What’s in the Box? (or how I am discovering creative freedom)

NOTE TO THE READER: You’ll need to forgive me for meshing references from 2 completely different movies in this post (Seven and Raiders of the Lost Ark) but this is just how my brain works. If you can see the connection between the blog title and the GIF above, great. If not, sorry not sorry. And no, I am not in any way referencing that infamous Justin Timberlake SNL skit in this post (although now that I think about it, that’s a pretty damn funny reference that also works – snort).

ACTUAL BLOG POST

So in yesterday’s post I mentioned that I was pulling out all of my how-to writing materials and going through them. Today I woke up early, excited to take advantage of the extra hour of sleep that came with Daylights Savings Time ending, and actually start writing again. But before I even got to my desk, I could feel the weight of the world bearing down on me. Where would I start? my mind wailed. I could feel the pressure to produce something amazing building up in me along with all sorts of paralyzing anxiety as I looked around my office and realized how much I seemingly don’t know about the writing process at all. The evidence was staring me in the face – piles of how-to books (most read but some not), lectures, articles, workshop handouts, cassettes and CDs from RWA conventions of years past and endless issues of Writer’s Digest that had been thrown in a drawer the day they arrived, never to be opened. Who was I to think that I could write?

But every now and then my guardian angel whispers a bit of advice in my ear. This morning she said, “Don’t worry about working on your story just yet. Why don’t you do your morning pages and use that space to figure out where to focus first?” I instantly felt an outpouring of relief. My morning pages were the perfect place to puzzle out where to start and I fell to them gratefully.

I was arguing with myself on paper where to start – should I reread The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron? Slog my way through Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway (4th edition)? Try and conquer the rules of grammar and composition? Maybe I should read those Harlequin Presents from 2 or 3 years ago when I subscribed for a few months and then never read the books they sent me (yikes). And then it occurred to me – none of this had anything to do with me writing. All of this anxiety was about me wanting to “know it all” before I would allow myself to start writing because I’m afraid of looking stupid, that I’ll fail, that I won’t have a damn thing to say and all of years of dreaming of becoming a writer will have been for nothing. All of these how-to materials were just another form of procrastination, a way of protecting myself from the imagined hurts once I learned that I can’t hack it as a writer.

And as I wrote all this out in my morning pages, I started wondering what would happen if I gave myself permission to do whatever I wanted during my creative me time for the month of November? Not only to write (or not) but also to read whatever I wanted, or spend time creating whatever I wanted. Who wants to read a boring old textbook when they could be playing with words (or with paints or diamond art or playing songs on the piano or dancing) instead? Even an entertaining how-to text like Stephen King’s On Writing can suck my creativity dry. I needed to give myself permission to experiment and figure out my own writing process, to let myself make mistakes (and not fall back on trying to find the PERFECT answer outside of myself). And the best way to give myself the mental space to do that was to clear out all of those writing books and magazines and what nots and put them in a box (well, actually 4 boxes) and put them out of sight. I might not be burying those boxes in a vast warehouse filled with identical boxes (there’s the Indiana Jones reference you’ve probably not been waiting for), but they are sitting in the back of my office closet, nicely sealed up so that I can use my creative me time to do other things. Even if I don’t know what those other things are yet. Isn’t half the fun going to be figuring that out?

Today I grabbed my writer’s journal and read through it. This is the first journal I’ve ever had that I actually feel comfortable calling a writer’s journal – it’s a place where I put all kinds of random thoughts, questions, bits of art, and story ideas. I never realized I have had so many story ideas! I would have told you that the biggest road block to my writing was that I NEVER had any good story ideas. But reading through this journal, I started to see things differently. Most of the things I had written down I had completely forgotten about. I had tons of ideas jotted down in there. And then I grabbed a pile of loose pieces of paper I had stuffed in my writing drawer – HOLY SHIT – here were even MORE story ideas. What the actual fuck?! I worked for over an hour adding those random thoughts and story ideas into my writer’s journal and I’m not even close to being done! And I have a ton of random writings just printed out that were hiding in the drawer as well. Where the heck are all the original files for these writings hiding on my computer? I couldn’t even begin to guess (I really need to clean out my computer files – it’s on my list for when the universe starts making days where I have NOTHING else to do but organize computer files or watch paint dry – ha!)

Here’s the most important lesson I learned today – I tend to block out memories of my own creativity because some part of me probably thinks that’s the “safe” thing to do. On a subconscious level, I’ve convinced myself that I shouldn’t even try writing until I know exactly what to do, until I can do things “perfectly” right from the get-go. And that’s absolute horse shit. And I’m pretty damn sure it’s been the source of my writer’s block all these years. Whenever the urge to write starts to bubble up, a little protector part of me goes, “Uh oh, Ryley’s got an urge to write. We need to make sure she’s ready so she doesn’t get hurt. Hurry, have her read another how-to book! Tell her that if she can’t name all the parts of a sentence she’ll never hack it in the romance writing community. Convince her that she needs to memorize ALL the rules before she starts or she’ll never succeed!” And then off I go to spend days or weeks trying to learn other people’s writing methods until I get frustrated and that little urge to create flickers out and dies. Well not this time folks! I’m getting wise to that little part of me and I’m telling it to step back, take a break. For the month of November, I am giving myself permission to write badly, create or just read fun books. I want to do things that make me happy and fill up my creative well. I already know all the things I need to get started living my best creative life. Now I just need to go do it. Go me 🙂

SNORT.