I Forget To Breathe

Blogging has taught me a lot about myself as a writer. For example, that I am distracted by everything and need almost complete silence to write. I've also confirmed that I hate drafting (always have) and like any athlete with an injured knee, I've learned to compensate by writing slowly enough to edit as I go. I now know that no matter how many times I use the word definitely, I will definitely spell it definately, and perhaps most satisfyingly, that I have the ability to make people laugh out loud (I've heard you!).

What writing hasn't taught me is how to prepare myself for the deep, questioning, soul-searching paralysis and doubt that accompanies writer's block. I mean, I'm no dummy, I knew this was coming at some point. I can't even tell you how many times I've read about the "miserable self doubt" that plagues writers who encounter a dry spell. But for all the wonderfully-talented writers and artists who try to recapture the miserable depths of creative self-doubt, none of them does much to prepare you for the mud-stuck rut of it.

Which, on a side note, brings up an interesting thought: Have you ever read the description of an emotion that you've never experienced that made you feel as though you have? The idea is such a tangle of metaphysics in my head right now I can hardly get the point across without confusing myself. Does the question make sense? For all the books I've read about places I've never been that truly made me feel like I was there, I can't think of one example of an emotional experience that was ever described so well that I felt like I had had it before I had it. (Is your head spinning yet?)

Think about it. By the time women in our culture are in their 20's, most have been so well-conditioned to talk about their feelings with one another that they are expertly-versed in psychobabble and bored with talking about the "typical range of emotions" by the time they're 30. I realize this conversation doesn't strike everyone as fascinating, but the fact that we live in a culture that is so saturated with emotional analysis explains why I'm hung up on the idea of experiencing a new emotion altogether, and whether its possible to translate that emotion to someone else through writing.

Okay, wow. Enough of that sidetracking crap. Sheeeesh!

The point is, though blogging has taught me a lot about writing, writing (more specifically not writing) has taught me something very important about myself: That I put an incredible amount of pressure on myself to accomplish great things. Then to remedy any sense of overwhelming, I try to do too much at once. My Dad is always telling me to "Slow down. Take things one day at a time," and he's right. Sometimes life intersects with stress and writer's block and moving to a big city and I forget to breathe.

Writer Anne Lamott describes a similar momentum like this,

"One time, in one of my classes, I asked my students to write about lunches for half an hour, and I sat down with them and wrote ...But in half an hour there was already too much material for me and some of the people in the class, and it threatened to immobilize us. So we decided not even to bother with our parents' handwriting on the outside of the brown paper lunch bag--how much it resembled a Turkish assassin's and what that said about us. We decided to set aside the bag itself for a moment. For the time being we'd stick with the contents, and, to begin with, the sandwich. That was the one-inch picture frame we were going to look through." (From Bird By Bird, "School Lunches")

You see, 99% of the time when I'm having trouble moving forward, it isn't because I can't think of what to write. It's not that I don't know where I'm going. It's that I want everything to come together at once. I'll try to fit so many ideas into a few short paragraphs when I can't even get my arms around the idea enough to begin. Eventually, some miserable voice inside of me starts whispering a speech I've heard a thousand times before... About how I can't possibly become a successful writer if no one takes me seriously. And if I want people to take my writing seriously, I'd better write about something profound. And if I don't write from a new, creative perspective, then I'll drown in the overwhelming sea of no-talent nobody writers and never accomplish my dream.

From there, it's all over. I'm paralyzed.

I won't dare sit down to write until I've got the Number One Best Idea I've ever had, which I might as well throw away forever if I don't already have a witty lead composed in my head. And if the Number One Idea doesn't ever come, then I'd sooner reconsider any dream I've had of moving to New York to become a magazine editor than face the embarrassment of writing something lousy. What an awful thing to say.

This type of thinking is incredibly frustrating in itself. There are too many people standing in the way of my dreams in life to be standing in my own way with this do-nothing paralysis nonsense. No shit, it frustrates me. It frustrates me that I'm moving to New York next month and despite applying for dozens of jobs, networking with influential professionals, having a handful of face-to-face interviews, a terrific resume and plenty of capability, there's still no assurance I'll be any closer to my dream.

"What I do at this point," writes Lamott, "as the panic mounts and the jungle drums begin beating and I realize that the well has run dry and that my future is behind me and I'm going to have to get a job only I'm completely unemployable, is to stop. First I try to breathe, because I'm either sitting there panting like a lapdog or I'm unintentionally making slow asthmatic death rattles. So I just sit there for a minute, breathing slowly, quietly."

I do yoga. I tell people its for my mental health and lean muscle tone, but it's really to ensure that I'm breathing for at least one hour a day.

Ironically, my first sense of relief comes from knowing that people have felt this way before. Other people, sure, but breaking down and feeling completely insecure about your craft is almost a rite of passage for artists, some sort of sick initiation. (Maybe now I'm in the club ...? I don't know.) What I DO know is that for the next month I've got to concentrate on a one-inch frame perspective, take things one day at a time, and breathe. It may sound easy, but you'd be surprised.