Deciding Not To Write

Life is very busy right now. Not only are both my sons planning weddings (as I wrote about here ), but I am also planning the next trip to Cambodia and, very importantly, working very hard to get my Writing Through organisation up and running, complete with training sessions, agreements with new schools, and all sorts of government-required documents. I started to explain my thinking behind this expanding program here. But one thing I haven’t talked about is the impact all this has on my writing.
In January 2014, my latest novel, Out of the Ruins, was published. That led to a year of promotional talks and events where I’ve been doing the best I can to get the word out and the work circulated. I have found that it is important to devote a year to that effort in order to give the book as good a start in life as possible.  Then, once that year is over, I start turning my thoughts and energy to what comes next. Up until now, that has always meant a new book.
But right now I feel inundated with other important work. Even if there were more than 24 hours in a day, there would still be only a limited amount of energy and concentration in my little body. How would I find the time and energy to write as well as plan weddings and organise international NGO’s, not to mention the other volunteer work for Anjali House and Theatre Delicatessen which are so important to me? So I decided to give myself a break. I decided to take some time off writing and not rush into working on a new novel and more poems. It was a scary and emotional decision to make, but it felt like the right decision.
Then something funny happened. On a stray hour, I opened up the first draft of a short story I had started, and sat down to revise it. Then, on one of the many airplane rides I have found myself on over the past few months, I wrote a poem. Then I wrote another one. And now I find myself with a new Black and Red notebook dedicated to the next novel, and in it are pages of scribblings about research, character sketches and structure. It seems that once I gave myself permission NOT to write for a time, I started to write anyway.
And I think that’s pretty good news. Once I stopped thinking about writing as another thing on  my long to-do list, it became once again what, I suppose, it has always been — something that I do, a part of who I am. It seems that the more permission I give myself not to do something, the more I want to do it. How subversive of me.
PS Thanks to elephantjournal.com for the image above!