Half-jokingly, I've been calling 2022 my year of rest and relaxation. I spent a lot of days last year unable to get out of bed until after 9, even when I woke hours earlier. I spent a lot of afternoons dozing on the couch to reruns of a show I know by heart. My inbox had somewhat fallen asleep, too; I submitted things now and then, got solicited for things occasionally, but for most days of most weeks, nothing came in or went out.
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| this blog post is not to be construed as an endorsement of this book or its author |
Most of the big stuff I do as a writer is early in the year. A book prize I read for is mostly active in January; AWP is in March; and the time-consuming work I do for a residency committee is largely in April. Everyone will tell you that publishing is least active during the summer, and fall is so frantic that I have no interest in ever publishing a book then, or really in doing anything else notable as a writer.
Last year, once AWP and the mini-tour I did for the Plan 9 book were over, I found myself idle, and I couldn't rustle up any motivation to break the inertia. In late summer I researched for the novel I'm trying to write. That occupied me for a little while, but it wasn't a reason to get out of bed. Nor did I/do I yet have a significant schedule or deadline for anything related to that book, so there was no rush.
In all, I'd say that I did very little of significance for about seven months of 2022, nonconsecutively.
I can't complain about this, per se. What most Americans wouldn't give for that kind of leisure - to have nothing pressing to do for half the year. My therapist wasn't worried. But I was. It seemed unnatural not to produce anything for such a long period of time, to find myself with no logical argument for spending the day upright instead of horizontal. And I felt vaguely, minimally unhappy. Not much, not to a clinical point, but like a narrow vein of obsidian in an otherwise buff-colored stone. Something was wrong.
There's more for me to think and say about all this looking back than there was as it happened. I kept checking and couldn't find mental illness at the root of all this, but I'm still a bit suspicious, because the behavior ticks a few boxes for depression. A thing that occurred in late 2021 harmed and affected me a lot more than I realized at the time, and those effects reverberated in my disposition for most of the next year. (Curious, in fact, how it took exactly a year for the effects to start to fall away, one by one, in succession.) Some of how I justified my inactivity was rebellion against the capitalistic work structure, and some was that I was intensely resting after a period of intense physical activity (while I worked at the barn). Still more was that I watched movies almost every day, which counted as work for a film critic, even if the movies weren't attached to a particular project.
My year of rest and relaxation was probably sustained by all these reasons in different quantities. It didn't feel good while it was going on, but like any not-so-good experience, now I know what that feels like, and can recognize it if it ever shows up again. Plus, the rest fueled me to bounce back strong.
Which I think I can safely say is what's happening now. February has been bonkers, full of opportunities and heartbreak and frustration and celebration, but particularly the past week has given me the feeling that I've come back to life. My inbox is hopping. My list of responsibilities is extensive enough to be written out instead of remaining in my head. The interactions I'm having with fellow writers sparkle and hum. I have ideas for books again. The feeling of dark dormancy, the heavy nadir of motivation, has lifted.
Not gonna lie, I'm pretty sure my work with X-R-A-Y is the biggest part of the change. My book publicity machine having to start churning has helped, too, because it's forced me to take some action instead of staring at the wall, but X-R-A-Y has given me a purpose, a set of daily activities, I simply didn't have for most of last year. In joining the team there, it feels like I reached up very slowly and weakly for a handhold, and what I seized conveyed me out into the sun from a room I didn't even realize was dark.
Which brings me to the carnival-barking portion of this post. I'm teaching the very first class X-R-A-Y is offering, ever, and you can sign up for it right now, if you'd like. It's on a Sunday afternoon next month. Payment slides from $75 down to $25, and if you as a writer are stuck in the mud (kinda the way I was last year, in fact), this is a great way to get unstuck. Hence the name of the workshop.
Also, if you are headed to AWP, I hope to see you kind of generally, but I also hope to see you at one of the two readings I'll be attending. The first one, on Wednesday, I'll be a reader; the second one, I'll be handing out promo stuff for X-R-A-Y and probably myself too.
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| reading at this one |
See you there. XOXO
