The Post-Portugal Procrastination
Or, how illness helped sideline me for a week
I don’t really blog, so bear with me here. I’m gonna get real about the process.
You could say I was overdue for a holiday. I hadn’t had any extended time off of work since early October, and combined with everything else life has to offer, I could feel the encroaching heat of burnout approaching. We had wanted to go earlier in the spring, but a scheduling snafu meant increased ticket prices, and that’s a no-go for launch.
While I love to travel (I mean, I did move to Europe, after all), part of me was…not exactly terrified, but certainly apprehensive about what this might mean for my writing. Because every time I take a trip somewhere, I always fear I’ll lose my momentum; and when you’re in the thick of creation, few things are more important than maintaining that forward thrust.
The same thing happened to me last spring after a trip to Berlin. I’d begun writing a second book and 25 pages of exciting new material practically leaped out of me and onto the page. Then, I went to Germany, traipsed around the capital — still keeping a travel journal, and taking notes by candlelight — and upon my return? Nothing. Nicht. Rien.
I feebly tried to resuscitate my ambitious, long-gestating project. Often, one of my methods of getting back into a story is to review what I’ve written so far from an editorially POV. That way I can more easily fall back into its rhythms. But it didn’t work. So, I did the practical thing and moved it to the backburner. And as the days turned into weeks and the weeks slid into months, the story moved off the stove altogether.
Soon after, by late July, I decided to give Medium a try, and took to writing flash fiction every day during the month of August. Then, other stories came alive. There’s never just one thing to be working on.
Which leads us back to the present. I went to Porto, where I wined and dined and toured the city. I kept my journal handy, I wrote every day. And when I got back, I stuck to my guns. I refurbished a short story I had published last year back when I had few readers aside from my parents and friends I pestered on Facebook. I answered Tre’s call to write about my first heartbreak, and I wrote an ode to my pop for Father’s Day. All in all it was a productive week back.
I felt like I had broken the pattern, reversed the curse, kept the ships afloat. And then Monday happened. Nah, mostly, I felt ill, some nasty gastrointestinal thing that sapped me of energy and the will to live. Then, temperatures here soared to a very unseasonal 38 degrees Celcius (a very muggy 100℉), and I still had to not only work, but commute by bicycle to the various companies where I teach.
By the end of the day, I could barely stay on my feet, much less commit to new stories I’ve had swirling around in my head. I came home evening and crashed hard, except the heat prevented much in the way of comfort. This being Europe, there isn’t much in the way of residential air-conditioning. They do it the old-fashioned way, with the windows open and rotating fans, if you have them. At night I’d lay atop the bedsheets, writhing in a paralytic sweat. I wasn’t even able to read much, which if you know me will make your eyes pop out of your head.
The thing about not writing, for me at least, is that I feel like shit if I don’t get anything done. Writer’s block is an illusion, because it only means you despise all the words that you put on the page. Taking the occasional break is essential, but prolonged procrastination is an insidious virus that is directly proportional to self-loathing. The longer I go without writing, the worse I feel. I marinate and stew and suffer, when the simple solution is to put words on the page.
Often, an easy trick to get back into the thick of things is to do some correspondence. They get the fingers mobile again and the gears of the brain begin to grind and click. Truthfully, the amount written doesn’t matter much. In the past I’ve spent hours — once even an entire 8 hour session — over a single sentence. But that’s an extreme example.
This past week I wanted to write a new episode of my ongoing series of vignettes, Silly Sex Rituals. Thus far I have one measly paragraph. That’ll change, I know. Eventually I’ll get it done. Or I won’t, and I’ll brush it aside and move on to something else.
Always forward.
Thanks for your patience and, as always, thanks for reading!
