The One Where the Magic Stops

 

This post is a long time coming. *deep breath*

Writing, to me, has always been its own form of magic. You live with these characters in your head, you sit at your computer (or with a notebook, etc, in front of you), and somehow, you transform the characters from fragments in your mind to words on a page. Those pages multiply, making a book. Then that book is in the world, in the hands of readers and other authors, librarians who, if you’re very lucky, might passionately support your book, lending their voice to your creation.

It’s a mysterious magic. It’s a little like a leap of faith. You close your eyes, hoping that you’ll be able to float, not fall, or at least build your wings on the way down, as the quote goes. And for me, I always built my wings, found a tail wind that carried me past the first awkward pages, onto the next chapter and the next, until I was finished. A first draft became a second, a third.

Then a published book. Then another.

Then, the magic stopped.

***

People talk about their writing processes, the triumphs, the fear, the joy, the frustration. They don’t talk about writer’s block, or just plain fatigue. Writers guard the magic closely, cupping their hands around the spark like Bastian in the Neverending Story, making our wishes to tell the first, we hope, of a thousand stories.

No one wants to talk about what happens when the spark goes out.

 

I tried everything. I tried to force it. I tried to let go of expectations. I tried taking breaks and coming back refreshed. I tried reading favorite books to get my mojo back. Nothing.

Not being able to write, not knowing if you’ll be able to again, is paralyzing. To have the words and feelings on the tip of your tongue, yet trapped there, is a goddamn tragedy. It’s like you’ve been breathing easily all your life, and now all you get is a tiny sip of air. It’s like living in the light, then someone plunges you into darkness. You don’t have a light switch, or a flashlight, or a match. There’s just darkness. You know there’s a way out, but for the life of you, you can’t find it. You start to panic. You start to believe you’ll always be in the dark.

And you miss the light. You miss it with everything you are. 

***

When the year started, I had a clear plan: a novella, the second Walker Boys book, and then the first companion to ONE SONG AWAY. I bought a planner that sat on my desk, collecting dust. I opened the novella document so many times, but writing wasn’t easy anymore.

It was hard. 

It was painful. 

I leapt, but my wings were just paper, paper that couldn’t hold me aloft for long. 

I fell. 

***

Over the next weeks, I threw myself into work, and didn’t think about writing at all. I knew, in my heart, that the novella wasn’t working, and worse, *nothing* was working. There was a place I wanted so badly to get Jonah and Quinn to, but it wasn’t going to happen the way I’d originally envisioned. So I worked. I spent time with friends. I read.

I went to the beach with two of my best friends and my girlfriend. I slept with the sound of the ocean carrying me into sweet dreams, and I laughed until I cried, and cried out of sheer joy, which is never a bad reason to cry. I came home with a plan for the future in terms of where I want to end up…and somewhere in the middle of all that, I let go of what wasn’t working.

What I did might work for the next person, and it might not. All I know is that when I rebooted, I felt a bit of the old me, the me that knew how to string words together into a pretty sentence, into something that can bring a setting to life, make a character seem real, like a friend.

I opened a new Scrivener project and named it AS YOU BREATHE AGAIN. In some ways, I’ve been waiting to tell Reece Walker’s story since he appeared, fully fleshed, in the middle of AS YOU TURN AWAY’s Chapter Two.

It was a new beginning. 

***

Writing again was tentative. Tender, like the first time you dare to stretch your foot after a painful cramp locks you up, making moving impossible. It was fragile, like repairing a nearly severed relationship. It was like coming back to your childhood home, where things are different, but yet the same, too.

That novella, AS WE FALL TOGETHER, is still in my Scrivener. After a few difficult months, I had to admit to myself that even though I had ideas for a Jonah and Quinn novella, it wasn’t working. It wasn’t the right time, and maybe it wasn’t the right time for *them*, either. As much as I want to check in on them after AS YOU TURN AWAY, a novella isn’t the way to do it. I’m working on different ideas for that peek into their lives before AS YOU TURN AWAY and their appearances in AS YOU BREATHE AGAIN, and I’ll update y’all as soon as I know how it’s going to happen. Because it will. I’m not giving up.

Instead, I’m taking a leap again, on Reece and Lanie’s book. It will be out this year, but beyond that, I can’t say for sure. I wanted to publish it in the summer, and that may still happen. It may be the fall. It may be the winter. It may be the only book I release this year. And that’s okay. 

Every word is a little easier. That magic is working again, sometimes in fits and starts, sometimes with a creak or a groan, but it’s working.

I’ll never take it for granted again.

I learned that they say “Eyes on your own paper” for a reason. I cannot compete with other writers. I am not them. I don’t write any anyone’s pace but my own. Putting out less or more books a year than other authors does not lessen *my* accomplishments. My readers, I hope, will be here on this journey.

And it is. A journey. I focused too hard on the destination, thought I could speed my way through the aching growing pains of creating another book. I thought if I wanted it hard enough, I could get there faster by forcing it out. I thought I had to change my timeline.

Now, I see that I can only write on my own timeline. I can only write for myself. I can only hold myself to my own expectations. I don’t need to look at anyone else’s grass, seeking a greener hue. I only need to work patiently on my own.

***

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