Grief as Writer’s Block
Listening to a recent interview with Maya Shankar, a behavioral scientist on the topic of “The Science of Handling Uncertainty,” she talked about “the benefits of cultivating a more malleable sense of self.” How we think of ourselves as we change, how we change how we think of ourselves. I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to writing after Daryl and my mom died. Writing, as a daily practice to record and share my experience, to alleviate some of the stress and uncertainty after his death, to figure out how to navigate the gaping wound he left in my life, became a habit of survival. However, the desire to be an AUTHOR OF FICTION (yes, all caps) is no longer central to me.
It shocks me to type it, to think it, to say it aloud, because I worked hard to be an author, to achieve author-y status like lecture others and ponder the craft of writing. I went to graduate school, I worked with a guru of screenwriting and story, I’ve spent real time in my very real life figuring out how to write. When I talk about my “90% complete but for some edits given to me by an actual literary agent” novel with other writers, I feel detached, a loss of spark or excitement. Occasionally, I will feel a pluck of jealousy as I watch other friends’ books come out, but I know jealousy is not the only spark I need.
The Secondary Loss
I read a lot about secondary loss or grief, and I stumbled on a quote recently about how projects you were working on when your loved one was alive may no longer seem relevant or worthwhile to you, and those projects take on a whole lot of baggage after they are gone. I wish the project in my case was a bathroom remodel instead of a novel.
Grief combined with the seemingly impossible happening with Daryl’s cancer diagnosis and death made writing fiction feel vapid and indulgent. I could not imagine a creative way to interpret the truth of life, or an escape from reality, nor did I want to. The timing of this realization could not have been worse, I had finally finished a solid draft of the novel after nearly 10 years of working on it (probably draft 50 if I am honest), I sent it to my ever-patient agent, got his notes and then…sat on it. I am still sitting on it. I fear, if I am honest, I may forever sit on it, because to move forward means to move forward without Daryl seeing it. And while I’d love to stroke my ego and assume thousands might read it, he is the only one I truly cared about turning its pages. And maybe if it’s never complete then him being gone isn’t forever either.
In an odd turn of events, not long after Daryl died, whenever anyone asked what I “did,” I said, “I’m a writer.” It rolled off my tongue so easily. It’s not a lie. I am a writer. I am writing. I’ve turned to writing nonfiction and personal essays, I’ve had them published, I am “writing.” I’ve been paid for my writing. Despite the fairly low bar of entry when it comes to calling yourself a writer, for years, I struggled with saying it aloud. After he died, a switch flipped on and saying “writer” instead of “griever” or “widow,” seemed to encompass all my identities. It felt earned and, aside from walking the dog, staring at my phone, suddenly bursting into tears, having lost days when the most I could do is eat popcorn on the couch and binge TV, or going to dance and barre classes, my occupation wasn’t exactly well-defined.
Sifting through Grief to Find What Matters
Several months ago, I attended a moon circle (yes, you read that correctly), and one of the exercises was to give something to the moon to hold. I gave it my novel, I was nearing the end of working on a political campaign that I somehow found myself managing, and I needed to let the guilt of novel writing go. I also know in order to make a big decision, I have to completely talk myself out of something to talk myself back in; measure carefully the pros and cons, feel what life would be like without that thing. The last time I dug this deeply was in my mid-30s when I did some soul searching about having children. Daryl gave me a lot of space on this, as he said he was as happy with kids as without. After agonizing for nearly a year, finally, I landed on a simple question: Can I envision my life without children, and is that a life I’d be content with living? The answer was a simple and resounding, “Yes.” It did not come without tears and a lot of deep digging, but it came. I know I made the right decision for me. I know this because I have since watched and listened as other women my age, who desperately wanted children and could not have them for various reasons, mourn what they could not have in a way I never did.
After a couple of months of leaving my novel in moon storage, I was on a walk and heard a voice in my head say, “What do you mean, you’re letting it go? Have you completely lost it?” That was it. I realized I wanted it back. The feeling, the pluck to finish the damn thing has been coming back day by day. It’s happened this way before, the seduction, the siren’s song to “just read it through with a clear head, you’ll find what needs fixing,” then, the re-reading of the first 20 or so pages, the spark of “Oh, this isn’t bad!” and then, the deeper in you get, the slow sinking feeling as scenes pile up, the characters who maybe already said that or don’t need to say it so bluntly? Is the motivation clear? Does it all fit together, does it work??
It’s a fine and exhausting balance, the dual energy needed to build the world and tweak it without ruining it, without questioning your very abilities as its creator. It’s probably why architects are not general contractors. In my experience, editing a novel is like changing a duvet cover, and, if you are me and not good with the duvet cover “hacks” that seem to require a graduate degree in geometry, you do it the old-fashioned way: Shove the comforter into the duvet cover, dive in head first, (fear of claustrophobia held marginally at bay) root around in a fabric mine shaft, tucking down corners, smoothing out folds, flattening where needed. You emerge sweating and flushed into the fresh air of your bedroom, proudly lifting and snapping it into place, comforter and duvet cover finally as one, only to find a corner is bunched, or the top edges are not meeting and you have more cover than comforter. It is exasperating, it is tiring, it is necessary and nothing feels better than when it all comes together.
Honoring Our Passions and the Life We Built Together
I know Daryl and my mom would want me to see the novel through, to publish it, and yet the spark of achievement and recognition I hoped for in the pre-Daryl cancer days, that ego, that Shannon, was nearly extinguished when he died. He was so much a part of me writing and finishing, whether urging me to keep writing or helping me understand structure and work through plot holes, I know, in my heart, to not finish it would disrespect the life we built together to pursue our creative passions—mine, an MFA in creative writing and his, a successful soccer podcast. We built that life and those dreams together, each taking turns working full-time jobs we did not very much like to support the other in their pursuits. He saw his through, and I know I cannot feel content to watch my writing dreams, in whatever form they come back to me, drift away. I’m learning to be malleable, to accept the constant of writing in my life as a gift and a life raft, to hold on and see where it leads me and who I will be when we arrive.