How I overcame my worries to write worriless
For years I was worried about what people would think about my writing. Once I overcame that fear I entered the next stage: sit on your butt and write!
“Almost everything will work again, if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” - Anne Lamott
It was early in the morning and again it promised to be a warm summer day. My physiotherapist had told me to expand my activities but at the same time warned me not to overdo things. In other words: I needed to find the right balance and American writer Anne Lamott helped me doing that. Putting her advice into practice, a morning walk fitted perfectly. As I walked towards the park it was quiet. The streets were empty. Summertime in Helsinki when many people escape the warm city to unwind in their summer cottages. Since I had an unexpected encounter with a writer I started using these morning walks to clear my head and get inspired. As I entered the park I saw from a distance the rose bushes blooming fully. I stopped for a moment to breath in the the sweetness smell of roses as the morning breeze carried the scent to my nostrils. Normally I would have taken some pictures with my smartphone to capture this beautiful view. Now I did not. This was my ´unplug´ moment of the day.
Feeling refreshed and awakened I walked home, opened the laptop and scrolled through some old notes. I read back about my struggles in wanting to write worriless. Again it was Anne Lamott that saved my day:
‘Today’s writing advice: Remember, it will not go smoothly or possibly not even well. Did someone tell you it would? Not me baby. I’m the one who said no one cares if you write, so you’d better. Butt in the chair: just do it, one disappointing paragraph at a time. Victory!’
My eyes lingered again over one phrase:
Butt in the chair!
Next to having a writing challenge I simultaneously had to deal with that other thing: sitting on my butt. As sitting on a regular chair proofed to be painful instead I used an exercise ball to sit on. Previously I wrote about my frustration on the inability to sit for a longer period of time. Despite the fact that I regained muscle strength, sitting pain free just did not seem to progress. If you ever experienced living with some sort of physical pain, you know at a point, pain relief through medication and finding distraction, are not working any more. My distraction was through writing.
For me the process of writing, always began firstly in my head. After some time thinking and lingering about a topic, the next challenge was to actually sit on my butt and write it down. And that advise to sit down and get into a writing flow seemed contradictory to my physical possibilities at that time. It was time to change my writing methods. I needed to learn how to get into a thoughtless writing modus without having to sit on my butt all the time. The only way to do that was to write short stories. So I spent time feeling, listening, tasting, watching and following my intuition. In the limited time I was able to sit down I wrote down in one flow a recap of a moment or encounter I had that day. For this I set the timer and wrote as fast as I could. At first the timer was set on five minutes. That seemed short.
As I wrote without thinking words flowed over my screen
This writing routine became part of my daily program. The timer was set to 6,7,9, 10 minutes. Gradually I felt the process of overthinking and rewriting decreased. The inner critical voice in my head slowly faded away. Instead quietness came and with that an imaginary huge empty room that needed to be filled with stories and laughter. Did it mean that I was in the flow every time I had those 5-10 minute writing sessions? No way! Some days I found myself really struggling from sentence to sentence. On those moments I got frustrated. I had to remind myself that I was now writing for myself. There was no deadline, no predetermined topic, no hassle waiting for feedback on spelling or content. Something in me was awakened and made me determined to keep on writing. No matter what! With what result? Some days I managed to write one ore two paragraphs. Later I would use that to write a short story. The memory of my laptop was slowly filled with short stories. I did not share them. Until now. As it is Pride week in Helsinki, I end this Substack with a pink short story.
FLIGHT
“Hurry up!”
Bianca heard a voice encouragingly speak in her head, that made her even run faster. The forest path was uneven and she had to be careful not to lose her balance. It was a warm day and the air was humid. Drops of sweat slowly ran down from her head into her neck. Her heart was beating fast and she started to get out of breath. She did not notice any of this. The only thing that kept her going was the voice in her head encouraging her to keep running. Approaching a crossing Bianca slowed down hesitating for a moment which direction to take. Her instinct made her turn right. A long, seemingly unending, sandy road followed. The ground was solid to run more evenly. Running turned into flying. As the winding path led out of the forest the bright sunlight blocked the view. Bianca stopped for a moment and put her hand to her forehead to look around. The view of the dunes and the sea were breathtaking. Then she noticed the silhouette of a person standing on top of a dune a few hundred meters away from her. Despite being hot and sweaty, she felt a heat rising in her abdomen. With a sense of liberation, she cried out:
“There she is!”
One last sprint. The sand felt soft and made it hard to run. As Bianca got to the top her heart pounded in her chest. They just stood there and looked each other deeply in the eyes. Slowly they moved forward just close enough to feel the heat radiating from their bodies. A mixed scent of sweat and perfume mingled between them. Then the silence was broken:
“So, you made it?”
Bianca put her arms around her waste and before her lips sank into a long kiss she whispered:
“Yes, I made it home.”