About nightmares

The nice thing about nightmares is that 1) they can't hurt you, and 2) when you look at them in the merciless light of day, they quiver and shrink and crawl into the cracks between the floorboards, leaving only a whiff of brimstone behind to remind you of how they once scared you.

So it is with my own personal writer's nightmare of not being able to write. Now that I have exposed the roots of it, I see how ephemeral it is. Its power over me is waning. Fast, I hope.

To wit, this morning I wrote 335 new words. Decent words. Words that I can build on. And it was fun.

(And Mrs. Mitty, I will get to the Christmas meme when I can...)

***

The dream would catch Miren on stormy nights, when the wind raced through the trees and rain fell in great wet gusts. She would fall asleep with the sound of thunder in her ears, like a thousand horses galloping across the earth. She would ride them down into the darkness and awaken in the gray forest. Always the same forest. Always the same man in the forest.

Each time, it began in hope and ended in despair, a progression of events as inevitable as the journey of the moon across the night sky: the man, appearing out of the gray columns of trees and silver mist…the joyous lift of her heart at seeing him after so long…his face hidden at first, then revealed…that shocking smile, scarred and grotesque…his hand, touching Jona's hair in that wrenchingly possessive gesture.

Herself, slumped against the tree with her soul bleeding out to puddle on the earth like rainwater.

Then she would awaken, sweat-soaked, gulping in great breaths to assure herself that her lungs still worked properly. Sometimes Jona would be awake, too, watching her, green eyes intent and concerned. "Is it the bad dream again, Mama?"

"Yes, sweeting. But it's nothing. Go back to sleep."

Once, Jona had suggested, "Make it change. Make it be different."

Miren had given a bleak laugh. "Remember the mummers' show in the market? How every week you wanted the story to end differently?"

Jona nodded solemnly. "The story was wrong. The prince was supposed to die. He was the real bad man, not the outlaw."

An unsettling insight from a five-year-old, who could not have understood the play's subversive undertones. "But the play always turned out the same, didn't it? The story had already been written. Nothing was going to change, no matter how many times you saw it."

"Is the dream like the story?"

Frost crept across her heart. "Maybe it is, sweeting."

But she'd been wrong, it turned out. About two months after her arrival at the Wild Castle, the dream changed.

(from The Knife-Giver)

Diagnosis

So now I know what the problem is.

Performance anxiety. Impotence, of the writerly kind.

This has nothing do with anxiety about a nebulous future--will I find an agent? Will the agent find a publisher? Will the book sell enough copies to warrant another contract? And so on.

All legitimate, potentially fraught issues, but for another day.

My anxiety is much more immediate. It centers around the very act of writing, as if putting words on the screen were some sort of virtuoso performance I must not only endure, but triumph over. Continually best myself. But like a performer with an advanced case of stage fright, I freeze. Again and again.

Until the only way to deal with the situation is to avoid it. Elaborately and tirelessly scheme to avoid it. Any distraction, any excuse will do. "Today I will write," I say to myself, "Yes, I will. Looking forward to it. Can't wait. But not right now. In ten more minutes. This afternoon. Tonight."

But that deadline is always receding. And a day begun with the paving stones of fervent good intentions winds fruitlessly downward into writer's hell--the place where words are so bright and tempting, and so painfully out of reach. Put out of reach through my own efforts. It's so ironic, so infuriating, so...nonsensical. The thing I want most is the thing I deny myself.

The result? Impotence. The inability to perform. To write.

Well (you say), obviously you can write just fine here.

Yes, that's how it works, doesn't it? The anxious musician performs exquisitely in private, but fumbles on stage. The impotent man can rise to the occasion anywhere except where it matters.

So how did this happen?

I don't know. It just did. I do know I'm not the only writer who has dealt with this. It happened to a well-known and highly talented romance author, who ended up quitting writing altogether, for years, until she was finally able to face the page again, on her own terms and at her own pace. She's back now, and better than ever. Wiser, too, I imagine.

I'll be back, too. As soon as I figure out exactly how to beat this. Just knowing what's been going on has been a source of great relief.

And anyway, the game's not over till I win.

Dry, dry, dry

So, what do you do when the writing well runs dry? When you crank up Word (or equivalent) and know that you must write a scene, a paragraph, a sentence--a word, even--but you can't. When the task of writing becomes so daunting that you begin to understand how the Aegean stablehands felt before Hercules showed up.

Where is Hercules? I need him. I need him to hose the gunk out of my brain so I can see clearly and make connections and dig into the underlayers and discover secrets.

My imagination is dozing, adrift without bearings. Tangled in the detritus of everyday living. Too lazy to swim free. Becalmed in fog. I need a ship to tow me to shore. Or into deeper waters. Someplace where the skies are clear.

I've been writing more or less steadily for ten years. I've persisted through every dry spell.

But they seem to come closer together now, and they last longer. And my usual tricks for winning through aren't working any more. It takes more and more effort to even sit down and try. To the point where I dither away my days doing anything but writing. Oh, I fully mean to write.

But somehow I never do.