During my recent move to Florida, certain people have done something unthinkable; they have ordered me to take a break from writing. “At least for a few weeks,” they said. “Until everything settles down.”
No one has ever ordered me to take a break from eating or breathing but writing is dispensable, they say, not something I need to survive. It is true that packing up the entire contents of a house in a week does not allow for many other activities. But I decided to keep writing anyway, even if I only had time for a sentence. Why? Because once I let writing go, even for a little while, the idea of starting back becomes a daunting Momentous Event. Expectations soar for my brilliant moment of return. Anxiety gathers.
Besides, even writing one sentence means thinking about my story or article. It is more likely, then, that I will think more about it as my day goes on, and when I finally do return, I can easily pick up where I left off. But there is another reason for writing during upheaval. Often, it is during times of stress and change that my writing goes best. Many things happen which are beyond my control, but writing takes me to a place where problems, no matter how difficult, have concrete solutions, and I am likely to channel the my thwarted energy into writing.
My best writing year was the sixth grade. It was probably no accident that this was also the year I was bullied by a gang of girls, and going to school had become a frightening everyday hell.
I was forced, by law, to go there. Writing became a refuge that year, a protected playground. It gave me a place where I could move around and breathe freely.
The teacher encouraged me by giving the class weekly creative writing assignments, all dealing with point of view: Pretend you are a flea. Pretend you are a car. Pretend you are a slave during the Civil War. The message was clear. I could be anyone, anything, if only for a time. A wizard, a dog, a thief.
I always received praise for my stories, but what I remember most was how my writing changed. Gone were the fairy tales, the ghost stories, the talking animals inspired by cartoons.
In the new books I was then reading writers could do something amazing: they could recreate thought flow, spin words into minds. Reading was ESP. It was mind reading.
Excited, I struggled to create that same effect in my writing and began to play with interior monologues.
My style changed. My new characters, whether animal or human, felt and thought, eased pain with humor. They hoped and guessed. They could be happy about sad things or sad about happy things.
This change may have happened without the daily stress of being bullied, but the need to write was more urgent because of it. Writing was not just about being “good.” Beneath was a quest for something else.
Many years later, as a hopelessly blocked adult, I remembered the writing I did in the sixth grade, and that became a guide for what I wanted to get back to.
Back then, writing was not about “being a writer.” It was about experimenting and discovering a place of freedom in a classroom where I had none.
As a child I only wrote made up stories. I wish I had kept a journal back then; it would be interesting to read it now. Written observations of true events take on new meaning over time.
I have kept journals since college. When I packed to come here, I found a small mountain of them in my closet and had to decide whether to take them.
They are hard to throw away because reading them is like going back in time. I can see exactly what I was thinking about, hoping for, or worrying about in 1996 or 2001. As I read, I wonder, did I really think that, say that, want that?
Writing in a journal as events unfold means facing insecurity head-on. It means writing blind, with limited knowledge, stumbling into an uncertain future. As a reader, I have knowledge that Old Me would have desperately liked to know. In this superior position, I know exactly where the events described will lead.
At the time of writing, my record of experiences often seem boring, but many years after writing them, I have gone back to find them transformed. Time, it turns out, adds layers of context to even trivial details.
For example, I kept a journal during a severe depression, and I could not foresee a time when I would ever not be depressed. Back then, I seemed capable of only making the most trivial mundane entries. Ate lunch. Read a book on astronomy. Played a video game.
I was writing mechanically. However, I went back many years after I had recovered and reread what I had written. The astronomy book I had read, one of my boring journal details, was significant. Readingabout space, dark matter, and other planets had focused my attention away from myself.
It reminded me that I was living on a rock that orbited a star, in a universe whose origins were mysterious. Afterward, I checked out more books on astronomy, including Cosmos by Carl Sagan. The book was riveting, a lyrical homage to the universe.
I woke up one day, many books later, and thought, “I get to read Carl Sagan today.” The sun, which I now knew was 93 million miles away and whose light took eight minutes to reach earth, had risen. I was eager to get out of bed. My depression was over.
My “boring” journal had a plot – a conflict, a struggle, and even a resolution, but at the time of writing, my recovery was too slow and I was unable to see it.
Rereading old journals allows me to recapture detailed memories long forgotten. It reveals recurring themes and patterns. It shows me that I have solved seemingly unsolvable problems before and that I can do it again. It motivates me to write every day.
Writing every day, through any circumstance, makes writing not just an activity but a way of life. Stability is unnecessary.
Life is inherently unstable, and writing is not something I want to take a break from, whether I move to a different state, country, or planet.
Upheavals, whether large or small, are just waves among thousands. Writing is a way to capture or transform them before they roll onto the shore and disappear.