Trying Not to Write. So I Can Write.

I am taking off the month of April. At least, this is my plan. 

Although technically I’m already violating my plan by writing these words right here and now, this is writing, as opposed to WRITING. There’s a difference.

I shall explain. 

I’ve been working on what feels like a VERY IMPORTANT WRITING PROJECT (VIWP), one that has been percolating and haunting and torturing me for almost ten years now. Recently, I got very serious about finishing and polishing this project. I enlisted constructive feedback from mentors and trusted fellow writers and took many classes to refine my craft, and although this input is extremely helpful, I find myself…in a word… 

Paralyzed.

There are too many voices in my head. Too much instruction. 

Is this how it works for some of us? The more we write, the more we learn about the craft and structure and secret inner workings of writing, the harder we try to get it right, the more impossible it is…to actually write? 

The good news is that I know what my problem is. 

I am right-brained. An ENFP. A Gemini. (If any of that matters.) My jam is intuition and gut-feels and expansive skin-tingling soul emotions. 

Take music for example. I love to dance, but choreography cramps my style. I adore singing and do a lot of it, but sight-reading is eternally a struggle for this ear-learner. When I once forced myself to take a music theory class, I felt as though my entire body twitched in revolt, longing to flee. I’ve taken lessons in piano, flute, clarinet, electric guitar, drums, and trumpet, and failed at all of them. 

But yes, I SING. In fact I’ve sung semi-professionally, not always following the notes on the score (although I try, er, generally), but true to what sounds beautiful to my ear and what feels delicious in my body. It has worked for me so far.

Then there’s my love of ART. In college, I considered a double major in English and Art (but settled for an art minor), and have taken countless art classes in the years since then in watercolors, pastels, portrait drawing, mixed media, photography, and acrylics. But when those classes tested my skills in more technical things like vanishing point and scale and math-y stuff like that? Yeah, I was and still am hopeless. 

Please know that I do not want this to be true. I want very badly to master the things I love doing, to take my innate creative longings, to develop and train them. I’m not being stubborn. I have tried. But something restless and rebellious in my core is battling against my own sincere desire to buckle down, learn and get it right. 

So I’ve come to the conclusion there is only one thing I can do. 

I need to stop trying so hard. I need to find my JOY. 

To re-discover the MAGIC. 

Last week, I took an impromptu walk around Walden Pond and fell in love with awakening emerald moss, lacey gray-green lichen, a dead branch with curling gray bark, and last fall’s red and gold oak leaves magnified in clean cold water that rippled in the sunlight. This helped. 

I started working on a collage, ripping up patterned papers, ancient sheets of music and an old National Geographic magazine, to create messy images that please and inspire me. This too, is helping.

I’m reading for fun instead of research. Dancing with my grand-baby in the kitchen to songs I make up for her on the spot. Writing journal entries with zero stakes that make me feel free. Writing this. 

Also, here are some words that resonate for me, from the book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin:

We’re not playing to win. We’re playing to play. And ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun. A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process. To make and put out successive works with ease. 

Oscar Wilde said “Some things are too important to be taken seriously, and art is one of those things.” 

Setting the bar low, especially to get started, frees you to play, explore, and test without attachment to results. This is not just a path to more supportive thoughts. Active play and experimentation until we’re happily surprised is how the best work reveals itself.

Thank you, Rick Rubin. (And thank you, Perry Alison, for making me aware of this book!) 

It is Spring. Nature is waking up, and so I hope, is my joy. 

No more work. It’s time to play.