A couple of months ago, Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote an article for her The Business Rusch blog series that talked about dealing with unexpected, potentially life-altering events. She and her husband, Dean Wesley Smith, call them ‘life rolls’. (The term comes from a role-playing game they invented to teach writers at their workshops about the ups and downs of the writing life. You can find the article here It’s definitely worth reading, even if you’re not a writer.)
The point of her article was that life-disrupting events happen and sometimes writing has to be shelved in favor of more pressing matters—both positive and negative. Or, because most of us aren’t little robots who can continue to write in the midst of emotional/mental/physical upheaval, words and creativity dry up altogether for a while. It’s normal. More importantly, it’s not the end of the world.
My family has experienced plenty of life rolls in the last several decades, but it had been a while since I personally encountered anything that stopped me cold for more than a week.
The day after Memorial Day, I walked away from a near head-on collision that totaled my mom’s car. (Let’s face it—a Prius vs. a pickup truck, even a small one, is not going to end well for the Prius most days of the week, and the guy who hit me was going fast.) I’m seeing a chiropractor to deal with some neck/back/knee issues, but it’s still a miracle I wasn’t killed, didn’t have to be cut out of the car, and didn’t have any cuts/gashes/broken bones/internal injuries. I have no doubt I was surrounded by angels. (The guy who hit me walked away as well.)
The rest of that week, I didn’t write a single thing. Couldn’t think of a line of dialogue or a plot point or anything to save my life. It’s like the creative side of my mind disappeared into a hole and pulled the hole in after it. That’s probably just as well considering I was emotionally/mentally processing everything and physically couldn’t have written anyway, but still. It was really weird.
The next week, I had a couple of scenes pop into my head, but nothing else. Not even characters bantering back and forth like they usually do.
This week, the words have come back in a slow, but relatively steady dribble. I’m thrilled about that, but I haven’t been able to do much with them. Anything that requires me to tilt my head is still painful at the moment; I haven’t yet figured out how to write flat on my back. 😛 I’m getting better, but it’s taking longer than I anticipated.
I know, I know—I should be grateful it’s not worse. And I am. I am so thankful it’s not worse. It’s just frustrating to have everything I’m supposed to be doing right now–or want to be doing right now–temporarily postponed until my body heals.
And that is why I headed back over to Kris’s site to re-read her article again. It’s a reminder that in the grand scheme of things, a few weeks are a drop in the bucket. This, too, shall pass and then I’ll be back on track.
In the meantime, I think God is teaching me to be more patient, more humble…and maybe to not feel guilty that other people are picking up the slack for what I can’t do around the house right now. *sigh*
Thankfully, I’m also experiencing fewer moments where I tense and have to check oncoming traffic to make sure their tires are on their side of the line. That’s a good thing; the heart rate spike is annoying. 😛
Definitely have more empathy for my poor characters now, after what some of them have been through so far. Not that it will spare them from the events that will unfold in their respective stories when I’m back to full speed. 😉