do seems like the weakest thing to do.
But if a perceived weakness is in actuality, a call to something essential,
such as the vital importance of finding deep joy in the writing process as far more central to the long term health and success of your writing journey, than is the willingness to push on at any cost,
then I believe that this so-called weakness, is actually worth listening to.
Maybe even writing about some day…
Lori
Re: “The stumbling block in the path of the weak, becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong.” This may be my new favorite quote. Thanks Tyler.