Writing Life: Writing Through Chaos

So, I have these three roommates. They drive me crazy.

However, they are also wonderful. They have been there for me through thick and thin, for better or worse, sickness, health, and all that’s in between. I have fought with them, cried with them, laughed with them, loved with them. They’re important to me. And they’re important to how and why I write.

Addi is a free spirit. She’s hard to have a deep conversation with sometimes, as distracted as she can get. She won’t stick to the schedule, and I have to remind her to check our calendar before she runs off and makes plan after plan after plan. And she’s an absolute mess. Keeping the house clean with her around feels like a full-time job. Sometimes she gets a hair up her ass and spends two days in a whirlwind of picking up and wiping down, but it’s not nearly as often as it should be with how she lets things build up. We’ve definitely fought over it many times.

But she gets me out of the house. I’ve done some impulsive but awesome things because of her. When I was a kid, she convinced me to scale the side of our local reservoir’s dam. Pretty sure that’s a federal offense, and I did bring that up, but when you’re twelve and the only laws you’ve ever had reason to be scared of are the ones your father puts down, what’s the issue? My fear of heights? My fear of blood? My fear of some Sky Daddy judging me for doing things just because I could get away with it? Those things held me back from a lot, but Addi was good at picking the right time and place. We were climbing this thing, damn it. And frankly, I’m glad we did. Looking out over Fort Collins from that high point after scrambling up jagged rocks that were not always as secure as they looked, I realized I could do anything. Timid and scared as I was of the world, if I could just believe and go for it, I could get to the top. Growing up and having to pay bills and dealing with life in general, it’s hard for me to remember that. But Addi reminds me whenever she can.

Then there’s Skim. Short for Skimbleshanks—they really love the musical Cats. Appropriate, since they can end up fighting Addi like she’s a back-alley dog. Skim needs neatness, order, routine, and those can be hard to establish in our house. Even so, Skim insists on it, to such a degree that if they get frustrated by the lack of it, everything going on in everyone else’s lives can come to a grinding halt. Skim is also easily overwhelmed by socializing too much, which is frustrating for everyone. Hard to get along when the person who is freaking out can’t talk.

Get Skim and Addi on the same page, though, and they are a force of nature. They both like to focus, and when they agree on the thing they want to focus on, Skim takes that energy to the next level. Addi wants us to go to Japan? Sweet. Skim’s got the flights, the shinkansen, the rail pass, the hotels, the restaurants, the sights, the attractions, the reviews, the translation apps, the hiragana worksheets they kept from a class they took 10 years ago—it is on. Skim is the one that makes sure I am on time for appointments. That I turn my work in on time. That I am ready to be a teacher when the clock hits 9:26 am. They are precious to me, and have helped me survive this world even if they don’t understand it particularly well themself.

Finally, there’s Ben. He’s…difficult. Very, very difficult. A pessimist in an otherwise optimistic house. He thinks of himself as a realist, and maybe that’s true to an extent, but don’t all pessimists think of themselves that way? Problem is he’s got the most silver of tongues. Seems like when the house is in an uproar, he’s always the eye of the storm. Addi is inconsistent and chaotic—he shoves that in her face to an unhelpful degree. Skim is quiet and rigid—Ben enumerates exactly how many relationships that has cost them and the moment they went downhill. I try to come in and break it up with logic and reason—he turns that logic around on me and somehow makes it all my fault. It’s always my fault. He’s there to remind me.

And that’s just it. On my own, I can be oblivious in my optimism. I can let people walk all over me. Give too much, trust too much, overlook too much. Ben reminds me that I can’t do that and survive. He’s overbearing and unkind in his words, but there’s truth in them. He comes from a place of remembering that people can suck, just like him. That if I am not careful, if I don’t have boundaries, others will take advantage of me and hurt me. He’s right, of course, but we’ve had so many fights about how he puts his message across. Ben figures that if he makes it all my fault that I am too permissive and cruelty from others is my punishment, then that puts me in control. It’s my fault, so I can change it. I can put down the boundaries I need. Again, he’s right. I am able to do that, and I’ve learned a lot about boundaries because of him. There’s only really a problem when he finds himself on the other side of them.

These three are deeply influential to how I approach everything in life, including my writing dreams. Their inspiration, their devotion, their trepidation. I can’t overstate how much they have dictated how and what and when and why I write. That will never change. I will never live apart from them. I will always need to negotiate with and around these three when it comes to being an author. They’ve made the path so deeply difficult. They’ve also made it deeply exciting and satisfying. And if I’m going to stay the path, I have to continue to find better and more meaningful ways to negotiate with them every day.

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I love writing. I have loved writing since I was very young, and it has been the one constant passion I have clutched to my chest for as long as I’ve been able to hold a pen. Also, I have ADHD, autism I, and extreme OCD with an emphasis on rumination. I think deeply and wildly and methodically and harshly. I clash with myself in ways that makes creating and staging multiple characters with their own motivations and goals feel natural, like I’ve been doing it since before I could read. However, between Skim’s burnout that’s been running wild somewhere between the last six years to two decades , the fights with Ben only being tolerable while medicated, and Addi hating the rigidity of taking pills twice daily, writing consistently has been, in a single word, challenging.

But who cares about my personal challenges? Writers write. Stephen King said so in On Writing, and who can argue with the horror titan from Maine? So, if writers write, that means that if I want to claim the title, I better be writing.

There is no shortage of blogs, books, videos, and seminars featuring experts with loads of helpful advice on how to create a writing routine. They know it’s not easy, but truly, it can be simple! Just wake up at 4 am instead of 5, get your coffee made early, and put down some words before its time to get ready for a long day at work. Oh, you’re a night owl? Carve out an hour sometime between getting home, cooking dinner, reconnecting with the spouse, cleaning the house, contemplating the life choices that led you to this particular couch in front of this particular TV as you stare down having to repeat the whole thing tomorrow and going to bed! You don’t really need to be on your phone as much as you are, so put that down and write instead. Oh, also, did you know writers need to be reading? Better find a daily hour for that, too. And no, scrolling trashfire headlines doesn’t count, even if they contain words. You gotta read in your genre! And you need to read up on other authors who are successful so you can learn from what works. And read writing advice. And how to market yourself in the age of social media influencers. In fact, you better be following those influencers to see what they do, so pick that phone back up! If you’re motivated, you’ll find the time to do all that around working a job, nurturing relationships, having a hobby to keep you grounded, and generally being a well-adjusted human adult!

Throw regular doctor appointments in there. Weekly therapy that occasionally destroys you and you have to spend the rest of your night recovering. Medications that need fetching, monitoring, switching up. Side effects that might be helpful but usually aren’t. All that on top of the underlying reasons why you now know your psychiatrist has a dog who just went through surgery last week but you can’t get past the debilitating anxiety that stands between you and texting your friends because you’re convinced they hate you because you’re too inconsistent, too socially awkward, and too at fault.

Now write.

All the listicles out there that want to help you build a writing routine around your busy schedule mean well. They all have great advice, too. Hard not to when so many of them are repeating tried and true methods. But it’s important to look at who has tried them and why they were true. I posit that no famous author I have ever heard of was successful because they found someone else’s routine and copied it uncritically. No square box, no matter how perfectly straight the edges, is ever going to fit into a round hole. We can’t force it. Instead, we have to understand that the hole is round, allow it to be round, and fill that void appropriately.

I’ve named my diagnoses. It helps me practice an old adage: talk to yourself like you’d talk to a friend. Don’t get me wrong, friends can fight, and I have thrown down with all three of them more than a handful of times. But friends are also truthful with each other. Friends see each other for who they are, exalt in their strengths and hold them up when their weaknesses get the better of them. Addi makes it so difficult to read, but her love of nature and new things invigorates my desire to engage with the world and craft stories about it. She has just enough energy to get Skim out of the house once in a while and breathe. Meanwhile, Skim makes me love sitting down and focusing, researching and obsessing over the scene before me. They push me to be better, to find the right words and rework things until they feel right. And Ben…Ben is hard. But I have learned to love him for trying to help me survive in the only way he knew how. He doesn’t have the right mindset, but he does have my protection at heart. While I need 40 milligrams of Prozac to keep him quiet now, there are lessons I’ve taken away from our relationship. I’ve learned who to watch out for in an industry that can breed unnecessary competition, to stand my ground against criticism that was aimed to hurt, to not let others talk to me the way I talk to myself, and consequently to start talking to myself more kindly. To that end, my writing routine these days is built on one guiding principle.

Do not judge yourself. Yes, writer’s write. They write as much as they can, as long as they can, as fiercely as they can. That doesn’t mean every day is a writing day. Some days are recovery days. Not just so that you can write tomorrow—sometimes you have to recover because you just. Need. Recovery. And then you can write more. And yes, your favorite writer made it big because they found that one coffee shop corner that had just the right atmosphere, but that doesn’t have to be you if the noise is overwhelming or the other people there make you nervous. It’s hard to write if you don’t get out and experience the world, but that doesn’t require jumping out of a plane. Know your boundaries, however close to home, and then push them, just a little.

Know thyself. Come to an understanding, however hard that understanding is. You have potential and you have limits. Write through, around, and for yourself. Talk to yourself like the writing partner you need, and start by stating the ultimate goal of every author. “Get words on the page.” Then figure out how to do that from there. It’s alright if it is slower or harder for us than others. Our words are beautiful, in part because they are hard-fought for. If you are a writer, just like King said, you will never be able to give it up. Let it come and go as you travel through the circumstances life has given you, and also strive to be better every time it comes.