Writing when SAD
I’m more than two-thirds through an edit that I hope will make my young adult novel ready for the final round of submissions to agents and publishers. It’s been a hard, slow slog, but I like the changes I’ve made. The world I’ve created feels more tangible, the plot more plausible, and the troubled mother-daughter relationship at the center of my story rings truer.
So why do I feel so depressed?
Some days I can’t even bring myself to open the 87,000-word document titled “Leaving Year 4.” Instead, I’ll play an on-line Scrabble game, read emails and my Facebook news feed, do the dishes and the laundry, walk the dog, talk to my mother on the phone, fix dinner, ask the boys about their day and whether they have any homework, remind them to brush their teeth — all the while telling myself “I’ll get to it when ___, but when never comes, and I go to bed hating myself for wasting another day.
Is it laziness? Yes, in part. I’m so overwhelmed by all the work I’ve yet to do that I don’t do any at all. Or, I come to a summary paragraph that needs to be a scene, but I can’t face the need to drill down and tap into my deepest self so I can make my characters live and breathe. So I leave my computer to do something else, like load the dishwasher or grab a snack. And I never get back to the chair.
Even when the words flow, I doubt myself. “It’s too easy. It must be bad,” says the evil critic in my head.
Elizabeth Gilbert, in her best-selling book, Big Magic, blames fear for stifling creativity. (I’ve been waiting weeks to read a library copy because I’m too cheap to buy the hardback.) I’m sure that once I finally get to read it, I’ll recognize myself in her words. I am, after all, a perfectionist procrastinator extraordinaire.
It’s easier to keep that illusion of perfection in my head than to struggle with it on the screen. So I stop working or put it off. And end up hating myself. Who was it that said, “Writing is hard, but not writing is harder?”
I know I feel better about myself after I’ve written, even if it’s just a few paragraphs. So why has it been such a struggle lately to get my head in the game? I’m not sick, but my mood feels like it has the flu.
While taking a walk the other day, it dawned on me: It’s that time of year.
The hubbub of the holidays has passed, but the days are still short, the weather’s still stormy and spring feels like a remote promise. On this particular day, we’d just endured four straight days of rain and I’d been cooped up in the house with a restless dog, two non-communicative teenagers and a husband dealing with his own issues.
I’m depressed, I realized, because I’m depressed — as in clinically. I take medication for it. And most of the time it keeps my head above water, but during the bleak mid-winter, the water table rises too high and I’m sunk. My energy ebbs, my anxiety grows, I consume way too much sugar, caffeine and chocolate, and generally feel like s—t.
(By the way, I know some experts don’t put much stock in SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) as a legitimate diagnosis, but it’s real to me.)
So here I am a writer living in Seattle. Ah, the irony. I have to laugh.
On that walk, as I stepped around puddles and looked to the thin silver light of the sky, I realized I also have to forgive. Myself. Self-flagellation on my bad days won’t make them better or more productive, quite the opposite.
Now is the time for a little self-kindness. I need to get outside and walk, breathe the rain-freshened air and soak up all the lux I can. If that means stepping away from the page to walk the dog or going for a run instead of tackling a rewrite, so be it. Because here’s what I know. The days are getting longer, and I will finish editing my book.