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Starting something new
According to a random Instagram post I just saw on the account @quoting_literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote that “very little is required to destroy a person: One has only to convince him that the business he is engaged in is not necessary to anyone.”
Around the years of my ending middle school and starting high school, I read everything in print by Cinda Williams Chima, who is still one of my favorite YA fantasy authors now, if not my very favorite. I’ve read everything she’s written, I’ve been fortunate to make two of her book signings, and she so graciously responded to an email I once sent her.
She keeps a “Help For Writers” page on her website, and the first line is, “Don’t be a writer unless you have to.” As a young teenager, that sent me spiraling. What do you mean, “unless you have to”? How cynical and disappointing! I sent Ms. Chima an email asking about the line because I did not understand it. I just didn’t. Her prompt response helped me understand why she included it on her website, but it didn’t quite help me understand it altogether; that wouldn’t come for a number of years and a bit of experience.
Musing that she has been emailed many times regarding that very sentence on her website, Ms. Chima explained that the line simply encourages people to do what they love, but understand that what you love—especially if it’s writing—might be arduous, draining, and super-duper thankless. What you love will take its toll on you, so find something that tolls less if you can.
Boy oh boy, do I get it now.
This would all be a lot easier if I didn’t have to write.
And, I suppose, I do not have to write; I could drop the pen and ditch the keyboard and distribute what time, energy, and focus I currently apply to writing towards other facets of my life that are just as, if not more so, demanding. Something like my job, teaching 10th grade English and religion, could always benefit from even a hair more of my time, energy, and focus; teaching seems to me an insatiable arena that frequently pits its gladiators against burn-out, an opponent I have been warned about since Day One.
This would all be a lot easier if I didn’t have to write, but God help me, I have to write.
Writing is a non-essential. It does not pay my bills: Teaching does. It does not take me out for drinks or watch movies with me or invite me to parties or recommend new music: My friends and family do. It does not house me, clothe me, feed me, bring delight to my eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or hands. I was in fact not too long ago diagnosed with Sjögren’s Syndrome that manifests in swollen, aching hands and feet, leaving me possibly the most embittered arthritic 25-year-old you’ve maybe ever met.
I have to write.
Part of this involves apply to literary magazines and journals on the regular.
I try to keep my rejection letters organized in my email folders, but I forget to label them and I use three different emails and I may use any which one to submit pieces for publication based on nothing at all: I am quite the WIP.
In 2022 the ones I did remember to label made up a total of six rejection letters. I know there are more of them slinking somewhere around my inboxes, but I can’t really be bothered to go seeking them out. As early as this first week of the year, I am receiving more.
Maybe this comes across as very whiny, tacky, and lazy, but by God, if I can’t air my grievances through the medium I love, then what really is the point? Because writing doesn’t house me or feed more or love me or hold me, but it sustains me. All a writer wants is to be read. Someone in my position can only wait for that day, hoping this isn’t all some Sisyphian tea party: where I get to dress up in my afternoon best and tip-tap some dark squiggles and angles on white pages and screens when the reality is the teapot is empty, the teacups are empty, and the party guests are all stuffed with fluff from crown to foot.
So, for the next 51 weeks, I’m writing this blog. My goal is to have something written and published every Sunday. Obviously, I’ve missed my first deadline (after three days of going to war with WordPress), and that’s honestly par for the course; what matters is I have begun anyway. Whether I am read or not, I am writing, and that’s something. I’ll be writing about whatever, probably, but I’ll be writing about writing too, hopefully. The triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of being unpublished, unread, and writing: It’s all fair game.
Thanks for reading,
J. August
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So, how’s it going?
Actually, better than I expected. Not super-duper, but better.
Over the Christmas break, I experienced a serious lull in creative energy. It was distressing for a few reasons, but mostly because break should have been the time I got the most writing done. I didn’t have to work (or drive to work, which usually takes anywhere from an hour to two hours out of my day), I could write nearly whenever I wanted to, I had less to focus on, et cetera, yada-yada.
I am also two weeks behind on these posts, but I don’t think I’m going to try to “catch up”. There will just have to be a missing post. Shit happens, you know? And last week really happened.
For the first time since my high school graduation in 2016, I attended a graduation ceremony of mine in-person and on-time. This isn’t meant as a critique or derision of my undergraduate ceremony: That was so special and nothing could replace it except in a parallel universe where the pandemic never happened, and that’s just not a tangible ask. That said, the joy of seeing people, of walking onto the stage when my name is called, of taking photos with my professors and parents and friends, of going out for pints after dinner and staying until they kick us out, of the anticipation before and the shenanigans afterward: the joy of all of this happening, on-time, cannot be exaggerated. It was maybe the closest we will ever get again to recreating the unfeigned and so, so beautiful joy of the year of study.
I graduated with my Master of Arts in Creative Writing, by the way (don’t look so surprised), from the University of Limerick.
Maybe it was going back to Ireland and the build-up to it that got me writing again, but since January 11, I have written not insignificant amounts nearly every day. I have been excited about writing every day. I have wanted to write every day. See, I used to try to make myself write, even if I didn’t feel like it, but what I would do was make myself write the next couple words or sentences of the larger piece I’m working on, and that never felt right. Famous writers tend to give the same advice that to be a writer one must write every day, sometimes with the added instruction to read every day. On days I feel uninspired, sometimes all I can do is get out a measly little four-line poem and call it a day. If my head isn’t in the right space and if what I call the Flow isn’t coming organically, I cannot write but for the safety of my work. I really fear I could ruin it if I write too much on a bad Flow day.
What do I mean by the Flow?
Sometimes when I sit down to write, I feel empty. I feel empty mentally, maybe a little physically and emotionally, but most importantly, I feel empty creatively. No thoughts in head. No lights on at home. But it’s not just in my head because the Flow comes from the source, which I have to imagine is some intangible, impossible triunity of the head, the heart, and the soul. That’s where creativity comes from, I think.
Five bucks says I read this again in 25 years and think, “Jesus, what a load.”
Wherever its source, the Flow must be present or I cannot write. Simple as. I needed help identifying it, and one of my professors at the M.A. did just that. It mattered, identifying it, because now I can give it a name, and as they say in some darker circles and older texts, once you know the true name of a demon, you have some semblance of control over it. Not that I have any control over the Flow: It either comes or it doesn’t. No, not so, but being able to identify it and its absence by name means that when it is present, I can give it my absolute attention and make the most of it. I don’t have to scramble anymore and distress that it’s going to leave in five minutes so if I don’t get writing immediately right now right nOW I’m going to lose it; I know that I can hold onto it. Not forever, but long enough to write something meaningful. It may last for days, after all! When it is absent, on the other hand, I know not to beat myself up about writing and to explore other art and creativity that isn’t strictly writing (or even reading!). I know the Flow will return. It is only a matter of time.
J. August writes 