Grief and the Writer by Jennifer Spiller
[/caption]How does the writer deal with grief? People grieve physical death, death of relationships, death of dreams. Most people still have to get up in the morning, go to a job, feed the kids, keep the money flowing. Writing is a job, but it’s not like every job; it’s a craft, but it’s also an art.
This isn’t a blog telling you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Art doesn’t always cooperate. Actors study method less to learn how to play a role than how to play a role when there’s no inspiration. That’s what method and technique is for. In film, an actor has plenty of takes to get it right.
On stage, there’s no such luxury. I’ve known actors to go on, do a love scene, and then vomit in the wings. But even if they have a lousy performance (and it happens), they usually have a chance to do it again the next day.
Does the writer? Maybe.
More than anything, I wanted to write a clever, witty, entertaining blog post for you all today. It’s not happening. Not because I couldn’t write it, I could. But it would be a lie. I might write it for another site, but not for this one, because this site is for writers. And there’s one thing I haven’t been doing lately, and that’s writing. I’ve been grieving, numb, busy, grieving, numb, and I haven’t written a single word, except for countless emails trying to work out the logistics of death and suffering.
There’s a reason so many awesome stand-up comedians have miserable lives--comedy and laughter often arise out of deep pain. It’s a way of coping. I like to cope that way, but not here.
The last few years of my life have been about as packed with major life events as one can get, new child, loss of a parent, building a house, funerals, crazy job stuff with my husband traveling a ton to the other side of the world.
Through most of it, I kept writing. There were breaks here and there. My most prolific periods were actually when I was pregnant, when my Dad was having his stem-cell treatment for his Cancer, and then after his death. I let writing be my therapy--either that, or I used it to anesthetize myself.
I’m not alone. Four women from my childhood have kept up an email chain about our writing. Five years ago, on Mother’s Day, the first of us lost a parent. In the past two years, the other three of us have all lost a parent. All to Cancer. My critique partner lost her dad to Cancer just a few months after I lost mine. Most of them threw themselves into their creative work as a way of coping.
Maybe it’s age. I’m thirty eight years old. My Facebook feed is filled with birth and death, jobs gained and jobs lost, moves, marriages and divorces.
Writing can be a form of therapy. (I shudder to think what Stephen King would be like if he couldn’t get his stories out on the page). Therapy, however, is work. It can be painful.
Two weeks ago, I attended yet another funeral. This time, the grief flattened me. It emotionally wiped out my entire church community, of which I’m currently the de-facto leader. (We’re lay led). It took all my emotional energy to keep the logistics of our organization running; I couldn’t even manage my own household. My mother and husband did that for me.
If I had a regular job, I’d have had to take a leave of absence. I’m not published, though, or writing under contract, so I honored what obligations I had, and let everything else go to hell. When I reached my lowest point, I decided to do something drastic, and went out and got a puppy.
This may seem like an odd choice, but my husband isn’t a dog person. He’s perfectly happy to take care of the kids, but he doesn’t do the dog stuff. The puppy made me get up in the morning. The puppy made me laugh. The puppy is bringing me back to life.
I wondered why my writing couldn’t do it. There’s no good answer. The best I can come up with is that I’d been desperately trying to revise and fix a manuscript. That’s painful work. Oh, and grief is an underlying theme in the book. Yeah, I so did not want to go there.
There’s a fun, new idea for a book just waiting to be written, but I have to finish this other monster first. So, my best guess is that if I were working on my new project, birthing something, as it were, my laptop would be the Niagara Falls of words. Instead, I’m trying to patch a dam or build the Suez Canal. Rushing along on fast water is fun and requires little thought. Engineering requires my analytical brain. It takes tough choices. I can't even decide what to have for lunch right now. So I often don't eat lunch.
Discipline is likely the answer, but I only have so much to go around, and I’m using it for other stuff.
I miss the words, though. I miss them a lot. It’s probably time to start writing again, otherwise, I’ll be grieving the death of a book, too.
There are no easy answers when emotions are involved.
How do YOU handle grief and writing?
