Writing When Writing is Impossible
In two months, I’ll be in full surgery preparation, convinced I’ll be able to keep working on my new novel immediately afterward. Not true. I’m going to be learning to walk again in my newly configured body. The earliest I’ll be able to sit at my desk will be the end of August (even then for no more than fifteen minutes every couple of hours). It’s the same feeling as running into a Road Closed sign on the one road that takes me directly where I want to go. My first response will not be one of embracing the possibility of adventure.
Inevitable, yet always unexpected, Road Closed signs pop-up in life so often that life itself may prove to be one long detour. On occasion, the detour demands that I set aside my writing, usually when the writing is going well, when I have momentum and ideas and the language to render those ideas on the page. I only want to write and physically cannot. Swear word. Swear word. Swear word.
The first futile effort is to deny the road is closed to me. I fall into the making of plans. Plans are stories I use to reassure myself I’m in control how the future will unfold. As if any of us could ever do that. Knowing better after many U-turns, I’ve my own process for maintaining forward motion when the chosen way is barred.
The thing I must remember: Life always offers more roads, roads galore—even if I have to forge them.
I try to take advantage of any available moment allowed to contemplate my novel. I keep a notebook at hand. I don’t try to work on the prose itself. The point is to jot down (with dates) the ideas I am gifted regarding my characters and their supporting story elements. These notes needn’t make anything close to sense in sequence. I have no need to organize them until later. Capturing them on paper or a smart phone via note or voice apps, even cryptically, is enough. This system is as close outlining as this dedicated pantser is willing to indulge.
Writers tend to think of our productivity in terms of word and page counts. In truth, writing occurs in the mind and heart before it ever hits paper or screen. I wait for the flash of an idea that I can flesh out and work into the narrative when circumstances permit. It’s paramount to catch those ideas. It takes but a minute to make sure that idea is noted where I can refer to it.
In Anne Tyler’s wonderful essay Still Just Writing, her father tells her that there is always time enough to do what we are meant to do. This philosophy of “there will be time enough” has stuck with me since first reading the essay. In the first few months of recovering, I may not be able to compose new text, but I can always handwrite a note to myself indicating what I would be writing if writing were accessible. As William Churchill is quoted as saying (and Churchill said everything) “Having a plan is useless, but one should always be planning.”
Translation: Roll with it. Remain open to the possibilities.
A big challenge stands before me, but when aren’t there challenges, the unanticipated closed roads? The thing I must remember: Life always offers more roads, roads galore—even if I have to forge them. I’ll have more time. On arriving at my destination, I’ll still be a writer but with new, adventurous material to draw from after taking that journey. I’ll be a changed person. Isn’t exploring change why we write?
Writing Exercise
Take a day or two, maybe a week if you’re feeling daring, and work on your writing project as if you were physically unable to get to it. Pay attention to where, for you, writing begins. In a feeling? In a thought? In reviewing what you already have? Should new ideas strike you, how are you going to make sure you have them when you return to your work? (Hint: if you take handwritten notes, make sure you can understand what you’ve written in terms of your idea. The words Blue in chapter three can lose their meaning fast. This is experience talking: a lot good ideas lost to illegible Post-It notes.)
Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash