walking lessons

photo credit: thomas lloyd qualls

​I should start by saying that I’m not someone prone to writer’s block. In general, I have more ideas than I know what to do with. And more words wanting to get out of my head and onto the paper (or you know, screen) than I generally have time to lead them there. Even as I scribble out this confession, I have no shortage of creative projects on my metaphoric plate.

Still, if I’m honest with you (and myself), I’ve been having a little trouble lately, well, writing. That’s not exactly true. The real truth is I’m having a truckload of trouble writing. I simply can’t seem to usher the words anywhere near to where they need to go. And even when I do, I find myself looking around the room for whoever wrote the banal scratch I’m staring at. And then, more often than not, I close my notebook and go on with my day as if the very world itself were not collapsing around me.

         Now, for most people, that would be enough. But actually the terror does not end there. At the same time I’m engaged in this mortal struggle with words, I’m also slightly out of my depth on several other projects: (1) researching a technical subject I know almost nothing about for my next novel; (2) working on material for a non-fiction book and companion workshop; and (3) developing a multi-faceted podcast series.

And when I’m not doing one of these stretching exercises, I’m probably watching a master class to evolve my craft, researching one of the hundreds of things I still don’t know about marketing and audience-building, or falling down the rabbit hole of social media. Oh yeah, I’ve also got a law practice to run and a bright young boy who stays up nights thinking of ways to keep me on my toes.

         As you might guess, on any given day I can find myself feeling less than competent about any or all of these components. And really, all the advice out there on life hacking doesn’t help. Those seemingly innocuous self-help bites just reinforce the feeling that I have no idea what I’m doing.

         Admittedly, writing is not like most other jobs. It’s prone to a unique kind of frustration. Not the least of which is that there have never been any guarantees that the ideas or the words or your focus will all show up when they are supposed to, in any kind of meaningful order. But that is also what makes writing kind of magical.

         The thing I’m starting to believe is that the harder I try to make any of these things happen, the more I chase the fickle cats of progress or achievement, the more I think I really need to do or be some thing, the more these things become water between my fingers. There seems to be an inverse magnetic effect.

I find that when I loosen my grip a little, however, things start to shift. When I practice walking, instead of just getting somewhere, then the view expands. And then what appears on the horizon as I wander these tangled paths of a creative life looks like a hidden meadow, a place where the trees offer quiet shade and the grass wants nothing more than for me to just come lie down.

         And so I am learning to walk without expectation of where I’m going to arrive. And to realize how many unnecessary things I’ve been carrying on this long journey. And to set them down.

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This essay is one of 66 from the Gold Nautilus Award Winning collection Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. You can get your own copy of the book here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0