Getting Back into the Grooooove

Well everyone, it’s a Monday again. Happy Monday! I’m sure most people are rolling their eyes at that statement, but sometimes we just have to get excited about stuff and today I’m excited about life, so I’m wishing you all a happy Monday.

I decided late last week that enough was enough: it was time to start writing every day again. Before leaving Australia, I was fighting to finish our moving admin and finalise all of my uni assignments for submission. The result of that and moving to Oklahoma meant that for quite some time, I only worked sporadically on my novel. Any excuse would do. I couldn’t decide how to move my protagonist into the next phase of their journey, so I allowed it to develop into a never-ending and seemingly insurmountable obstacle that kept my notebook closed for weeks. When I did figure it out – late one night in bed, scrawling on a notebook in the dark – I found other ‘reasons’. I was tired, I was bored (I know, I know, forgive me) and I didn’t want to try. I was lacklustre, I was trying to settle myself into uni, I was nesting into our new place.

I didn’t write consistently for close to a month.

A month, people. From a woman who considers herself a writer, I didn’t work on my baby, my one-and-only, my first novel, for a month. Sure, I wrote some odds and end of poetry and sure, I germinated a few new ideas for short stories, and yes, I wrote down some interesting observations of life… but I didn’t really write. I just let it fall away and I filled my time with other things, most of them not overly stimulating or important (I started playing Sims Freeplay on my iPhone, which may have been a huge life mistake). I’m sure that there are people out there who find this story familiar. Whether it is blogging, poetry, short stories, or a novel, sometimes it’s easy to just let our projects fall by the wayside and be absorbed by the demands life places on us. 

Sometimes, it’s hard to be a writer.

I feel that when I started on this path, no one really told me it was going to be hard. It seems silly when you consider the wealth of knowledge and advice available for aspiring writers to tap into, but that’s how I feel. It’s easy to look at our favourite famous authors and imagine that one day that can be us. Reaching it, it turns out, takes a little more than luck and a love of words. Learning that sometimes being a writer will be hard, and that sometimes I won’t want to, and sometimes, I’m going to have to force myself to pick up my pen, is an interesting journey. It’s never going to be harder than when you haven’t written in a while and you have to remind yourself not only of how far you have to go, but maybe also of all the time you’ve already lost. It would be so much easier to put your pen down, close your languishing document and do something else… But then your story may never get written.

If nothing else, remember that. Your story will never be told if you don’t tell it. Someone else may attempt to write it for you, but they can never do justice to the wild storms, the quiet slumber or the eddying mountain streams of your mind and it will become something less than what it might have been. One day you may have to let someone tear through your novel, marking it with red pen and suggestions, and redrafting it with you to give it to the world… But until that happens, your story is solely, blessedly yours. Don’t miss the opportunity to rediscover that story, and yourself, amongst the pages that are just waiting to be taken up again. The first step is easy. Make the choice and close the door to the outside, re-enter your own imagination and dive back into writing. Ten minutes? That’s fine. Five? That’s great too. Just come back to it.

I hope that this inspires you to pick up your pen again. Even if you just try for ten minutes, you might find at the end that you want to keep going, and you’re hungry to continue telling your tale again. Take this blessing for tired writers and go forth:

May your pen be light in hungry hands,

and the ink flow freely to your page.

May your words nestle together like puzzle pieces,

and your characters remember their manners.

May your mind be full of wonder and madness,

mystified by the wonder of open seas and open skies.

All of this, I hope for you… And

may your pen be light in your hungry hands.

Sometimes all we need is to be reminded of how much we love what we do.

— Ana.