Some mornings arrive carrying a strange kind of fog. Not the kind of fog you would see hanging outside the window like a screen coming in the way of the scene outside, but the kind that makes thinking seem like a chore.
I would not call it grief, which comes with its own particular gloomy stillness. This feeling is different. Putting a name to it through the fog is an effort I would much rather not make. If I have to describe it, it is like an invisible weight pressing down on me and everything around me. The stillness in the house makes it feel as if it were a photograph. I have to move my body through an iron-heavy oppression: opening my mouth to yawn, stretching my hands to relieve the static, feeling as if I am doing all of these in zero gravity. Even the effort to swing my legs off the bed and pick up the water decanter seems like carrying the Himalayas on my back.
One thing I can be certain about: this total lack of energy feels like something between numbness and dread.
I had promised myself I would spend a few hours writing every morning. Whatever comes is fine, so long as I get up with something readable, something concrete. This is not a deadline someone else imposed on me. It is something I set for myself in an attempt to climb out of a writing slump. Breaking it would feel like a sacrilege, because it would mean I had disregarded my own sacred oath to do something I love doing. And it so happens in life that you are pulled in so many directions that you barely find time for the one thing that matters, the one thing that makes you a living, breathing, feeling human being.
Yet part of me wants to shut the system and lie down. Sleep is out of the question. So what should I do? Just lie there staring vacantly into the distance? That is simply not on. The other part of me, the more stubborn part, does not entertain the body’s plea for relief. “Now or never,” it says, reminding me of the three unfinished novels, a novella, and a bunch of short stories gathering dust in the digital trunk. “The price you paid for later,” it tells me bluntly.
If you aspire to be a writer, or if you already are one, later is the dynamite that blows up any fragile construction of a writing career you might have built until now.
Here is what I have learnt from these mornings, and from handling plenty of them before.
The first thing to note is this: the fog, the reluctant mind, the entirely energyless body does not mean you have writer’s block, that awful thing many wannabe writers blame for the lack of progress in their careers. In these situations, the best way forward is to keep kicking the dead scooter until the spark triggers the ignition. I learnt this from the motivational speaker and writer Og Mandino, who said simply: “Write whatever comes to mind first.” What you are reading now is the result of exactly that. Not the subject I intended to write about, but writing nonetheless. When you warm up with whatever comes, the fog lifts and you find yourself standing in sunshine, ready for the day’s marathon.
The second trick is to write about the very thing that is stopping you. In my case this morning, it is the fog, the lack of energy, the voice urging me back to bed. Reluctance is a melting block of ice. It seems rigid, tight, and solid, so solid that giving up on it feels logical. But once it begins to thaw, it becomes water and flows quickly.
The third thing is to practise meditation. And by meditation I do not mean emptying the mind of all thoughts. I mean observing the thoughts without attaching yourself to any of them. My yoga teacher put it this way: observe your thoughts and bodily sensations the way a nanny watches a baby. If you try controlling the baby, it gives you more trouble. If you let it roam the room whilst you sit nearby, you keep the baby safe without the exhausting urge to control its every move. When I observe my thoughts and sensations rather than fight them, I breathe easier, and the thoughts begin to flow. Gradually, without force, I return to the task at hand and find the ice has melted, the water flowing first as a trickle, then as a gush.
The fourth thing is not to be rigid about your deadline or the hours you commit to writing. On a good day, when writing comes effortlessly, you need no prompting. On a bad day, the goal itself changes, and the new one is simpler: make the most of the time available, write as much as you can, and leave the rest. Remind yourself that this is better than not writing at all. The moment you stop being hard on yourself, you will be surprised how energy arrives uninvited. If you set 2,000 words as your target, you will at least write 800 or 1,000. And who knows, if someone cancels an appointment or nothing else calls you away from the chair, you may reach those 2,000 without effort. It is not how you start that counts. It is how you finish.
The fifth thing is the value of what you write. Quality sometimes matters more than quantity. Writing is not something you do unconsciously — or at least not something you should make a habit of doing unconsciously. Stephen King wrote Cujo in a drug-induced haze and has since said he has no memory of writing it at all. That is an exception in a writer’s own career, not a rule to aspire to. You need to write consciously and deliberately, which means the words you commit to the page ring true and work their quiet magic on the reader.
If you guessed that I am now ready to write, you guessed correctly. The fog has not lifted entirely, but the sun is shining a little brighter and there are silver linings showing through the curtain. My mood has shifted. My fingers move faster. My mind has risen from the armchair, stretched its arms, and is ready for the sprint.
Who knows. It might even turn into a marathon.