Change is as good as rest
This past weekend I did something that was hard to wrap my head around: I travelled with my family to Cape Cod, where we gathered. With people! Unmasked! (In short, we partied like it was 2019.)Â
It felt weird. But also great. (Hats off to the host, my friend Ian, who did a ton of preliminary legwork to ensure everyone was vaccinated and on the same page as far as safety.)
I hadn't seen a lot of these people in a long, long time, so beyond "what have you been doing the past fifteen months?" the conversation was also "what have you been doing the past fifteen years?"
One friend asked me if writing has gotten any easier, and honestly? No. It's still hard. What I told him, though, is that the only thing that is easier is knowing that it's hard. There was a sense when I started writing that it shouldn't be so hard, and that notion kept me from writing seriously for about twenty years. But now I know that it's supposed to be hard. It's like pouring antiseptic on a skinned knee. "The horrible burning sensation means it's working!" Except with writing it's "that sense of intense unease and of not being good enough means it's working!"
The other thing that has kept writing hard is that I keep getting better at it. So the things that were hard when I was starting out -- unsure how to make the story work, unable to properly convey the mood/pace/tension -- are still the same. But now they've gotten more complicated as my storytelling gets better, more layered, and more nuanced. It's a hard thing, when you're writing, to get the story out, not knowing whether you're good enough now to properly finish it, or if the story is going to have to wait until you're better. I just finished a novel that I started years ago, and which had to wait a few years until I was good enough to finish it. And yesterday I was looking at all the folders that live in the "picture books" folder on my computer. There are so, so many books in there, and a lot of them were great for me when I wrote them, but aren't actually any good. That's ok. I needed to write them to become a better writer.Â
When we were packing up to come home from Cape Cod, our friend Ellen said she hadn't seen us relax at all. We cocked our heads like confused husky puppies. "Relax? What is relax?" I think we've forgotten how to do it. Sit back? In a chair? For more than five minutes? I'm acknowledging that this might be a problem. (Or it might not? I honestly don't know.) I finally declared that Dave and I had "relaxed" because we had done a six-mile power walk but it was a) not where we usually walk, and b) we didn't have to rush home to do chores. And then Ellen said, "There's a saying: 'change is as good as rest.'" I'm thinking about that a lot. Because if I don't know how to relax anymore, at least I can get out of the house a bit and do something different.
We went away over Memorial Day too, which was much more of a socially distant getaway (we barely got within fifty feet of anyone else), and I did actually sit and read a little (I read Alison Bechdel's new book, which I loved). We also saw a porcupine, and an enormous (dead) lion's mane jellyfish, and this house that looks like something from a picture book. Maybe change is as good as rest, but also: you miss a lot of fun things if you sit at home doing the same routine all the time.
IN CONCLUSION: remember that writing is work, and work is often hard, and that's how it's supposed to be. And after more than a year of every day being exactly the same (punctuated by occasional bursts of scary and unwelcome change), I am encouraging you to get out of your house and explore (safely!). Go see what you can find.
And if you know how to relax, let me know.
Thoughts and Links
I am lucky that I already had a work-at-home setup when the pandemic hit, but the circumstances of 2020 also made me wish for a home office that wasn't so distractingly surrounded by my home, so we're renovating our backyard garden shed to make it into an office (photos in next month's newsletter, I hope!). The project was already underway when this New Yorker article by Deep Work author Cal Newport popped up, all about how many authors have had to leave their homes to get writing done (and so many of them fled to writing sheds!).
I talk a bit about case covers below, but for a delightfully addictive dive into case cover art, check this out.
One of my favorite things to do when we go on vacation is to buy a pile of magazines that I ultimately never read (maybe if I knew how to relax I'd read them?). Last month I got a copy of Eating Well, and flipped through it enough to find this recipe for zucchini, spinach, and gouda bake, which I have now made three times (doubled, and I don't bother to let it cool before we dive in) (also I use onions instead of shallots). It's super easy and very delicious, and I know I don't usually give you recipes, but there you go, there's something to have for dinner this week.
