Finding the Sweet Spot; or How to Rediscover the Joy in Writing

For most fiction writers, creating stories is a passion, something they would do whether or not they had any hope of being published. In fact, when I reflect on my writing life so far, it’s those years before I was published—when I was striving for truth, daydreaming about characters, building story arcs, experimenting with language—that were the most exciting and rewarding for me. And I think it’s because that time truly belonged to me. It was my choice whether to spend an hour of the day writing or seven. My choice to try my hand at contemporary or magical realism, women’s fiction or young adult. It felt like I was in a giant sandbox of imagination playing with dozens of toys. And best of all, no one was watching.

Now that I’m published and contracted, those toys have become tools, and that sandbox has become a workshop, one with glass windows through which any number of people can peer in and pass judgment. And my time no longer belongs to me. Now I’m in the business of creating a product, and people are waiting on the sidelines to judge what I’ve created. Somewhere along the line, I stopped playing because of those eyes on me, because of the voices seeping through the windows telling me that what I was making looked wonky and strange, that it was neither functional nor beautiful.

And then those voices became so loud that I stopped listening to the most important voice of all—my own—the one that was trying to tell its next story.

So how do I find my voice again when all those other voices are shouting at me? How do I find the joy in writing when it feels like a job? How do I get myself back into the sandbox?

A writer friend of mine gave me a great sports analogy that has helped me immensely. She said that when she's playing tennis, occasionally the ball hits her racket so soundly that she can feel the impact of it in her bones. That satisfying feeling travels all through her body, telling her she's made perfect contact, that she's hit the “sweet spot.”

When I told her how I'd been feeling lately, she reminded me that when you’re writing freely and tapping into that reservoir of imagination and possibility, you can find that “sweet spot”in writing too, that place where you know instinctively that you've hit on a truth, made a connection, done something well. If you can somehow immerse yourself in the game and play like no one's watching, then the words will come pouring forth and it will feel like magic. Like joy. 

The Aftermath of a Book Launch

So you’ve written a book and snagged an agent who sold your book to a publisher who helped you revise and copyedit and promote, and now three years later, you have an actual book in the world! Most people might assume that after this long roller coaster of a journey, the writer can finally breathe a sigh of relief and just coast. But in my experience, this is just the beginning of another roller coaster, much shorter in length but with the same amount of ups and downs--the post-launch.

The first “up” in my post-launch rollercoaster was my launch party held at The Doylestown Bookshop last Saturday. I debated whether to have a launch party at all—I’m not one for being the center of attention—but I would encourage anyone with a debut coming out to have one, if only to remind yourself that you have accomplished something that the rest of the world sees as kind of awesome. It was so wonderful to have friends, family, and even some of my students come out to support me, to chat and sign, eat scones and drink wine, and basically just celebrate with the people I love. Major, major high point! A huge thank you to all who ventured out on that rainy day to help me celebrate; it was amazing!

And now for the “lows.” I’m sure there are many writers who navigated this post-launch terrain with more perspective and maturity than I did, but I also know I am not alone in becoming a dysfunctional mess of a human being during the first week after my launch. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was on spring break; if I’d been teaching I would have had more distractions. But right after my book released, my world suddenly became very small, a bubble of minutiae that no one else really cares or knows about but that can become all consuming for the writer.

I’m talking about the internet, of course. Every morning I would hop on the computer to see if my Amazon ranking had gone down or if my Goodreads ratings had gone up (and then cry when I realized the opposite had happened). I obsessed about sales and reviews and blog comments, hoping that my little book was thriving out there but knowing that, for the first time in this entire process, I couldn’t do a single thing about it.

Because once a book releases, it’s no longer yours. Unlike the end of a pregnancy when a woman gives birth and has an actual baby to take care of, a book is immediately out of your hands, for better or for worse, and the only thing the writer can do is wish it well and get started on the next project.

I am happy to say that now, two weeks after my release, I have returned to the land of the living. This past weekend I threw myself into revisions on Book 2, and today I head back to school. Normal life has resumed.

And I know that a year from now, I’ll be going through this roller coaster all over again. But next time I’ll be armed with this knowledge and experience, no longer a green “debut author” but a seasoned writer who will have learned not to fret about things beyond her control. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself…

Has anyone else had a less-than-relaxing post-launch experience? Any tips on how to avoid the madness?

Stress Dreams & Writing Deadlines

I was an anxious little kid. Consequently I used to have a lot of stress dreams. As a child my fears were big and amorphous, and my dreams followed suit: lions outside my front door, tidal waves bearing down on my house. As I grew older and my fears became more concrete, so did my dreams: showing up for a test I hadn’t studied for, realizing I had worn underwear to class. Even now I often have teacher stress dreams about showing up for school without a lesson plan or not being able to subdue an unruly classroom full of kids.

But two nights ago, I had what I think is my first identifiable writer’s stress dream. Oddly, it begins with a search for a seafood restaurant that’s gotten good reviews but is known for being in a sketchy neighborhood. I am scouting it out at dusk, just as it’s getting dark and the crowds are thinning out. I have trouble finding the place, and when I do it’s an unassuming little white building with no signage. I knock on the door, and a bland almost faceless male guide opens it and ushers me in, but he moves so fast I can’t keep up with him.

Once inside, I’m not in a restaurant but a shabby house with exposed pipes, chipping tile, and peeling wallpaper. I walk down a long white hallway toward a swinging 2-way door, the kind that normally leads into a kitchen. Only when I go through it, my guide has disappeared, and I have no idea which way to go. I turn left and go through a door to find myself in a tiny claustrophobic room. I’m suddenly terrified I won’t be able to get out. I pull aside a long curtain that hides a changing room, then try another door that’s locked. I begin to panic until I realize I can leave through the same door I entered.

However, this only brings me to more hallways and similar dead-ends until I open a door that leads to an enormous, cavernous space. The room seems to grow downward as I watch in awe. Concrete ramps appear, but the space is mammoth and dark and rugged, like the Mines of Moria in The Lord of the Rings. I’m beginning to wonder just what I’ve gotten myself into when a fluorescent light flickers above me, and the space slowly transforms into a giant library. Rows of bookshelves appear, and books magically fill them. The scary ramps are no longer frightful, so I descend into this basement library, wondering what I’m doing here when I was supposed to be finding a restaurant.

Even though I’m a fiction lover at heart, something compels me to the non-fiction section at the other end. I walk past rows and rows of books until I come to a library carrel holding a large folio laid out to showcase the portrait of a female figure. Just as I’m about to read who she is, I wake up. 

Eventually I fell back asleep. When I woke later, I told my husband about the dream and asked him what he thought it meant, and he turned to me and said, “It's probably about your writing.” And you know, I think he was right. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working feverishly on my sequel and trying to write an outline of the entire book for my editor. The dream seems to tap into a lot of the fears and self-doubt that have plagued me. 

In the dream, I go looking for a restaurant that doesn’t look like much on the outside but has gotten good reviews. These, I think, represent my expectations going into the writing process. But as I plunged into the actual writing, I found blank white hallways that led nowhere; exposed pipes and peeling wallpaper—all the messy false starts and loose story threads and dead-ends of writing a first draft.

The deeper I went, the darker and more overwhelming the entire manuscript became until it seemed like an endless cavern, too terrifying to investigate any further. But then—light! And books! And a sense of relief that I was in a library, a place of comfort and order and new ideas. Somehow I had crossed a threshold, turned a corner that let me know everything was going to be okay.

That mysterious open book in the non-fiction section still bothers me, but maybe my subconscious mind was directing me to take a look my own life and experiences and draw from those. Sometimes we’re so lost in the world of our fictional landscape that we forget where all good fiction ultimately stems--from real life. I have a feeling if I’d had time to investigate that book more closely, the woman in the portrait might have been me.

Do you have stress dreams? What’s the wildest one you’ve had?