I Thought Writing Would Save Me

Letting go of lies I told myself about art

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

― Stephen King, On Writing

I thought art could save me. I remember being 16 years old, crouched under my pink quilted bedsheets, listening to Otep croon on my iPod, “Art is my God, music is my religion.” I was tired of staining the world with my useless tears. Finally, I thought, a god I could suffer for. A god who might reward me with purpose, a life, my name on the cover of a pulp paperback.

Art is my God. And for years I was a devoted disciple. I bent my head to my computer screen in the dark. I wrote through the throbbing pain in my throat, through every headache. I gave up sleep and food. I gave up invitations to the bar. No, I’ve got to stay home and write. I gave up any career that might provide me with easy money, because I knew they’d demand time away from writing. When I believed a boyfriend threatened my writing, I grew bitterness in my heart so it became easy to push him away.

To be a failed writer seemed almost glamorous. But to be a failed writer who failed because they lacked discipline, lacked effort, lacked commitment - that was unconscionable to me. I would not be one of those women who clung to her techie boyfriend’s shoulder at parties, martini in hand, slurring about the novel in the drawer that she’d get to one day. I would not be one of those writers who lacked the courage to ruthlessly edit their own work. My art, my master could swing my own weak words at my face and I’d take the criticism without even flinching. I’d keep writing. I’d maintain the faith.

I continued writing even after my daughter was born. I wrote a newsletter on my laptop three days after her birth, bleary eyed at 4 A.M. in the morning, high on hormonal juices and the soft sleepy presence that filled the bassinet next to my bed. I wrote the epilogue to the second edition of Girl Like a Bomb 5 weeks postpartum, with a baby cradled in my lap. I signed a contract with my agent in October of 2023 and finished my novel back in March of this year, all while being the fulltime caretaker of a toddler.

People applauded me for how dedicated I was. They expressed amazement at my ability to write a novel while I dealt with adjusting to becoming a new mom, sleep deprivation, the constant needs of a toddler.

But the truth was I’d grown used to writing through suffering. In fact, I had to conceptualize it as suffering for it to mean something to me.

I once wrote the entirety of Bukowski’s poem, “So you want to be a writer?” on the door of a rented room because I loved the idea that writing was something that burst out of me like a rocket, uncontrolled, unfettered. Sometimes it happened like that. But often I sat down and ground the words out of me; like turning diamonds into dust.

Because I wanted to be great. Because I thought that was what was required of me.

I read Stephen King’s “On Writing” and loved the anecdote about how he dreamed about having a grand desk in the center of his office, but ended up pushing it into the corner because he realized writing should serve life, and not the other way around. It made sense, it rang with truth, yet I couldn’t apply it to my own life. Everything I did served writing.

Yet as I aged out of my twenties and started staring down the barrel of the life I’d created, it all started to seem a little hollow. I’d given everything up, and for what? A few books? A pile of little short stories about girls who teleported through walls and Lovecraftian beasts? Some newsletters full of platitudes that I only half-believed?

I was not twelve years old anymore. I could not disappear inside of a story and hallucinate for myself a fantasy world to live inside. I’d written of grand, labyrinthine palaces full of weeping girls while the walls of my house remained bare. My cupboards were empty. My future was boring.

Even if I got everything I wanted - the huge book deals, the fame, the book tours - it all seemed so tedious. Was this the god I’d served? The god of writing conventions and Q&A panels and a cramped hand writing out autographs for all eternity?

Here’s your reward for serving me: Another book to write. Another interview. Another royalty check so you can buy a bigger desk in an even emptier room. Another boy telling you that you’ve “changed his life” while his eyes flick up and down across your waistline.

Every word I wrote started to feel fake. I’d given up everything, only to find I actually had nothing worth writing about.

So I decided to take a little break.

I’d been writing non-stop for almost 20 years. After I turned in my last manuscript I found that I was sick of myself and my words.

Finishing a book always feels like pulling a knife out of your stomach, leaving a big empty gap that needs to be filled. It took me a few weeks just to stop reaching for the manuscript any time there was a lull in my day. And another few more weeks just to get comfortable with the idea of not writing at all. When people play enough chess, they start to view the world as a giant gameboard. When someone is a writer, every motion and action and thought becomes filtered through a story generating machine.

At some point I stopped thinking, for the first time in my adult life, how can I put this into words?

I got back in shape and lost twelve pounds. I spent more time with my daughter. I read. I played videogames. I went to the park. I cooked delicious meals. My husband decided he wanted to work on setting up my grandpa’s old family business, and I started to help with that too. Later that year my grandma passed away and our little family moved onto her farm, so I spent a considerable amount of time preparing the place and getting it ready. And as I’ve discovered, there’s lots of little things to taking care of a farm that aren’t immediately obvious - trash pickup, fixing the well water pump, taking care of the animals.

I felt a heaviness lift from me. It felt good to not write, to not have to sit down and take every thought, feeling, emotion, and attempt to compress it down, repackage it, sell it. I sat outside in the garage in the dark, drinking a martini while the wind sucked my hair, and I stared out into the rolling hills, goosebumps against my skin, a little thrill for the future to come, and there was no story.

It was just a moment.

I felt guilt about abandoning my god, relinquishing my sacred rituals of obsession and pain. For years I lived inside the dark and beautiful forest I’d had in my mind. It was an awful place, cruel and cold, but it was mine. Now I’d stepped out of my world, and found sometimes it was more enjoyable to live inside another one.

I don’t want to stop writing.

I just don’t want to use it as an excuse to stop feeling alive.

I don’t want to turn my face away from the sunlight so I can duck into the cool, cloistered comfort of my pain. Writing can’t save me. It can only shrink me until I stop recognizing my own desires, until I become so small and so compact that I can’t even write truth anymore - only screech a hoarse imitation of it.

Art isn’t God. God is God. And God is just another kind of word for something like ultimate truth. I try to remember why my desk belongs in the corner. I don’t want to squeeze the juice out of life so I can squeeze out some pretty words. I just want to live.

If there’s anything left worth writing about, the desk will always be there.