Hello, friends! Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. If you’re a writer and if you feel insecure, then this is the support group for you. Click here to learn more!
I’m a sciency kind of person, and I think about the world in a sciency kind of way. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in magic. I happen to know that a magical fairy person visits me while I’m writing and helps me with my writing process.
For today’s IWSG meeting, I’d like to turn the floor over to that magical fairy person, a.k.a. my muse. She has something to say, and perhaps it’s something your muse would like to hear.
* * *
My fellow muses, I almost lost my writer. This is a difficult thing to talk about, and a painful thing to talk about, but I cannot not talk about it. My writer almost gave up on writing.
He was under too much stress. He was dealing with too much external pressure. At one point, he said he felt like life was squeezing all the joy and happiness out of him. And every time I whispered in his ear “You should be writing,” I was making the problem worse.
Many muses would make the same mistake, I think. After all, what could be better for a writer than writing? But sometimes we forget just how much stress the so-called “real world” can cause. I thought writing would alleviate some of that stress, but my writer felt like I was just making the stress worse, and he resented me for it. And the more I tried to force the issue, the more I tried to assert dominance over my writer, the worse things got.
Deep down inside, my writer knew I was right. Deep down, he knew that giving up on writing would not make things any better. He’d learned this lesson about himself before, many times over; but he needed some time and some space to learn it again.
So I let my writer stop writing for a while. I let him work on other things, and I let him experiment with other interests and passions. Eventually, he came back to writing. It was inevitable that he would, of course. But in the end, he came back because he wanted to, not because I told him he needed to, and that makes a tremendous difference.
Obviously my writer’s recent stress is not unique. The human world is an unsettling and unsafe place right now, for a multitude of reasons. So if your writer is having a rough time writing, be patient. Give your writer the time and space he or she needs. They’ll come back when they’re ready, and we muses will be waiting.
Planet Pailly 
Hi,
Love this. To sum it up here is one of my favorite quotes to myself: Be gentle with yourself. We writers forget that a lot.
All the best and take care.
Shalom aleichem,
Pat G @ EverythingMustChange
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Thanks! You’re right, we writers do forget that far too easily.
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What an endearing post! 😀 Your magical fairy person sounds very wise.
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Thank you!
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Muse, sometimes we just have to go through a season of not writing.
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It’s true. Sometimes we do.
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Welcome back…
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Thanks, friend! I guess this is my official back-to-normal post!
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Great job, muse! Love how creatively you wrote this one. Made me grin and feel it more.
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Thanks, I’m glad to hear it!
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Yup. I think the universe is definitely trying to tell me something since I’ve come across so many posts about struggling to write and needing breaks for various reasons.
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Absolutely. If you need a break, take one. Your muse can be patient, and your mental health comes first.
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I called it filling up the writer’s cup. We empty it every time we write, and that’s fine, as long as we fill it up again with things we love to do.
Anna from elements of emaginette
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That’s a good analogy! I’m going to start using that one.
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Sometimes the solution is to write about something different. I’m pretty sure if I wasn’t blogging about entertainment right now, if I insisted on finding something deep to write about, no blogging would be happening.
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That can help. And in truth, I did spend some time trying to write something new, something completely different from what I normally write about. It turned out to be garbage, and it will never see the light of day. But it still helped to try something different.
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I can definitely relate. I went through a high stress couple of years. I could not write during that time. It all stopped. I needed to totally switch off just to keep going from day to day. That’s when I turned to photography for the duration. It’s worked. Now I’m back to writing.
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I’m glad you found your way back! Photography’s a good art form too. I can see that doing a lot of good during difficult times.
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Hopefully your muse doesn’t become a slave driver. 🙂
I’m glad she realizes that you need your space in order to ease back into writing again. There’s nothing wrong with taking time out to deal with the world, and the words will still be there when you return to the computer, no matter how long it takes.
May your stress slowly ooze away.
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Thanks, friend! The stress is still there, but I feel like I’m much more in control right now than I was a few months ago. So yeah, it’s oozing away for sure.
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I love your Muse!
I struggled to write for a period of time due to grief. But the urge to write came back. I agree that there will be times when life takes you out of the game – and the writing game is no different to any other in that respect – but when you find your way back, it’s like “honey I’m home!” I’m sure you got a good welcome from your Muse 🙂
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Thanks, friend! It is kind of reassuring to me that the urge to write keeps coming back, no matter what.
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Stress is really getting to me too. My muse has become a lush and abandoned me for online games. The future is looking brighter though. I’m sure we will schedule a play date soon. I did write a post. That is a start, lol.
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Glad to hear things are looking brighter. Writing a blog post is a good start. I think that’s one of the ways IWSG helps us: if you’re having trouble with writing, these monthly “meetings” at least give us an easy writing project to help us get started again.
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It’s good to pause for a bit. Writing is so challenging sometimes, but I like to think that our brain needs a rest like our muscles need resting after a long workout. Even if that break is a whole 2 months 🙂
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I absolutely agree! I actually use the exercise metaphor a lot when I’m trying to explain writing to non-writers, because there are some kinds of writing that feel like a light jog, and others that feel like running a marathon.
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