writing – Page 2 – PSYCH/FLASH

Writing Goals are Good and All, but How About a Little Play Time?

Tomorrow I’m traveling to an east coast writing retreat where I was granted an eighteen day fellowship. I’m excited to go, and it almost feels weird, because nothing fun has really happened in the last year and a half. Two birthdays in quarantine, conferences moved online, no travel just for enjoyment. I miss the world.

I was awarded a fellowship here once before. I spent the entire month of January 2020 working on my memoir, hanging out with writers in all genres, with visual artists working in multiple mediums, with composers making all kinds of music. Nothing to me is so generative and downright comforting as hanging out with my tribe. We all get it. Art is everything and art is really hard and it’s the best.

Charlie Jane Anders Connects Creativity with Survival

This matters to me because when I don’t write, I start to feel sick. My body stiffens, my curiosity wanes, my fatigue worsens, and anxiety begins to poke a fiery hole in my chest.

Writing eases all of that. Almost any kind of writing, in fact. I have my big projects on which I want to make progress, but just putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to write anything at all breaks open an invisible portal in me and cleans out what is sticky and stagnant and slowing me down.

Today is a Day of No Revelations. Instead, Migraine.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Today it rained, which means low barometric pressure. This fact, coupled with my poor sleep last night, means it’s a high probability migraine day, and yeah, that’s what happened.

So pain. And nausea. Lots of lying down while still trying to get work done. And walk the dog and get food and water into my body and all the other things we all do to maintain ourselves every day.

It still surprises me that even when I’m in this kind of pain, I can write something. That makes me happy. Nauseous, but happy.