It’s About to Get Busy…
It’s the afternoon of Halloween as I’m writing this. The neighbors across the street are congregating outside with their costumed children. Other neighbors are adjusting their Halloween decorations. TVs are queueing up tonight’s offering of horror films, and my wife and I are getting ready to head into the city to catch a rare screening of the 1981 horror-drama Possession.
Tomorrow morning brings with it the month of November. The next two months, for many people, will be a whirlwind of holiday preparations, stress, the juggling of even busier schedules, and planning to spend time with family members — relatives both beloved and nerve-wracking. The election year is long behind us, but that doesn’t mean the polarized divide that whips us into a fervor every two-to-four years is gone from our Thanksgiving tables.
NaNoWriMo also launches tomorrow, which, depending on how much or little you participate, brings its own emotions and stress to the table.
For many writers, artists, and creatives, the next two months are an uphill battle of scrounging time to birth something beautiful and worth taking pride in unto the world. Schedules tighten. Days slip away faster. Everything consistent that we could anticipate day-to-day and week-to-week is suddenly tossed into the air the nearer we get to the holidays.
I don’t know about you, but in years past, November and December would stress me out — creatively. What little time I manage to scrounge every week to write stories or reviews would diminish, and I’d have to find oddball hours/minutes to bleed out a sentence or two on a blank Microsoft Word screen, hoping for the best.
Then, I’d beat myself up about it. I’d read all these articles from professional writers, many of whom offered the same, tired stereotype that if you want to take this seriously, you need to dedicate time to writing everyday with no exception. The intention was to inspire and push people to practice their craft, but it would stress me out. I’d sit down for a measly 30 minutes, hearing a phantom ticking of a clock somewhere as I’d force myself to bleed onto a blank page, only managing to come up with a passing thought before I had to focus on something else.
During the spring and summer months, finding time to write was more of a breeze. With the holidays approaching, there is always some shopping to be done, some planning ahead, so that we, my wife and I, can enjoy a few good meals with our family. Adding fuel to the fire, both Deanna and myself have divorced parents, and each of our parents dislike each other to some degree. What this means is, instead of two Christmases, we have four. That’s not as fun as it sounds.
And time flies by even faster.
Every morning, we look in the mirror and see ourselves anew. We’re a day older. We may have an extra wrinkle beneath our eyes or a new gray hair we hadn’t noticed yesterday. The inevitable march of time beats on, and we’re struggling against its ebb and flow to do something meaningful with our time on this planet. That can mean any number of things to any number of us. For creatives, that means we create a new world or share a new perspective through our works. It means we put the finishing touches on one piece and start another.
Most creative people that I am fortunate enough to call my friends have day jobs, and that means we don’t have the luxury to sit down whenever we feel like it, typing away at that story. And that’s stressful, especially now that November is upon us.
But it’s okay.
This is what I want to tell you.
Create when you can, and when you can’t, don’t beat yourself up about it. Why? Because you’re stifling that wellspring of motivation that can hit you at any moment. When you’re too busy stressing out about what you’re not doing, you’re closed off to what’s living, breathing, and moving around you.
When stuck in your head, skewering yourself for not writing, you’re missing out on that extraordinarily beautiful flower trapped in the floral section of the grocery store. You’re missing out on being mesmerized by a runaway plastic bag (like that weird kid from American Beauty) in the parking lot. You’re not listening for that wild, out-of-context conversation you happen to walk by that fuels your next story idea.
Plain and simple, you’re not embracing the lifeforce all around us that leads to those jolts of creativity. When you’re scrambling to exert control of the situation and force yourself to write for writing’s sake, you’re missing out on all of those little moments that bring color and vibrancy to your pieces.
You probably won’t be able to write as much as you’d like in November and December, but what you do manage to write, you should be proud of. Because we’re all in the same boat. We’re all waging war against lost time to fulfill that creative drive that keeps us sane in a colorful and crazy world.
Don’t stress; breathe. Repeat that to yourself in the mirror every morning, and maybe you won’t see any new gray hairs for a few days.