People usually talk about not writing when they are blocked, when they want to be writing but are not. The other way people talk about not writing, at least subtextually, is when they talk about “having to write.” For anyone struggling with a rigorous daily writing schedule, the idea that someone “has to write,” can seem ridiculous. How many fabulous ways there are to spend one’s time other than not writing. Sleep comes to mind; movies; lunches; exercise. All the pleasures
that must be pushed aside to write at a pace, to finish a project.
It is only when the project is done, or handed to someone else for a while, that the sense of the phrase “having to write” comes clear. The grumpy exhaustion that comes from concocting a daily schedule, from succumbing to those neglected pleasures, from neglecting the writing (even if that neglect is necessary!)—that is what people refer to when they say they have to write. They mean that they will be unpleasant to be around if they are not writing. They mean that they will suffer in small and medium ways from not writing. They mean that they will be relieved to get back to it, to begin again to complain about the requirements of daily writing, rather than to be floating in the amorphous, muddy joy of not writing, a joy more hangover than party.
Vacations are necessary, but life tends to rush in during vacations, during my vacations at any rate, and demands its due. What’s been put on hold for the writing looms. Cleaning. Bills. Emails.
How do you give yourself a real vacation, one that will help you refuel for the next project, or the next revision of the last project? How do you remind yourself to breathe, to look around and take in the glory (even the horror) of the world?
Here are some of my answers, but they are not enough, and I welcome yours:
- Reading
- Camping (Well, this one’s new—we just got a tent and are headed off for a preschool camping trip.)
- Costco (i.e. retail therapy)
- Re-organizing the house (dangerously close to the slog)
- Spending more time with my children
- Wandering around in bookstores
- Going to movies
See? The list is too short, too ordinary. So here is a real question for you: What are the best kinds of mini-vacations, treats and rewards that feed you, that fill you, that send you back to the writing rejuvenated and whole?
Elizabeth Stark is the author of the novel Shy Girl (FSG, Seal Press) and co-director and co-writer of several short films, including FtF: Female to Femme and Little Mutinies (both distributed by Frameline). She earned an M.F.A. from Columbia University in Creative Writing. Currently the lead mentor and teacher at the Book Writing World, she’s taught writing and literature at UCSC, Pratt Institute, the Peralta Colleges, Hobart & William Smith Colleges and St. Mary’s College. She’s at work on a novel about Kafka.