Today I dread writing.
I’m 60% finished with this book, square in the saggy middle, and aside from a few tentpole scenes, I have no idea what comes next.
Years ago, when I was much more inexperienced with this feeling of dread, I would let the anxiety win. I would stop returning to the page. I would finish nothing.
Now I see it for what it is: a necessary but temporary discomfort on the way to having a finished draft.
Doesn’t mean I feel it less, or that the duration is shorter than before. Often not. Often it feels worse than it ever has. Often I toil for days or weeks before I finally break through.
But I know now that if I keep working and sit with the discomfort long enough, there’s a finished book at the end of it all.
This process-this sitting with discomfort thing–is actually what made meditation and mindfulness make sense for me.
I’ve practiced meditation for years. Sometimes I find it helpful, but often I’m just going through the motions, meditating because I said I would meditate, but not really finding the flow.
Now I get it: it’s not about finding the flow, it’s about learning to sit with discomfort. Practicing sitting with discomfort, even.
Writing first drafts (this is the year of first drafts) is a whole lot of discomfort, in my experience. And I’m hoping that by learning how to sit with that discomfort, day after day, a little bit at a time, I’ll also get better and faster at drafting, and treat it with understanding and compassion rather than judgment and dread.