“...and I knew in that moment that my writing would never breathe on its own if I didn’t learn how to let go.”-Laraine Herring-
I started writing my first -and, so far, only- novel years ago, five years to this day precisely. It sprung unexpectedly out of a random writing exercise from a book I never finished reading; a simple exercise: write something in first person as if you were a man. And there he was suddenly, some guy telling me his story. And I kept writing because I wanted to know who this person writing through my hand was and what had happened to him.
I spent the next 6 months sitting down like two hours almost every day, writing. The process felt like I was slowly uncovering the fossil of an ancient creature out of the earth.
And then one day, I stopped. There were only two chapters left to finish it and I stopped. I couldn’t go on. Writer’s block I would call it. The next years were full of excuses and a couple of unfinished short stories, until the writing periods almost disappeared completely.
It was only earlier this year that I started writing fiction again, and only very recently that I have done it regularly. But something had to happen inside of me, a profound change, for this to be possible.
You see, I am extremely demanding with myself: everything needs to be nearly perfect or it isn’t worth doing it. Which is ridiculous. But, tell that to my mind. So, of course, it was almost impossible to attain this state of creative freedom you need for writing when you expect your sentences to spring out in glorious perfection like Athena leaping out of Zeus’s skull. Add to this a constant and uncontrollable habit of comparing my work to the work of others and what do we have? Eternal writer’s block.
It wasn’t until I learned to let go of all my expectations and insane self-demands that the written word and I became friends again.
It has been a long and hard process, this letting go of the thoughts that paralyze me, and this process is far from over. I still compare myself to others, but now I manage to walk away from this confidence-killer faster than before. I let it go and get back to writing (sometimes after spending a couple of hours brooding), and just focus on my writing and my very own process and style, and try to forget about the rest.
Letting go has allowed me to reach a new-found freedom. If I had to describe it, I would say it feels like a less cluttered inner space that has room for ideas and air and light, with a clean desk placed in front of a window, always ready for me, and every wall stacked up with words.
