Year in Review: Writing on Not Writing
I stopped writing in 2014, by choice and by chance. My on-and-off relationship with The Wire, The Atlantic’s ill-fated news operation, finally ended at the beginning of the summer after four-odd years. I moved home from Toronto and planned to give myself what, in my eyes, was a much-deserved break from the hustle of Internet publishing. My plan was to spend my two months going to the beach, drinking cheap beer in the park, and riding my bike as much as possible before heading back to university in the fall. (Blogging had packed on a few pounds around my middle and if I hoped to survive around young, beautiful late-teens and early 20-somethings I couldn’t look like a chubby blogger, is how my thinking went.) In the meantime I could write at my own leisure and build up a small freelancing portfolio. It was a best-laid plan, so you might guess what happened next.
Everything went well until about seven days in. In my short time home, wearing my bathing suit at all times had become a philosophy for my impending summer vacation, life as an always-prepared Spicoli, so I biked to meet my friends for a drink with my trunks on just in case we headed to the beach. After a few rounds, we crashed the opening night after-party for the annual Anne of Green Gables production — I live a short drive from Avonlea — but we stuck out like tourists among the suits and evening gowns, me in my orange and white Old Navy swimming shorts and bright polo, my friends dressed down too but not quite so care free. When a few people wanted to continue partying at another bar, I said my goodbyes, sober enough to find my way home safely but tipsy enough to feel the alcohol in my belly as I peddled. I took the safest route possible, the one with the widest lanes, the least amount of traffic and the best lighting — an old route through my neighborhood, familiar like the lines of my palm.
About three quarters into my ride, as I made the last big turn before home, my bike stopped suddenly on a crack in the road and I pancaked — body thrown forward, head bounced on impact, arms sandwiched between my body and the pavement, hands still clutched to the bars of my now mangled bicycle. It was not my first time rolling over and collecting myself after an accident, relieved I wasn’t more seriously hurt. I untangled myself from what was left of the frame, collected my backpack and broken glasses, and rustled through my bag for my phone to call my mom. She pulled up less than two minutes later. I barely had time to look at the blood that stained my shirt and my shorts — there was a lot, certainly the most blood to come from my face before. I picked up my bike and placed it in the back of her RAV4. My arms hurt like hell.
We got home and cleaned out the long, deep cut above my right eye, where, when my head hit the pavement, the metal hinge connecting the frame to the arm of my glasses tore through the skin — the glasses broke apart at the joint. There were other scrapes too — one on my chin and small gashes on my hand — but the one above my eye looked like a cut you see on a fighter’s face after ten or twelve rounds of hard punishment. Should I get this checked out, I asked my mom, eyeing the cut suspiciously. No, don’t be silly, she said, motherly wisdom deciding my level of care. I took an Advil and tried to sleep. My arms really hurt like hell.
In the morning I went to the emergency room. The cut above my eye needed about four stitches and I fractured both my arms just below the elbow. In the hallway, the doctor reviewed my X-rays with me, tracing the fractures with his pen, and said I’d wear a sling for the next four weeks and wouldn’t be back to full health for another eight. My healing process went right through the rest of summer. In the hallway, I cursed, loudly.
I followed my original plan as best I could given my condition, but it’s hard to clean yourself and use the bathroom with both arms suspended in slings, let alone write with any regularity. I spent the rest of the summer either watching a bad teen Youtube series on my iPad, or trying not to get a sling tan at the beach. My freelancing portfolio filled with moths instead of money.
I didn’t write a thing worth a damn until school that fall. As my bones slowly healed, my confidence eroded twice as fast. Going from an Internet schedule to publishing nothing for two months put me in a funk. But this felt worse — this wasn’t writer’s block, I’ve written through writer’s block before. My confidence was broken — the work break-up was messy — and I needed to relearn how to write. I needed a purpose to write again, something to fill the hole left by the job I loved that ended on terms I wished I could rewrite. It wasn’t long before I had an essay due, but I focused on relearning how to write academically, all stiff and proper, when I’m better and more comfortable writing loose and relaxed. I struggled to find any rhythm. I had to practice outside of any obligations. My sentences were short shit.
Procrastinating from school work proved to be the ultimate motivator, of course — my greatest weakness honing my greatest strength. Usually with an paper due in school, an essay will appear. So far all are varying degrees of OK: one about Dairy Queen, one about a girl, one about my personal shortcomings, another about music videos. Some I hope to publish while others were just exercises, working the muscles back into proper shape. The only published writing I’ve done since the accident is this Tumblr post about hanging curtains.
My writing is like a muscle. If it’s not used, it will grow weak and fat. I’m not back to full strength, not yet, but I think I’m making progress, and I was always an imperfect writer to begin with. Christmas break has been good for rehabilitation — spending every day in a coffee shop and tapping out a few hundred words of garbage helps. The girl who encouraged me to start writing again this semester helped. The professor who complimented a paper to which he gave a terrible mark with, “despite your essay’s many faults, your voice really shines through here, I can tell how you were able to make a living writing before coming here,” helped, sort of. This essay helped. Every little bit helps.
Eventually I’ll figure out how to write again.
