It's all sensible, reassuring, and helpful advice, Alison! Although my inner archivist cringed when you threw away manuscripts and letters,I do recognize this is helpful as well as necessary. Heavens, I sometimes clear my desk, and feel a lot better for it. I'm also recalling the advice of Nina Beachcroft, a popular British writer for children in the 70s, who said she had some mss that hadn't been published, and, she said, quite right, too. That was my first clue that writing was a process that can play out in unforeseen ways, and that it's good not to invest one's sense of self-worth in a manuscript.
I really appreciate you addressing this! I have a book project I've been working on (on and off) for years -- a breezy memoir-adjacent collection of stories about my time in France. But I'm back home now, living a completely different life. Which makes the material difficult to engage with, either because of unresolved emotions re: the experiences I'm writing about or because I've simply lost some of the memory/detail that would make a scene come alive. So, it's fallen by the wayside over the past couple years. I actually believe I WILL come back to it, or some form of it, in the future. Maybe when I have the luxury of going back to Europe and sitting with memories in context. But going from loudly declaring to everyone "I'm WRITING A BOOK!" to... not... was mentally taxing. For awhile, I felt embarrassed for abandoning it (or leaving it aside.) 🙈
May 15, 2022·edited May 15, 2022Liked by Alison Acheson
Alicia, I get that embarrassment. There are so many unpleasant mind states that come along with sharing with others that I'm thinking of walking away. Lots of it is probably projection, as when I imagine that my husband feels relief, or my mother seems unsurprised (and, since the project is autofiction, also relieved!). When I tell other writers, it gets hairier. The ones who've been so supportive for so long I imagine are disappointed, as if I've failed to offer a return on their investment of time and care. When I talk about it with more junior writers, I feel like an old crone with her cane and her bad teeth, ranting about dragons and lost dreams. Writing comrades make me feel like I'm a mafioso trying to leave The Family. I joke about starting a witness protection program for writers who want to quit--new name, new city, some light plastic surgery, and you will never again hear, "How's that novel coming?"
Oh my, when you start that witness protection program, please let me know!! The "how's that novel coming?" questions get so grating. Sometimes I think, whenever I next decide to write a book, I'll keep the entire project a secret.
Perhaps we have something to envy, or learn from, the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley who wear "failure" as a badge of honor. All the thrown away pages aren't for naught. We're just writing our way to the good stuff and had some lessons to learn along the way.
There's something to not talking too much through the process of a first draft, at least. (Why I loathe the grant application process--such a creative-energy drain--how can the council folks not understand this?)
So many good points here, to "how it is." How we deal with others' expectation, family, and other writers... maybe even people who should know better. And do, if they take a moment to think about it, to reconsider. I have "encouraged," too, only to realize the person might need some other words--or encouragement in another direction.
Brilliant! And so helpful. (I have done this. Walked away. More than once. And at the time, it always felt like I was leaving a house I had lived in for 20 years to be reclaimed by nature or something. But when I was cleaning out my storage room, I found boxes of old paper manuscripts, and some of them I couldn't actually remember writing. I knew that I had to be my writing. But still... On the other hand, there are a couple that I still hope to go back to. They were perhaps just out of reach back then. )
You are welcome and thank you for being here. As you mull through possibilities, don't hesitate to share questions and thoughts. It's a tough decision--even to set aside. It IS the emotional pieces, surely.
My post from earlier in the week was about projects overlapping. Do you have another project circling in a cage somewhere, waiting to get out? Also to ponder...
I do. I started writing it a while back, but the rejections from the novel I am submitting have made me stall. I am struggling to feel motivated to keep going.
Freya--so glad you wrote. That DOES make it tough. Are you talking about feeling discouraged with your current project because the one you've recently (relative, I realize--it can take far too long to sell a completed work!) is being rejected...? That's my understanding...
I find there are so many choices and actions we need to do in order to continue--I sometimes think of them as head-games. As in telling ourselves certain words or ideas... often to block out other words and ideas!
Does your current project excite you? Does it connect with you on a deep level--even if that level is the "fun" of it, and even lightness--that's still a deep connection. (Especially if going through negative stuff with another project.)
When you are able to switch off the anxiety about your earlier work, can you get lost in the new one?
In your process journal--have you read my post about that?--can you scribble a few notes to remind yourself of this enthusiasm for the new project (again relative! Could be two years!) and re-read, re-place yourself in that each day before you begin your work...? In other words, building a real WALL between the two projects.
Let the "old" project own its rejection (and know that can change!); this current one is moving forward.
Oh, I feel for you. I've been here. It's too much like being a parent and seeing one child come home from the playground after another day of being bullied... and then having the younger, more playful not-bullied child waving their ribbon from the dance competition... and somehow you have to bring them to some place of both feeling worthy.
But somehow compartmentalize. Decide certain times of day will be dedicated to your "dancer" child, and other times will be spent on the one who's having a rough time. If you have an agent, mentally hand-over the rough-time to her.
I have one of those--rather long-term now--bullied kids who may have found a friend in a particular editor. It is exciting to see that someone finally understands this older story of mine. It's been through years and re-writes. It's been one that I've set aside, and brought out again, and thoroughly re-written, and never tossed. There are those too. Long-haul stories.
This all takes so much faith. And love. It's important to be kind to your very self in all this, and to what each story needs.
"What does THIS story need today?"
So just a few thoughts here... Thank you for sharing this--it feels like it should have been part of the post. A good question of our reality.
Thanks for this. My current project DID excite me at one point. I have just lost all of my get up and go (which is very unlike me and I am hoping its partly to do with hormones I am taking). But maybe its because I have let other projects (not writing) get in the way and take priority as they are more successful, and so have lost momentum too. Such a big task ahead and hard to justify when the last one has got nowhere (not even a little bit of a bite from an agent). I would love to be able to pull the two projects apart, but I am having a hard time doing that in my heart (not my head). It seems that no matter what my head reads or knows about writing, it's having a hard time bringing my heart a long with it. Which is a hard thing to admit... My head is gets it. But how can we get the heart to listen?
Freya, do check out the wonderful comment below, posted by branchiwosen... The idea of "curiosity" is powerful, and is more heart than head--or can be.
Yes, it is too easy to allow others--both people and projects--to get in our way. And sometimes, for awhile, we might need to do that. (And toss the guilt about it.) But then, to return, we need some renewed heart-space.
Sometimes it can come down to knowing that this particular piece needs to be written for my own self, before anyone else. And does need to be written.
Make it about you and your heart; and the "be curious" piece. These are ways to approach.
Are these both lengthy projects? Might you work with shorter pieces for awhile until you and your heart feel like a return? I wonder. Sometimes playing with poetry, or even writing by hand, puts me into a better space.
Thanks! Have had a read and I am naturally a curious person, so I am stumped with this lack of get up and go. They are both big fiction projects, and I have been working on a side project of fun prompts that I enjoy... I will keep trying. I have asked someone if they want to collaborate on the non-fiction workbook and I think that has helped me a bit with that project. Gave me some excitement!
I suspect this could be a time thing. Perhaps only the passage of time and trusting it’ll work out one way or another. And just see what happens. I dunno.
Thanks so much though for the help! It does make a difference to talk about it.
talk about tackling a tough subject! I never throw anything out, but I have parked projects that have a lot of potential so I can shart the shiny hot new one. Not sure what to make of that. Best laid plans laid to the side...fear of successs? or not knowing what to do next....Coaching helps. thanks for your support and honest sharing,Alison. All the best!!!
I love your phrase a deep-deep-sense of “rightness” that creates this giddy, inexplicable lightening of your heart. That makes you sit at the computer or pick up a pen to write, even if you’re in the middle of doing something important. Sometimes this feeling smacks me in the chest and I jump over the shoes left in the middle of my living room floor to get to my desk.
But there is also another word that has been a miracle for me to fall in love with writing again. And again.
Curiosity.
The credit goes to Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic, where she talks about being more curious than you’re frightened of creating.
Curiosity works not just for winning over the fear of creativity. It also opens your creative mind to endless possibilities. When I’m working on a project for a client or when I’m writing an essay about being a black woman working in white institutions or when I’m writing a short literary fiction, I’m CURIOUS to see where writing would take me. I’m curious to read the sentences I’ve written. I’m curious to find out my thoughts on a memory that happened years ago or what I’m thinking about my relationship with my dad.
Whenever you feel boredom or dread when you think of writing the next article or book or whatever, try curiosity. Be curious to see what you can create and who you will be after your creation. And boredom or dread will start sleeping in the bottom of your bed.
What a perfect, path-finding word--yeah, to Elizabeth Gilbert, and to you for sharing this with us! Thank you. I'll have to call Freya's (above comment) attention to your post here.
Toss boredom and dread--especially the latter--right out the window. (One of my fave words--defenestration--any reason to use it more often.)
Writing is so often our work to try to understand, and curiosity can birth questions--more so than frustration. And it puts us into the heart of a child again. Freya talks about the "heart"--so this connects, too.
It is true. we learn and grow during this writing adventure. A writer friend who published her first book the same year I published mine, 12 years ago, has just published a book she started 20 years ago. It's almost a different book now as she has rewritten it a few times but she has learned so much in the past 20 years that it is now a very good story. Patience and perserverence is required to be a writter. And sometimes we do just need to walk away! (but not too quickly)
"Not too quickly." With thought. Thanks for sharing this, Darlene. Twenty years can go by quickly. I am always so grateful that at the outset, I have no idea how long it will take!
It's all sensible, reassuring, and helpful advice, Alison! Although my inner archivist cringed when you threw away manuscripts and letters,I do recognize this is helpful as well as necessary. Heavens, I sometimes clear my desk, and feel a lot better for it. I'm also recalling the advice of Nina Beachcroft, a popular British writer for children in the 70s, who said she had some mss that hadn't been published, and, she said, quite right, too. That was my first clue that writing was a process that can play out in unforeseen ways, and that it's good not to invest one's sense of self-worth in a manuscript.
I really appreciate you addressing this! I have a book project I've been working on (on and off) for years -- a breezy memoir-adjacent collection of stories about my time in France. But I'm back home now, living a completely different life. Which makes the material difficult to engage with, either because of unresolved emotions re: the experiences I'm writing about or because I've simply lost some of the memory/detail that would make a scene come alive. So, it's fallen by the wayside over the past couple years. I actually believe I WILL come back to it, or some form of it, in the future. Maybe when I have the luxury of going back to Europe and sitting with memories in context. But going from loudly declaring to everyone "I'm WRITING A BOOK!" to... not... was mentally taxing. For awhile, I felt embarrassed for abandoning it (or leaving it aside.) 🙈
Alicia, I get that embarrassment. There are so many unpleasant mind states that come along with sharing with others that I'm thinking of walking away. Lots of it is probably projection, as when I imagine that my husband feels relief, or my mother seems unsurprised (and, since the project is autofiction, also relieved!). When I tell other writers, it gets hairier. The ones who've been so supportive for so long I imagine are disappointed, as if I've failed to offer a return on their investment of time and care. When I talk about it with more junior writers, I feel like an old crone with her cane and her bad teeth, ranting about dragons and lost dreams. Writing comrades make me feel like I'm a mafioso trying to leave The Family. I joke about starting a witness protection program for writers who want to quit--new name, new city, some light plastic surgery, and you will never again hear, "How's that novel coming?"
Oh my, when you start that witness protection program, please let me know!! The "how's that novel coming?" questions get so grating. Sometimes I think, whenever I next decide to write a book, I'll keep the entire project a secret.
Perhaps we have something to envy, or learn from, the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley who wear "failure" as a badge of honor. All the thrown away pages aren't for naught. We're just writing our way to the good stuff and had some lessons to learn along the way.
"Witness protection"--yes!
There's something to not talking too much through the process of a first draft, at least. (Why I loathe the grant application process--such a creative-energy drain--how can the council folks not understand this?)
So many good points here, to "how it is." How we deal with others' expectation, family, and other writers... maybe even people who should know better. And do, if they take a moment to think about it, to reconsider. I have "encouraged," too, only to realize the person might need some other words--or encouragement in another direction.
Grateful for the discussion and sharing here...
Such a difficult decision. Some great tips. Thank you
Brilliant! And so helpful. (I have done this. Walked away. More than once. And at the time, it always felt like I was leaving a house I had lived in for 20 years to be reclaimed by nature or something. But when I was cleaning out my storage room, I found boxes of old paper manuscripts, and some of them I couldn't actually remember writing. I knew that I had to be my writing. But still... On the other hand, there are a couple that I still hope to go back to. They were perhaps just out of reach back then. )
Timing plays such a role. (And some manuscripts have to be set aside, even when completed, for the right time to market. That's a whole other topic.)
Yes, what a strange feeling not to recognize your own work--but it does happen.
You describe it so well, Maureen, the feeling of leaving a home--and reclaimed by nature--yes, how it is.
This is where I am at right now… Not sure where to go…. Thank you
You are welcome and thank you for being here. As you mull through possibilities, don't hesitate to share questions and thoughts. It's a tough decision--even to set aside. It IS the emotional pieces, surely.
My post from earlier in the week was about projects overlapping. Do you have another project circling in a cage somewhere, waiting to get out? Also to ponder...
I do. I started writing it a while back, but the rejections from the novel I am submitting have made me stall. I am struggling to feel motivated to keep going.
Freya--so glad you wrote. That DOES make it tough. Are you talking about feeling discouraged with your current project because the one you've recently (relative, I realize--it can take far too long to sell a completed work!) is being rejected...? That's my understanding...
I find there are so many choices and actions we need to do in order to continue--I sometimes think of them as head-games. As in telling ourselves certain words or ideas... often to block out other words and ideas!
Does your current project excite you? Does it connect with you on a deep level--even if that level is the "fun" of it, and even lightness--that's still a deep connection. (Especially if going through negative stuff with another project.)
When you are able to switch off the anxiety about your earlier work, can you get lost in the new one?
In your process journal--have you read my post about that?--can you scribble a few notes to remind yourself of this enthusiasm for the new project (again relative! Could be two years!) and re-read, re-place yourself in that each day before you begin your work...? In other words, building a real WALL between the two projects.
Let the "old" project own its rejection (and know that can change!); this current one is moving forward.
Oh, I feel for you. I've been here. It's too much like being a parent and seeing one child come home from the playground after another day of being bullied... and then having the younger, more playful not-bullied child waving their ribbon from the dance competition... and somehow you have to bring them to some place of both feeling worthy.
But somehow compartmentalize. Decide certain times of day will be dedicated to your "dancer" child, and other times will be spent on the one who's having a rough time. If you have an agent, mentally hand-over the rough-time to her.
I have one of those--rather long-term now--bullied kids who may have found a friend in a particular editor. It is exciting to see that someone finally understands this older story of mine. It's been through years and re-writes. It's been one that I've set aside, and brought out again, and thoroughly re-written, and never tossed. There are those too. Long-haul stories.
This all takes so much faith. And love. It's important to be kind to your very self in all this, and to what each story needs.
"What does THIS story need today?"
So just a few thoughts here... Thank you for sharing this--it feels like it should have been part of the post. A good question of our reality.
Thanks for this. My current project DID excite me at one point. I have just lost all of my get up and go (which is very unlike me and I am hoping its partly to do with hormones I am taking). But maybe its because I have let other projects (not writing) get in the way and take priority as they are more successful, and so have lost momentum too. Such a big task ahead and hard to justify when the last one has got nowhere (not even a little bit of a bite from an agent). I would love to be able to pull the two projects apart, but I am having a hard time doing that in my heart (not my head). It seems that no matter what my head reads or knows about writing, it's having a hard time bringing my heart a long with it. Which is a hard thing to admit... My head is gets it. But how can we get the heart to listen?
Freya, do check out the wonderful comment below, posted by branchiwosen... The idea of "curiosity" is powerful, and is more heart than head--or can be.
Yes, it is too easy to allow others--both people and projects--to get in our way. And sometimes, for awhile, we might need to do that. (And toss the guilt about it.) But then, to return, we need some renewed heart-space.
Sometimes it can come down to knowing that this particular piece needs to be written for my own self, before anyone else. And does need to be written.
Make it about you and your heart; and the "be curious" piece. These are ways to approach.
Are these both lengthy projects? Might you work with shorter pieces for awhile until you and your heart feel like a return? I wonder. Sometimes playing with poetry, or even writing by hand, puts me into a better space.
Thanks! Have had a read and I am naturally a curious person, so I am stumped with this lack of get up and go. They are both big fiction projects, and I have been working on a side project of fun prompts that I enjoy... I will keep trying. I have asked someone if they want to collaborate on the non-fiction workbook and I think that has helped me a bit with that project. Gave me some excitement!
I suspect this could be a time thing. Perhaps only the passage of time and trusting it’ll work out one way or another. And just see what happens. I dunno.
Thanks so much though for the help! It does make a difference to talk about it.
talk about tackling a tough subject! I never throw anything out, but I have parked projects that have a lot of potential so I can shart the shiny hot new one. Not sure what to make of that. Best laid plans laid to the side...fear of successs? or not knowing what to do next....Coaching helps. thanks for your support and honest sharing,Alison. All the best!!!
To know you can and have "finished" in the past, at some point, is good. That too eases "parking."
If however finishing is a problem... well, that's why I suggest completing shorter pieces. To know you can, and build that piece of confidence.
All the Best to you, too, Marilyn, in your wonderful sacred foolishness!
I love your phrase a deep-deep-sense of “rightness” that creates this giddy, inexplicable lightening of your heart. That makes you sit at the computer or pick up a pen to write, even if you’re in the middle of doing something important. Sometimes this feeling smacks me in the chest and I jump over the shoes left in the middle of my living room floor to get to my desk.
But there is also another word that has been a miracle for me to fall in love with writing again. And again.
Curiosity.
The credit goes to Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic, where she talks about being more curious than you’re frightened of creating.
Curiosity works not just for winning over the fear of creativity. It also opens your creative mind to endless possibilities. When I’m working on a project for a client or when I’m writing an essay about being a black woman working in white institutions or when I’m writing a short literary fiction, I’m CURIOUS to see where writing would take me. I’m curious to read the sentences I’ve written. I’m curious to find out my thoughts on a memory that happened years ago or what I’m thinking about my relationship with my dad.
Whenever you feel boredom or dread when you think of writing the next article or book or whatever, try curiosity. Be curious to see what you can create and who you will be after your creation. And boredom or dread will start sleeping in the bottom of your bed.
What a perfect, path-finding word--yeah, to Elizabeth Gilbert, and to you for sharing this with us! Thank you. I'll have to call Freya's (above comment) attention to your post here.
Toss boredom and dread--especially the latter--right out the window. (One of my fave words--defenestration--any reason to use it more often.)
Writing is so often our work to try to understand, and curiosity can birth questions--more so than frustration. And it puts us into the heart of a child again. Freya talks about the "heart"--so this connects, too.
Grateful for your thoughts and energy here!
I wrote an article I am proud of and would love your wise and considered interpretations good human 😊
https://tumbleweedwords.substack.com/p/is-the-celebration-of-overweight?s=w
It is true. we learn and grow during this writing adventure. A writer friend who published her first book the same year I published mine, 12 years ago, has just published a book she started 20 years ago. It's almost a different book now as she has rewritten it a few times but she has learned so much in the past 20 years that it is now a very good story. Patience and perserverence is required to be a writter. And sometimes we do just need to walk away! (but not too quickly)
"Not too quickly." With thought. Thanks for sharing this, Darlene. Twenty years can go by quickly. I am always so grateful that at the outset, I have no idea how long it will take!