How To Write Through the Tough Stuff

Hi friends.

I started writing another book a week ago. I started writing it because I had set myself up for it, carved out a few weeks in my life to really be present for this new, generative moment. It was time. My goal is to have a clean-ish 80-100 pages by fall, and to have an understanding of what this book is about, even if I have a ways to go on writing it. March 2, I knew I was all in on starting this sucker.

I have to stay on a schedule, because this is how I make my living. I always need to have a book in the pipeline, starting it or writing it or finishing it and sending it out into the world because otherwise I can't make money, live my life, pay my bills. There is no backup plan for me, no academic security, no trust fund, no joint income, there is just the writing. Lucky me, I love the writing! But I feel the insistent push just like anyone else with a full-time job. So I keep going. And now is the time I have to work.

And every day I went to the page felt potentially volatile in a dozen different ways. Every direction I could take with the material felt like it might trigger a new skirmish in my heart. It was all so emotionally messy. I was handwriting and not thinking too hard about what I was saying—my writing self was just taking care of the emotional content—but when I was typing up my notes later in the day I could see where I had been and where I was going. It was just some sticky, sticky business.