Waking Wounded

One thing I've always noticed in my own writerly life is that I find it hard to work when I'm badly stressed.

Ordinarily, I keep to a very steady predawn pace that's served me well for decades: typically, 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. is my prime writing time, and after doing it for so many years, I can crank out around 3500 words an hour on the good days, maybe 1500 words an hour on the bad days. My brain knows what to do at that time.

I've always been an earlybird, even as a kid, and years later, I realized that the predawn time was my "safe space" where I could write without anybody interrupting me. I used to refer to it as "writing in the margins of my day" -- that predawn ritual let me get my fiction-writing banked before the workday began, and I could take solace that no matter what happened in the workday, I'd at least have the satisfaction of knowing I'd gotten a chunk of writing done.

However, there's a caveat for that with me -- when I'm stressed, it puts the brakes on my writing. I'm a problem-solver by nature -- and, in many ways, I think of any story I'm writing as a problem to be "solved" (the solution being writing it to completion to my satisfaction).

But when other problems intrude on my consciousness, they shove my writing out of the way. Kind of like how I'd not be able to write a story while my home was burning down -- those other problems take precedence.

I've found that I need the rest of my life to be reasonably settled if I'm to be productive and creative, or else I get derailed.

Case in point: I've been out of work for 11 months, now, and while, on the face of things, one might think there was this wonderful gift of time for me to get a lot of writing done, in fact, I've not written much of anything new in this time. And it's 100% tied to my current situation.

I don't feel like I can write fiction while my mind is occupied with trying to find another job. It's terribly frustrating to me, akin to trying to deliver a speech while someone in the crowd is honking a horn at odd intervals.

As a 50-something acutely aware of how much time I have left to me (or not left to me), the prospect of losing 11 months crushes me, even though I know myself well enough to know that I simply can't do my writing right now, because my mind's tied up in the job hunt.

All I tell myself as solace is that if/when I'm able to land another gig again, and I can regain some normalcy, I'll make up for it by cranking out the new work I need to.

And that's the important thing to note: writing's not "therapy" for me -- I love to write, and even need to write, but the conditions have to be right for me to write. I need the economic and spiritual equivalent of peace and quiet to be able to create.

I'll always mourn the lost time -- I won't call it writer's block -- but I'm unable to write through it. All I console myself with is that I've been jotting notes down during this time, so I'll be able to hit the ground running again when the workaday wounds have healed.