I don’t remember where, but I came across some article about how to write blog posts if you’re trying to grow your authorial platform. Of course you have to write about writing, but, according to the article, no one wants to read about what you’re writing. You have to write advice posts for the readers, instead.
I might have advice that people would want to hear if I already had a book or two published, or if I already had some kind of platform. But since I don’t have either of those things, what do I have to give anyone besides the kind of generic advice that thirty people have already written about in actual books about writing, and that 300 people have already blogged about for free? Characterization, in media res, save the cat, five tips to make your villain more formidable? I don’t have anything of substance to add to these conversations. I’m not a beginner by any means, but I haven’t achieved the kind of success that would make me qualified to advise anyone.
Except, maybe, in one area: the “does my writing really matter?” area. Not that I’m hugely successful there, either, but I’ve gotten over a pretty rough dry spell in the past few years. I thought I’d lost my calling for good, but here I am, a year or two later, keeping a spreadsheet of my various WIPs’ daily word counts. That’s a comeback story of sorts. That might count for something.
I don’t think it would be honest of me to comfort anyone, though.
The thing about having this question – “am I worthy of this craft that I love?” – leeching uncertainty, self-hatred, and lethargy into your atmosphere is that, in my experience, no one can answer it for you. It makes you think you need validation from other people. And, of course, it never hurts to have people in your corner; you may need other people’s words to keep you hydrated while you cross the desert. But no one can carry you across. There is no Sam Gamgee for this particular trek. It’s just you and whatever god you own.
You can receive the kindest, most well-meaning, supportive words, and there’s every chance in the world that they’ll dry up in your ears before they can ever reach your head. The Question has locked you up like a princess in a castle or Amontillado in the wall or Ariel in the pine and there might not be anything that can reach you until you erase the question mark for yourself.
I won’t pretend that’s easy. It took me a long time and a couple very hard conversations before I finally got out of the desert.
Right here is where the script dictates: But I broke through anyway. All it took was trying hard enough, long enough – I will not elucidate what ‘trying’ means; Just Do It – and now I’m free and happy and whenever I doubt myself now I just look back on how I beat The Question already and it doesn’t have any power over me anymore, and all you need to do is keep trying, too, like me.
This is where I’m supposed to say, It’s hard work, but it’s worth the effort.
Screw that. It wasn’t worth the effort. Nothing is worth how much and how long I let The Question hurt me and hold me down. I’m not far enough out of the desert to pretend like I’m fine now, that it doesn’t still hurt even when I’m finishing novels and getting my 1-5 kudos per week on AO3. Some part of me died in the desert and it’s not coming back.
So, no, I’m not going to tell you – should you be uncertain, desperate, hurting, empty, any or all of the above – that I think your pain is only temporary or that your struggle is worth it. If that’s what you need to hear, you can find other people who will be happy to pass on that message. If you need to hear that all you’ve got to do is just keep trying, just keep going, just keep hoping and believing, you’ve come to the wrong place. When I was in the desert, hearing that kind of encouragement was the opposite of encouraging. I was tired. I had already spent months or years trying, going, hoping. I’m sure, now, that the effort wasn’t made in vain, but hearing that I had to keep trying to get where I wanted to be – well, there’s an or else hidden at the end of that sentence. That was the encouragement of someone who’d already made it out of the desert and was floating by in a hot air balloon, having forgotten how it felt to have your feet in the sand and a sword over your head. Keep going, or else. I’m not a child, I wanted to tell them. I’m no writing noob. What do you think I’ve been doing but trying? What else have I been sobbing over my keyboard about?
Here’s the only thing that gave me an inch of peace: T.S. Eliot and the book of Leviticus.
T.S. Eliot may be obvious – I’ve already made at least a couple blog posts about how I basically live my creative life by Four Quartets – but Leviticus is a little newer. Not the whole of the book, but, specifically, the concept of the year of Jubilee, every fiftieth year, the year of release. And specifically the part of the year of Jubilee that deals with letting fields lay unsown. You let the land alone. You let it lie fallow. Don’t touch a spade or toss a seed. “It shall be holy to you”: a holy abandonment.
You can try for as long as you can hold out, but you may well reach a point at which it doesn’t matter. The tank is empty, the field is dry, the stone is out of blood. You have to stop trying or you’ll break something vital, like a bone or your faith in yourself.
You know what’s coming now:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
Darkness and stillness will be the light and the dancing. Your neurons will flash again in the darkness and your thoughts will dance again in the stillness. The seed will grow when it’s buried like the dead.
That’s what got me across the line in the sand: the idea that I didn’t have to keep trying. I didn’t have to prove what I was or what I wanted. My God knew that already; in some deep place, so did I. None of that mattered, though, when I had given all I had to give. Some people may be, but I am not a bottomless well, and I’d drunk myself dry. I didn’t need to try harder or work longer; I needed to exist without effort, so that the well could refill. I needed to wait, not with hopelessness, but without hope. Even hope takes up precious energy that you need just to put one foot in front of the other.
I needed to spend months doing crafts with my hands, reading books and watching movies and shows and listening to music and looking at nature, not trying to write. I didn’t need platitudes about how everything would eventually work out, because that would be hope for the wrong thing. I needed rest. I needed to lie fallow.
That’s the thing about The Question. Am I worthy of this craft that I love? cannot and will not be answered definitively by other people. It can barely be answered by you. If you thought the answer was yes, you wouldn’t be asking. If the answer were no, you wouldn’t be doing your craft. (I’m talking about writing for myself, but I’m sure people have asked themselves The Question for every conceivable calling or career.) But if you’re asking The Question of yourself, you’re tired and scared and in pain, your faith is flagging, because you’re driving on close to empty. You’re asking because you want the answer to be yes but you don’t have it in you to believe it.
I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to believe it, or even try to. Your craft will outlive you; it will not cease to be when you let it go. For whatever it’s worth, you’ve got my permission not to be graceful about your fallowing; you don’t have to look starry-eyed to the future or speak of “this season of difficulty” or whatever the religious or self-care language might be this month. Forget your craft. Forget writing. Screw it. You shouldn’t feel obligated to enjoy this time, or make it Instagrammable or TikTokable. It sucks. End of sentence. It can feel like the ending of your life and I don’t believe in guilting people into feeling optimistic or positively about such things.
I’m not here to tell you that you’ll get everything back twice over, that you’ll look back on this time and laugh and be grateful, that you need to do or prepare for anything, that you’ll one day float back over the desert in a hot air balloon as a wiser, more enlightened individual. If you’re asking, Will I ever write again? or When does the creative urge come back? I’m not going to say, Oh, of course it will, just be patient, it’ll come back one day. Just keep going. I don’t know you, I don’t know your life or your future. Maybe it won’t. Maybe that chapter is closed for you. Weigh the possibility in your mind; what’s your reaction? Fear, relief, agony, all of the above? It doesn’t matter. Your emotions will most likely not be a good compass to follow. That, in some way, is the point: there’s no good compass at all. We all drive by the light of our grubby headlights.
What I do believe, even at my lowest point, for myself and for you, is that no love is ever wasted. If you’ve loved your craft, if you still do even in the desert, even in the stillness and the darkness, then it wasn’t and isn’t for no reason. Whether you find your way back to your craft or you move on to something else once you’re out of the desert, you’ll carry what you learned and how you loved either way, and there is always value in that.
I’m taking your face in my hands and repeating it until you believe it: love is never wasted. Neither is time in the desert. I’m not saying that you should try to find some amorphous beauty in a painful time, that if you aren’t grateful for it or productive through it then you aren’t suffering properly and thus don’t deserve what you want, but I am saying that the dry spells don’t disqualify you from your craft. They are, unfortunately, a part of the creative life. Will you ever write, paint, animate, carve again? Maybe, maybe not, I’m not going to make you empty promises. But a yellow light isn’t a stop sign, and the struggle may well be temporary. You won’t know until you do.
That’s my anti-advice for those who may be struggling with their art: it might be your fiftieth year. It may be time to stop trying so hard. It might be time to do a Yoga With Adriene or two and see if candle-making is for you. It might be time to write three thousand angry, bitter blog posts about how it feels like you’ve spent your life thus far on a hopeless dream. Drop your pen, your paintbrush, your needle, your sculpting tools, your power tools. Let your soul grow wild; let your well refill. Don’t tell yourself that the art will be back, don’t hope for the wrong thing, don’t let internet platitudes and toxic positivity convince you to spend energy you don’t have.
Breathe.
Sit.
Wait.
No matter the answer you find at the end of the desert, love will wait with you.
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