Where Was I?
It’s not unusual the joys, demands and stresses of regular life to get in between a writer and his or her work. Sometimes the connection between the writer and the work in progress is strong and vivid, and work resumes after a brief review, or even sometimes without a review—one just remembers that one was working on this scene, or a new scene jumps into one’s mind. At other times, when the disruption is strong and lengthy, then returning to the work and reviving the connection takes more work.
In late October 2019 a basketball smacked me in the face, leaving me with a concussion.
Come December, my ability to read slowly returned. Tiring easily, preparing for Christmas left me overwhelmed and annoyed. The year ended with a death in the family, requiring travel to family and the weight of grief.
The new year opened with my spouse catching the flu. Despite my being vaccinated and best-practices-hand-washing, I succumbed as well.
Despite having recovered from both the head injury and the illness, I felt as if a curtain, a thick rich velvet stage curtain, dropped on my life and separated me from my writing practice.
How, then, did I find my way back to reconnecting with novel-in-the-midst of revision?
Not by means of any systematic strategy that can be easily replicated by anyone else. Creativity arises in the soul and in the unconscious, and every creative artist has to find his or her own, most effective pathways. Even so, hearing another person’s journey can help to illuminate one’s own.
A key step for me—admitting my anger, frustration and annoyance at being defeated by the vulnerable body. For any number of days, I was just aggravated that I’d gotten disconnected from the revision, and my response was hardly constructive. I refused to try.
Eventually, sitting at the kitchen table, still avoiding my writing desk, I decided review the plot. A few days later I sat at the same table and began to make notes on changing the plot. A little later, a new scene occurred to me. I scribbled, it down, labelled and dated it, and put on my writing desk. Eventually, I sat at my desk and scribbled rough scenes. A few more days passed before I opened the notebook with the chapters I had revised on before the accident. I took a segment to my writers’ group. After that, which was about two weeks of desultory free writing, glances at past work and temper tantrums, I began to feel the pull of the project.
By the end of January I had returned to daily, regular, work on the revision.
There is a Benedictine saying: Always we begin again. However much I lamented the disruption or found myself disconnected from my favored project, the only way forward was to start in again. Trusting in the promise of beginning again does not mean cartwheeling into creative frenzy or vaulting over obstacles. I took a slow approach, in fits and starts, until the story drew me back to regular work. One can, one more time, begin again.
—Vicki Phillips, MFA Fiction ‘18