On Returning to Writing

As I write this, most of our planet is currently under a form of lockdown, just emerging from one, or preparing for one. There’s a lot of talk of productivity, of distractions, of filling your time and living slow.

It’s really strange to write about my own little world during a time that feels so global, but I think that speaks to how we’re all looking at our life right now. The entire world is undergoing a metamorphosis—for better or for worse—and with that widespread change, we’re forced to look inward at ourselves, at the walls of our homes, our communities. I feel a polar, peculiar sense of being both widely connected to strangers around the planet and yet more deeply entrenched in the survival of my own local community than ever before.

As a writer, slow living has always been my preferred method and antidote for creating good work. This new life, where I spend all my time in my 500-square-foot apartment, is exactly that, and yet like so many of us writers or storytellers out there, I struggle to use this time to finally return to my narrative roots.

In many ways, it’s likely because it feels futile. What good would my story about something so far from reality do for people right now?

(Quite a lot. Just look at all the people reading books and binging Netflix right now)

Plus, spending more time in my head doesn’t do much by way of easing panic. I’ve spent a few nights now spiraling from anxiety, and it’s weird that now this is a very normal feeling that so many others around me relate to and experience. I can’t help but wonder if 20 years from now I’ll wash my hands every time I go somewhere new, if I’ll buy a lot more hand sanitizer, if I’ll have perfect skin from not touching my face. What habits will become ingrained in me from this small period of my life?

How interesting that a habit from fear can take only a few months to become a part of you for the rest of your life, but something you want to incorporate can be so difficult. When I lived in Spain, I always held my purse in front of me for fear of pickpocketers, and to this day I can’t shake that. What I’d give for more my behaviors to be more malleable and pre-disposed to the things I want.

And so that’s how we land here, back on my blog. It’s a blog I’m still not sure I want to keep up with, but it reminds me of the good habits I formed long ago, and have lost. I still hold my purse close, and I’ll probably wash my hands aggressively for the rest of my life, so why is the thing I should love to do so far away from me? Why does it feel like a chore to get back to?

I ask myself if I like to write, and the answer is simple: sometimes.

I’ve always found my writing and storytelling to be best captured under the elusive truism, “I don’t like writing. I like having written.” I feel the way about writing the way I feel about everything else that’s the lifeblood of my mental and spiritual health—brushing my teeth, making my bed, exercising—essential and unappealing, but always for the better when done.

So I’ve returned to the idea that writing fiction isn’t a hobby for me. It is of the utmost essential to my well-being, as necessary as nourishment, and it goes beyond enjoying myself in the present, but instead aims at something much greater: the lifelong satisfaction of having lived responsibly daily.

Some writers might tell you that this approach is wrong, that my belief that fiction writing is a form of maintenance for my mind, a chore if you will, means I don’t love the craft. But I’d argue that it’s something much greater for that—it’s a necessity for me to be my best self to others. When I write a good sentence I am proud of, I am a better person to everyone I love. And when I leave words unsaid for too long, my mood is sour and everyone feels it, no matter how I try.

And so it’s this prescriptive sense that I now speak of my work. Again, I’m not sure what I’ll share here on this blog again.

But I just hope that if you’re like me and feel the same necessity to write, but not the desire, that you take solace in the words I share.

For now, I’ll work hard to pluck up the courage and energy to be responsible again. But until then, I’ll stay healthy and responsible in other ways, and nourish my mind with the chore-words of others.