Feed Your Soul

I’ve had a number of well-meaning friends come up to me recently and ask me about my writing. When’s the next book coming out, they ask. Are you writing? How far are you along?

I give them the same answer I always give when asked about my writing: I’m working on a couple of projects right now, and I’ll let you know as soon as the books are finished.

The assumption by many non-writers (and some authors themselves) is that once an author produces a book, or two (or four, in my case), the writer will continue to produce books at the same pace. While this concept might be true for many writers, not all of us follow the same path. For some authors (and I include myself in this category), writing is a soul-filling (and sometimes soul-draining) process, but it’s not the only creative occupation that fulfills us.

I’ve dedicated over ten years of my life to writing books. I also, at the same time, helped raise two kids, worked two jobs, and supported my family and friends when they needed me. The writing was a lot of work, and it required a lot of time away from my husband and children. I didn’t mind the sacrifice then because, at that time in my life, the writing fed my soul in an important way.

But since the release of my last book in 2016, my family situation has changed. My children graduated from college and are now living and working on their own. And my husband and I have found ourselves at the age where we need to make decisions about retirement, our long-term life and healthcare goals, and how we’re going to do some of the travel that we’ve always had on our bucket lists.

I’ve also discovered in recent years that I yearned to explore some new ways to feed my soul. In the past three years, I’ve learned to bake my own bread, spent time exploring glass painting, and my husband Dan and I created a successful monarch butterfly sanctuary in our yard. I’ve reconnected with old friends and family members, and Dan and I have started to do some serious travel to other countries.

I’m also still working part-time, teaching college business classes and doing some work for publicity clients.

Does all of this non-writing activity mean I’ll never write again? Of course not – I have a memoir outlined and have begun the sequel to one of my earlier novels, Favorite Daughter. But is writing the primary activity filling my soul right now? No. And that doesn’t mean the end of my writing career; it just means that I will write again when my soul calls for it.

I know there are some career writers out there who scoff at the notion that writing is only for those who do it every day without fail for years on end. But for many of us, writing is only one of many ways that we find creative expression. It fills a special part of our lives, but it may not be the only occupation that does that. And that’s okay with me, and my soul, for now.

Tricky Business

When I became a novel writer, I had no idea how time-consuming the act of creating a book would be. In addition to the uninterrupted blocks of time I needed to do the actual writing, I discovered that a fair amount of thinking time had to happen in order to get the story where I wanted it to go. For every hour spent putting actual words on the page, I found I needed an equal or better amount of time to conjure up the details necessary to create an imaginary world and people it with extraordinary characters. I needed to think about my storyline, to create a suspenseful and believable plot, to develop a sense of movement and structure, and to make sure that there were high stakes involved. I imagined my characters speaking, so I could recognize their voices; I visualized what their pasts might be, so I could construct their future actions.

Sometimes this thinking time was a conscious effort, where I pointedly outlined different scenarios for the story in my head; other times the thoughts cooked in my subconscious, bubbling up to my awareness at random moments to surprise me or, in many instances, provide a feeling of relief.

I learned that the time I spent thinking about my book was almost more consuming than the actual time I spent putting words on the page. And, frankly, this scared me a little, because as a working wife and mother, there are other people in the world who also needed me to be thinking about them.

All writers sacrifice in order to find time for their writing, and our family and friends and businesses bear the brunt of it. Not only are we physically unavailable while we’re holed up in our writing lairs, but we’re mentally absent, as well. Many of us find that when we’re writing, the stories we’re creating consume our consciousness. Though our bodies are present in the real world, our thoughts are somewhere else.

Unfortunately, the outside world doesn’t wait while we’re living in that creative state – our kids grow up, our parents age, our businesses succeed or fail, the world around us spins forward. We sacrifice our presence to our art, and the price can sometimes be steep.

For this reason, it’s important that we writers take the time to step back once in a while and evaluate whether our desire to tell the story inside us is stealing from other equally important aspects of our lives. Call it whatever you will -- a creative time out, perhaps – but every once in a while it behooves us to check in with those who love and need us. This, of course, is not a mandatory exercise and a lot of writers forego it by choice. But if we don’t balance the demands of the real world with our need to create, the things and people who mean so much to us can sometimes slip away.

It’s a tricky business, this writing thing we do.

World of Bookcraft: Tales of a Writing Junkie

At lunch the other day, a writer friend confessed that she had become seriously addicted to writing.

“How serious?” I asked. For me, anything less than twenty-four hours a day – which is how often my teenage son would play World of Warcraft if we let him – is not an addiction.

“Extremely serious,” she replied.

It turns out that my friend’s concerns were valid. She had stopped seeing her friends, stopped doing any kind of exercise (she does yoga to stretch out an injured hip), stopped taking her vitamins, and, eventually, stopped sleeping. “I was coming home from work every day and doing nothing but writing,” she said. “I’d spend all night writing, then shower and go to work, and then come home and write some more.”

Not good, I agreed. She told me that the seriousness of the situation finally hit home when she realized that she was feeling angry, tired, and generally awful about everything in her life.

I was curious to find out how she addressed the problem. She explained that once she realized things had to change, she sat down and made lists. “In one column, I listed all the time I was spending on my book,” she said. “And in another column, I listed all the things I used to do that I consider essential to my mental and physical health.” My friend then took her lists and started crossing off items on either side until they were in balance. Since things were so heavily weighted in the writing column, she forced herself to write nothing for a month and even skipped three weeks of her writing group meetings.

This last bit worried me a little, but my friend assured me that she’s writing again, only now, she does so only in proportion to the amount of time she spends on other activities. She still works, writes, and goes to her weekly group meetings, but she also makes time to do yoga, take her vitamins, eat healthy foods, and have lunch once in a while with friends like me.

I’m proud of her. In the world of bookcraft, balance is everything.