I haven’t worked on my memoir manuscript since before I graduated from my MFA program in June. It was my final project, and by the time I was done with it, I didn’t want to look at it again. I just wanted to be done with it. Done. To not think about for awhile. I looked forward to a break after graduation to maybe give myself time away from the manuscript, so I could approach it fresh and with new energy.
That’s not what happened.
Anytime I even thought of the manuscript, the vibes were off. I couldn’t bring myself to think of it for long, much less work on it. I started avidly avoiding it. I started wondering if maybe it would just suffice as a final project and nothing more.
Still, I couldn’t quite convince myself to give up. I thought I caught a second wind, and I printed out the whole manuscript to read it and see what I had to work with. But I only got about a third of the way through before life things interrupted. I didn’t pick it back up. I tell myself it would cost me nothing just to read it. Yet, I still don’t. The manuscript is still sitting on my coffee table in my office, a haphazard pile, which I try not to glance at.
Weeks and now months have gone by, and I still have not done a single thing with the manuscript. I can’t bring myself to. I finally had to admit that maybe, just maybe, I am blocked on this particular project. Because I am able to write my Morning Pages, a poem a day, blog posts, and writing prompts for the writing classes I am taking. I can write. I just can’t write this manuscript right now.
That’s why I was intrigued by Chapter 9 of The Artist’s Way, which tackles creative blocks and creative u-turns in an artist’s career. Julia Cameron points out two things about blocked artists that spoke to me. First, she notes that blocked artists often think “in terms of great big scary impossible tasks” instead of beginning with baby steps (151). A memoir, a novel, a play, an opera instead of breaking down the work of art into its smaller, more manageable parts. Second, “fear is what blocks an artist” (152). So, I knew I was doing the first one because I had been thinking, “I have to write a memoir!” not “I have to write 500 words today.” I was focused on the big thing instead of the small manageable thing that I could tackle. I had let the project grow larger and larger in my head until it became unwieldy and overwhelming, impossible to work on.
What I hadn’t realized was how much fear played into my creative block until I did Cameron’s Blasting through Blocks exercise. In it, she gets you to list all you fears connected to the piece of work along with other prompts about resentments and what you stand to gain by not doing the work. I was hesitant to do the exercise, but I made myself do it anyway. As I started writing in my journal, I filled a one page and then two. My list of fears was long. I was afraid of being boring. I was afraid no one would read my memoir. I was afraid the work wouldn’t be good enough to be published. Frankly, I was afraid it was garbage. I was afraid I wasted my time in my MFA program. And the list went on. Fear oozed off the page. And then, I wrote something that surprised me: “If I don’t do the work, then I won’t fail again.”
I won’t fail, again? What did that mean?
Then, it hit me. I had one of those creative u-turns that Cameron writes about. And it haunts me. A few years ago, I proposed a book about motherhood to a press and received an advanced contract. I started working on the book in earnest, but something was not quite right. I just couldn’t commit to writing it for complicated and legitimate reasons, so I eventually gave it up and cancelled the contract.
But to this very day, I always think, Was I making excuses for myself? Did I just walk away because I was lazy? Could I just not write like I needed to? I branded myself a failure as a writer because the book never happened. And it shaped the way I have thought about myself as a writer ever since. I was that writer who couldn’t write her book. I was that writer who couldn’t write. Maybe, I was that writer who shouldn’t write. Even as I was writing a lot in my MFA program, I was still wondering if I deserved to be there because of what I hadn’t done. The ghost of that project stalked me and wouldn’t let me be. To be honest, I wasn’t trying to chase it away. I felt like I deserved to be haunted. I deserved to be punished for what I understood as a failure.
What Cameron emphasizes is that we have to forgive ourselves for these creative u-turns. I decided that I would do so. Finally. First I had to acknowledge how much this one project impacted me and how I punished myself for not writing it. I had to confront the ghost before I could move on. And what I discovered is that things always appear scarier in the dark than when you shine the light on them. I’d let this ghost roam free in my head, and it had become bigger and bigger and bigger. Scarier and scarier and scarier. Yet now, I had to admit to myself that yes, I hadn’t written the book. Yes, I had cancelled a book contract. But, some projects just aren’t meant to be. I wasn’t lazy. I wasn’t making excuses for myself. This book just didn’t work out, and that was okay. It happens. It happened to me. And I’m still a writer.
So, I made myself write it down in my journal: I forgive myself for not completing this book. This one project doesn’t define me. It doesn’t determine my future. And now, I am actually trying to forgive myself (a work-in-progress), so that my current manuscript (and future ones) will no longer be haunted by this ghost. I know forgiveness won’t be as easy as just writing it down. But, I am hoping that my purging those fears, and confronting that project will allow me to approach my current manuscript with a clear head. Maybe, I’ll gain some traction on it when I’m no longer afraid. Maybe, forgiveness will actually happen. That’s my hope.