(I am writing along with Laura Lynn Brown’s summer blogging project at MakesYouMom.com. Please read her post here.)
As a general rule I don’t get writer’s block. My work at a monthly magazine doesn’t allow that. But in May, I could not get together my thoughts to write my column. I have a file called Potentials, and not even my potentials were coming together.
I suspected it was because I had just completed the rewrite of a manuscript. Was this normal? I called a couple of friends who have written multiple books. They both told me that, yes, it’s normal, and I should take some time off. I told them it was editing week and I was looking forward to editing 15 articles in five-ish days. I could hear the horror in their silence.
When you write for a living, the line between writing to live and living to write is fuzzy at best. I admit it—I do live to write. It has kept me from bursting into flame. Sometimes the fact that I have an interview to do or an article to finish or a column to start was enough to keep me going when I wanted to give in.
I’d like to explore this write-to-live thing, although I suspect it would be like saying, “I think I’ll stop breathing with my left lung.”
But last September when John and I took a week at the beach, I did not write. I did not miss it, not with the company of the waves and the sand and the migrating birds.
