Writing used to be my “safe place”

by Rick Blechta 

I’ve been around long enough to have collected a lot of writer friends. Over the course of the past several years — and this predates the Covid pandemic — many of us have experienced difficulty writing.

Writing requires major amounts of concentration and focus. You cannot craft good, readable prose if you’re going along word by word. A complete thought has to be clearly defined in a writer’s mind to get the words onto the page. I’m not suggesting that it comes out perfectly, but it has to at least be complete. 

If you’ve followed my posts for the past few years, I think it’s become pretty clear that I’m having difficulty writing. Hell, I’ve written a complete, full-length novel in 11 weeks. Right now I’m stumbling along working on a novel I began almost six years ago.

Why?

This past weekend I think I figured out what’s going wrong. There’s too much turmoil in the world. 

Sitting down to write whether it was in my home office, in a library, even on transit, I developed a level of concentration that allowed me to work no matter what was going on around me.

No more. That skill has completely abandoned me. Even when I was away for a few days recently and there was no one around to bother me, no internet, no email, and my cell turned off, I couldn’t manage more than a half-hour of good concentration. I was restless and distracted no matter how hard I tried. 

Outside thoughts, meaning outside of what I was trying to write, kept intruding into my brain. It was almost as if someone was firing a ray containing a newsfeed of distracting, well, BS as far as I was concerned. I could not shut it off.

It left me feeling frustrated and unhappy, two things that are not conducive to good writing.

In asking around, I’m finding that I’m not alone. One friend describes it as “the world is too present inside us.” I think that hits the nail squarely on the head.

What to do? The same friend suggested just sitting down to write and go where the muse takes you, even if it comes out more like a poor stream of consciousness. “Certainly don’t attempt anything with your WIP. You’re trying to clear your mind and get your focus back.

Writing used to be for me a way to shut out the world and focus on my own imaginary world, hang out with my invisible friends and share in their lives.

You know those newsfeeds like CNN or Fox News that are shown in waiting rooms or airports? That’s what it’s like inside my head.

“You have to learn how to shut that off,” said my good friend in a final bit of advice.

I answered, “Easier said than done, I think.”

“You have to keep trying. What else is there to do?”

She’s right.

And Life Goes On

One of the facts of a writing life -- as I and my blogmates have noted -- is that life goes on even when we would rather be focused on a work in progress. I'm having one of those weeks. Last week, we learned of a reorganization that is going to affect my academic unit at school. That has meant meetings and discussions and the need to re-orient before we move on. The fact that all this is happening during one of our gloomier weeks here in Albany has me thinking of Shakespeare's  "winter of our discontent" or Melville's Ishmael "growing grim about the mouth."

School is closing this afternoon because of the weather. It looks like rain from my dining room window, but obviously more is happening. So I may not be able to make it to the post office to mail out some paperwork about reissuing the next book in my Lizzie Stuart series. And I won't be able to get to Best Buy to pick up a printer and take it to my computer tech to be programmed. (I ordered a new Dell to replace my ancient desk top, but I was so focused on choosing the right computer that I neglected to order the speakers and a new printer). My computer tech has the speakers waiting to be picked up. But it looks like a few more day without sound on that computer.

Getting back to Ishmael and his gloomy mood. Last night I was looking up that paragraph from Moby Dick -- one of my favorite first paragraphs even when I'm in a good mood. I clicked on one of those sites with quotes from famous authors. I had never done a search for quotes from Melville before. After reading a few, I wanted to post them over my desk. 

I share below three quotes from Melville that sent me back to my keyboard feeling inspired and invigorated:


I try all things, I achieve what I can.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. 

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. 

So I am going to venture out to see what I can get done before the weather gets worse. Then I am going to spend the afternoon and evening trying to "achieve what I can."

(And the rain just turned to snow, so now I'm in for the day. But I'm ready to work).