- My Storybook Process (Part 1): creating a new thing
- My Storybook Process (Part 2): creating new characters
- My Storybook Process (Part 3): creating the story
- My Storybook Process (Part 4): creating the manuscript for a children’s book
- My Storybook Process (Part 5): creating rising action
- My Storybook Process (Part 6): um… now I’m a procrastinating writer *ahem
- My Storybook Process (Part 7): creating an ending
- How to Stay Motivated to Finish Your Story: 7 ways
- How to Procrastinate (yes, there IS a right way!)
- Falling Hard and Writing Anyway
If you know anything about me at all, you know that I love to write. Lately, writing has been more difficult for me because of an accident. I took a bad fall. This is about falling hard and writing anyway. Any Way.
To look at me, you’d never know that anything is wrong – except for the sling.
When things are rough, look at a baby animal for a few minutes. It helps. Then get back to writing. 🙂
Last week, while walking home from a class, I badly twisted my ankle, lost my footing and fell down hard on my shoulder. X-rays showed that no bones were broken, but after a few days it was clear that my shoulder was getting worse, not better.
I went to an orthopedic doctor who specializes in shoulder injuries. After a few tests, he determined that something might be ripped. To be sure, there is a contusion behind the shoulder blade that makes using my right hand or arm painful.
The opiate drugs I take to dull the pain give me stomach problems, so sometimes I take them and sometimes I can’t. My MRI scan later this week will show what kind of damage I’ve got hidden in there – to see why the shoulder isn’t getting better.
Living and typing one-sided is, as you might imagine, tedious – and after a short time, typing causes pain on my left side, which is badly unexercised in this way. Writing has become exhausting. I’m sure that with practice I can overcome this but for now it is rough going.
I tried recording my voice, to get my ideas down to be transcribed later. It didn’t work. I hit “record” and held the devise to my face – and nothing happened.
I had nothing to say. I had something to write. I couldn’t translate one act to another.
Maybe some part of my brain simply needs more exercise, so that recording my voice becomes as fluid an act as writing. It’s hard to imagine. It feels so different; I don’t even know how to begin.
I feel grateful to have my one good arm – or at least, the sort-of working awkward arm. I feel grateful to have this little problem, to have these pains.
After so many people have died or been badly injured in the recent terrorist attacks in France, after so many have fled from their homes to my country and my town because of civil war (there is a refugee camp located one block from my home), when so many today struggle for the things I’ve never been without a single day of my life – things like food, water, shelter and clothes – what the hell is a bit of soreness on one side?
I don’t want to come off as a greeting card sort of inspirational-poster type of sentiment, but it does work to look at an adorable kitten reminding me to “Hang in there!”
Writing is hard but I can still do it. It isn’t easy. There’s pain and my head is dulled. I feel restless when all I want to do is rest.
Have you run into this kind of situation? How did you get through it? Do you have any tips?
There are times the words just don’t come. There are times when cleaning the dishes sudddenly feels all-important. There are times when you want to throw your computer out the window.
It’s important I think for people to exchange and share how to get through the rough patches, how to keep creating when you feel flattened-out. We all have those times. It can be helpful to know how to get through them a little better.
So… when you fall down and things don’t work as they usually do for you, do what works. Remind yourself how lucky you are to notice when things aren’t going well. Then keep on.
Keep creating, no matter what.
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