Drawing the Chicken 8: On Starting (again)

(and again)

It was the night before my first day of twelfth grade. I had been home for a month, having missed my eleventh grade final exams due to an eye surgery. But my surgeries were routine and my grades good anyway, so my school had promoted me to the 12th regardless. I remember that night because I think it was the most anxious I have ever felt: I couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up, chanting the Buddhist chant I turned to for comfort, anxious beyond what I had tools for. At some point, my brother tried a prank thinking it might cheer me up (maybe?), and I burst into tears, so he had to go wake our mother up and send her to me.

Now, I should mention that I loved school. I had incredible teachers and supportive friends, and I was one of those kids who genuinely loved learning. There was no reason for me not to look forward to school after a month of convalescence. So I’m not sure I knew then why I was so anxious, and I don’t know how I explained my tears to my mother that day, but I think I know now.

Einstein’s First Law of Motion: An object at rest will remain at rest, and an object in motion will remain in motion, unless an external force imposes change.

Einstein might have been referring purely to the realm of physics, but so much about the physical world mirrors our emotional and mental realities (doesn’t the phrase “let’s get the ball rolling” remind you of high school science experiments around inertia, where we rolled little plastic balls down inclines? And don’t you use it for breaking inertias that have nothing to do with physics? There we go!).

This “Law of Motion” is certainly true of me and my creative process: if I’m in the middle of creating, I can pick up my creative work day after day for a long time, but if something makes me stop, I will also stay stopped for a long time. Either way, the change in state from there forward requires a great deal of external force. Force that will sometimes bring me to tears, and certainly to anxiety.

When I finished my MFA thesis— a book length collection of poems—, I didn’t write again for months. Then, after I revised it into a real book that got accepted for publication, I didn’t write poetry again for another year or so. I worried that maybe I would never write again, that maybe all the words were gone. Of course, I did write poems again, but after I finished the second book, I again didn’t write poems for more than a year. The old fears were back, but this time, I was also comforted by the rhythm in it: this seems to be my pattern, the stopping, and the taking time to start back up.

It happens in less dramatic situations as well. When I finish reading a book, even if I have been devouring it for hours everyday, it takes me a while to pick up the next one— even if it was lined up waiting all along. When I finish a Netflix series I enjoy, I don’t watch any others for a few months, until I start a new one and then watch everyday, sometimes multiple episodes a day, until again, it’s done, and I stop for months. There’s some powerful grip that the law of inertia has on me: in motion remains in motion, stopped remains stopped.

I’ve heard a lot of writers talk about the fear of the blank page— the fear of starting something new and uncharted— but I’m far more afraid of the half-written page that has been abandoned for some time. With blank pages, I can free-write my way into a new idea, a fresh thought, and go from there. But when I leave off with a half finished thought and don’t return to it quickly, my brain gets quietly more and more overwhelmed. Moving again becomes more and more impossible.

And yet, isn’t all creative work about precisely that process of starting again?

Over the last few weeks, I have been unwell and in the process of a major lifestyle overhaul as a result — medical tests eliminated about 75% of my major food groups, so I’m relearning how to cook, bake, exist (I’ll write another post about food at some point, not just about how much I enjoy making it but also about how central you realise it is to well being when you have to give up so many of the foods you instinctively turn to for comfort or a sense of “home”). All of my energy has gone into looking up new recipes, trying out new types of meal prep, and navigating blood tests, injections, and doctors’ appointments. And now, as I begin to settle into my personal new normal, and as I attempt to return to the book I’m writing but have abandoned for the last few weeks, I am struggling with the return.

An object at rest will remain at rest unless an external force imposes change.

It is time now, I suppose, for that external force. If I were to wait around for the inspiration to finish writing this book, I’d be here another year, in this limbo between rest and motion. And once I’m in motion again, I know I will be able to sustain it, until the next pause, when I have eye surgery in December, and then I will do this all over again. It’s exhausting, but it helps to remember that it is a pattern— that it is even a law of physics.

If you’re stuck, like I am, try and see if this helps: Remind yourself that you don’t need to worry about any kind of day to day gruelling effort, that all you need to focus on is that one strong push that will get the ball rolling. Once in motion, you’ll stay in motion (for a time, at least, until something stops you again, and then we start this process again!). It isn’t foolproof, but it’s certainly easier than imagining a time-after-time push when in truth, it is only truly difficult to start.

What about you? Do you have ways to ease (or force!) yourself from motion to rest or rest to motion? Tell me in the comments below?