Living the write life

An experiment in creativity and an exploration of freedom from obligation.

Mentally, I said to myself, “You’re going to experiment with living the write life.”

I’d seen a documentary with David Lynch talk about his life as a painter. “The art life” he’d called it.

According to David, the art life had come down to three things:

1. Time in the studio every day

2. Immersing yourself in painting

3. Wine and cigarettes

Still hurting a week after a rare drinking session with crippling hangxiety, I knew the third was not an option for me. But in the dark bedroom watching David Lynch paint with his surgically gloved hands tenderly touching canvasses before drilling and swearing, during my latest existential career crisis with a dash of midlife thrown in, the idea of of living simply and inexorably for creativity appealed to me.

In a journal, I wrote:

The writing life

“I want to sit on my ass and write”*

But what does that mean, really?

1. Reading regularly in the morning with coffee

2. Taking notes

3. Watching creative stuff that inspires me

4. Accommodating the different kinds of writing:

• Practical

• Short outs (Substack)

• Deeper feeling pieces

• User directed

• Story oriented

5. Using writing prizes to inspire me

6. Treating it like fitness training

7. Using pen and paper as well as keyboard

8. Giving myself projects & constraints to keep me accountable to the process

9. Studying in bed on shit days

10. Nature, walks, beach, lake

11. Freedom to do things

12. Experimenting

Before later adding the following brainwaves

13. Sidewinder commentary

14. Satire

And a bunch of clouds, seemingly to make the process more achievable, artistic, and cheery.

“Never break the chain”

(my term for setting a plan for production and fighting the problem of all the productivity coming to a screeching halt the minute you skip a day and the guilt setting in. Borrowed from the Fleetwood Mac song, The Chain)

“find inspiration more”

(this explains the hours of BBC documentaries on art history on the weekend, I guess?)

and the true breaking of ground statement that is “connect with creativity”.

I dutifully read and wrote in my journal a wonderful array of blogs, short stories, poems, and ideas over the next few days and weekend.

Then I met Monday and the cursor blinking in public space.

That writer life seemed terribly far away again.

Image: writing within writing. the original notes as above against the screen from Substack and the journaled to do list below.

What happened next is (un)predictable

Greeted with a blinking cursor, I started realising my humanness again.

No longer was I brave devotee to David Lynch or some bad ass from a Michael Connelly* book with a jazz collection and amazing house. I was some middle aged woman from the wilds of Wollongong, filled with self-doubt and very banal things.

The immediate aftermath of sitting down looked something like finding there was nothing in the creative cupboard except bills to pay. I turned to the journals to flick through this far more optimistic me, and struggled.

What I noticed in this moment was:

• My head started tightening

• I started worrying about random comments on the internet

• The words shrank back in front of me with their ordinariness

• The money I needed to earn started screaming

• I felt the repulsive urge to write something SEO friendly

It was almost enough to scare me away from the computer (though obviously, if you are reading this, I finally got my shit together).

Monday is a terrible symbol of obligation

I thought when I stopped drinking regularly that Monday and I would become friends again. But the stubborn bitch is still angry with me. To be fair to Monday, I do her no favours by asking it to carry a lot of pressure.

So, today, I took a different approach. I figured I’d stop asking Monday to set my entire week (read: existence) up for success and jump right (write?) in.

Instead of dismissing myself, walking my eyeballs back from writing to the adulting of my neatly penned TO DO list, I decided to explore this feeling. A feeling I believe is a gap where trauma sits. The thousands of messages to do better, be better, be something else, anything else, but creative. To stare down this black stain on my brain that eats like acid away at my confidence and creativity.

Instead of choosing safety (and shit people won’t mock later), I decided to do it anyway.

I wrote through the discomfort. And I did it anyway straight into Substack instead of allowing a page and the promise of a future edit stifle, muffle, or deter me (insert get out of jail re: typos and comma placement here).

There is a method to the madness - and a little superstitious hope in the mix.

Years ago, I wrote through a migraine trying to tell the world what the confusion looked like. A sufferer of debilitating aphasia, the confusion was so strong, I’d forget my own partner’s name and where the cups were kept. It was truly frightening.

I wrote through it - creating this piece . Oddly, I have never experienced it to that 10/10 level ever again.

I share this not-so groundbreaking idea with you today as a partial experiment. Luckily, I can confirm creating, even when you feel the shame rising, is curative.

Fuck inspiration. I believe in the power of sharing one’s own bullshit in helping other’s find a place for their own on life’s scale. If I do this imperfectly, weathering my own eviscerating voices and potential for some lemon-lipped commenter to laugh at what I’ve written now, maybe it will help a less brave, a more stuck, or a less experimental me again another day.

The ultimate goal is to push past that good girl neediness, the trauma, that inaction as a protective mechanism, to do what I set out to do.

Live the write life. And see where that takes me.

*Bosch, a no nonsense LA cop written by Michael Connelly and turned into a TV show had “get off your ass and knock on doors” pinned to his wall to inspire his inner detective. It tickled me to think of my heroic life as a writer to be somehow his inverse remedy.

80 minutes of writing and editing.