Degrees of Thawing

I'm a little bit paralyzed. I've spent over two years writing and editing two books in a series, and the ideas are there for a third, but I find them just sitting there in the folds of my brain, waiting for me to DO SOMETHING.

Unfortunately, like I said, nothing will come out. 

I think to myself, maybe what I need is a change . . . new characters, new setting, new world. So, lucky me, I have another promising idea for a book for a slightly younger audience (maybe 8-12, instead of 10 and up). I've developed the characters, laid out much of the plot. I've gotten excited about it. But still, it sits inside of my head—in the confines of this dense skull that insists on hoarding my ideas and keeping them prisoner. I can’t write a word of it.

Why is this happening?

I think it happens to all writers at some point or another, and right now just seems to be my time. You see, the rejections have started rolling in, and despite my intellectual understanding that facing rejection is, indeed, the lot of the writer . . . I also know that we’re a sensitive bunch. Well, perhaps I should just speak for myself:

I am a sensitive, wildly open-hearted, hopeful, vulnerable soul. And rejection hurts.

My head tries to tell my heart that there are a million reasons why an agent will decide not to take on a manuscript. I know this. I know that it is not enough for them to like it. It's not even enough to LOVE it. They have to love it more than they love fifty or more others (and that’s once they've weeded away the hundreds that they REALLY don't want).

But this mind-brain connection of mine doesn’t seem to be functioning properly. Someone pulled the plug on those nerves whose job it is to get this message to my heart—the message that says that none of this polite (even encouraging) rejection means that I’m not talented, that my story is worthless, or that my voice is useless. I cling to stories of famous authors who were told there work was un-publishable (James Rollins) or who got 10, 20, 30, 40 or more rejections before their manuscript found a home.

And yet, my writing brain is frozen.

What I can’t figure out is how to jump start it again—how to turn off the “fear of rejection” sensors so that creative messages can start flowing freely again.

(pause)

Now hold on a second, I just re-read what I wrote and realized that I specifically said that I was “a little bit paralyzed.” But, that’s not really paralysis then, is it? If it’s just a little bit, then isn’t it technically paresis? (Can’t turn off the Speech Pathologist’s brain) Paresis is a reduced ability to activate those neurons, rather than the complete inability to do so. So, that means that I can move. I can begin. I can take the first steps to strengthening those writing muscles that have begun to atrophy under the influence of fear. (Pretty sure I’m mixing neurological metaphors all over the place. Please forgive me.)

There is a fantastic book out there, which actually gave me the mental and emotional freedom to begin my writing journey in the first place. It is called, Write for Your Lives: Inspire Your Creative Writing with Buddhist Wisdom by Joseph Sestito. I don’t remember a lot of the details from the book, but I do remember that it taught me about applying mindfulness practice to writing. It finally hit home to me, two years ago, that I cannot live in any moment but this one, and I cannot write any page, scene, or chapter than the one I am in. Instead of thinking about the end of the book, or about agents and publishing houses, success and failure . . . this book taught me to stay with what my characters are doing, feeling, and experiencing NOW. Then walk with them into the next moment, and the next . . .

What you’re really doing is staying present with yourself, RIGHT NOW.

So, what I’m starting to realize is that maybe my intellect and my emotional self need slightly different things at this time. . . .

For the purposes of feeding that intellectual beast who knows that sometimes getting published really is a numbers game, I will continue to post each rejection on my corkboard like a badge of honor. I will also turn right around and send my manuscript out again each time I’m rejected, to reassure that “thinker” that I’m not giving up.

But, for the purposes of that fragile being that lives inside my chest, taking rejection much to heart, I will find a way to purge every moment but this one, and I will write something new to make her sing—I will put words on paper that make her fly to other worlds and see through different eyes until there is nothing to do but to remember that, for me, writing is everything.