Day 57: Midnight Breakthrough

This past week has been a real grind in the writing department. And also in the living department. I was hoping this hippy diet would lead to 24-7 world-peace bliss, but instead I'm getting my butt kicked by PMS. My experience of which is: everything stinks all the time, unless it's covered in chocolate sauce.

Besides that, the fridge in our hotel room rattles all day and makes me homicidal.

My posts have been shorter lately, too. I'm trying to conserve energy for this last push to the finish line. And also because I've been creatively fearful. This whole week has been full of self-doubt and confusion about the story: where it's headed, whether that's the right direction.

I've been doing lots of reading. Have read four graphic memoirs and a book of essays about faith by Anne Lamott. I've also re-read sections of her book on writing called Bird by Bird. In both books, she talks about getting quiet when times are tough, whether it's spiritually tough or creatively tough.

Because those two things are intimately connected. And in both cases, running around, tearing your hair and screaming like a banshee is not going to help. Although it's hard to get quiet when a hormonal monster has overtaken your body in some sort of demonic possession.

But I've been trying. Sometimes I've not done well and I've wandered the ugly streets of Cold Lake, crying and thinking the world is a dark, scary place. Other times, I've been gentle and calm, drawing myself bubble baths and having faith everything will be alright. But, for five days, I've been waiting. The writing lurches along, and I know that at least one full day's work needs to be thrown out. That it's taken me somewhere I don't want to go and no amount of shoehorning will get that piece to fit. That's okay. I'll let that go.

Last night, I accidentally left the heavy drape open a crack and the highway lights were coming in. Long moving lines of light shifting on the wall. I watched them and let my focus go soft and fuzzy. I think this is why people get such great ideas at night: their minds are relaxed. That irritating and pointless chatter we endure all day quiets down and finally the important stuff can be heard.

And after five days of waiting and being afraid, clarity came. As it does. As it always does, but I get so scared and think the magic won't work this time. That this is when the well dries up and I'll have to get a job sorting fish heads because my writing days are done.

I now think that's what getting quiet is really about: filling the well. It's stopping all the output for a little while and asking you to take baths and walks. To feed yourself nourishing food and delicious books. To stop doing and start being. To listen.

The solutions that came to me at midnight, watching the highway lights on the wall, were simple. Deceptively simple and almost obvious. But that's how it always is: we run around making things more complicated than they need to be, forcing things, getting more stressed and more frustrated and no nearer to a solution. When if we just stop and sit very still, for as long as it takes, eventually we see the answer that was there all along.