I'm a Slow Writer Now (And That's Okay)

Writing really is revision, or at least it sometimes can be

In 2015, I was heartbroken. The man I’d loved for five years—and had left and come back to at least five times by then—was, I was certain, finally moving on. For real.

Ancient (circa 2015) photo of Odin and I along the North Carolina coast by Piper Lane

So I drove home to Florida to see him, to make a stand I knew even then I couldn’t hold up. I was living in Ohio at the time, for grad school, and I’d already driven six hundred miles to spend spring break on the North Carolina coast with a friend—who was as ocean-sick as I was in the midwest, though her sea (the Gulf of Alaska) was about as far from mine (the Floridian Atlantic) as possible. The rental car dealership was out of normal vehicles, so my ride was a ridiculous, windowless white utility van. I left a day early with my friend’s blessing and zipped myself south and south along the salt-lined corridor of I-95. When I got there, the man I loved and I had furtive sex in the back of the van in front of the house we’d once lived in.

If I’m honest, I don’t remember the conversation we had; I don’t remember my big, ultimately failed stand. (Failed, to be clear, by my own ambivalence: I do know he said yes in some capacity [see: furtive roadside sex], and then I finally left him, once and for all, another two years later.) But I remember the flash-bang process of writing the essay I wrote about those days, sitting down with my 25-year-old heart full to the brim and letting it spill all over a Word document. The whole thing was done in about half an hour. I never made any changes to it, and it was accepted by the very first journal I submitted it to. 

This latter part was absolutely unprecedented then—and remains only once-precedented now. When it comes to publication in literary journals, some portion of the game is a total crapshoot—or the solution to an infinitely complex equation including factors like whether and what the editors had for breakfast. But sitting down and writing a piece from start to finish in one glorious fell swoop? That part was the rule rather than the exception, at the time. Yes, I’d heard that writing is revision, but I thought the people saying so were frankly crazy. In those days, writing felt less like writing than like channeling—like I was tapping into some purple-pink stream of poetry that was always flowing just above my head, waiting.

Unsurprisingly, a decade later, this dynamic is rarer for me. My attention, as is true of all adults’ attention, is fractured. That’s true even though my particular version of adult life—child-free, unmarried, self-employed, unbeholden to anything or anyone but myself and my dog—is a relatively stress-free one. (As it turns out, taking care of oneself can be a lot of work on its own.)

Along with my paid work—which, as I’ve mentioned before, will always be more incentivized than unpaid creative writing—I am regularly interrupted by joyful distractions that are distractions nonetheless, like walking my dog or taking Spanish lessons or having coffee with a friend. All of these distractions are of my own making—and of course, an embarrassing amount of it is owed to my twitchy impulse to swipe through social media (an impulse that’s definitely more ingrained now than it was ten years ago). Probably some of it is the simple fact of being a decade older—and a decade tireder. 

But regardless of the matrix of reasons, the fact remains: Writing takes me so much longer now. Essays regularly take me months to finish. To get even 200 words on a creative project in a day feels like a win. Sometimes it’s a win look at a creative project at all.

It’s easy for this increasing timeline to feel like a loss—not only of potential prolificness, but of something more vital. These days, writing more often feels like a slog than a divine communion. (Even this essay, which feels tiny and casual, took me three days and two sittings to complete.)

But this growing stretch of space, mandated though it may be by adulthood and tiredness and Instagram, has also—I admit—been a boon. Writing really is revision, or at least it sometimes can be.

In my 20s, I thought every word that came through my pen or processor was pure gold. In the throes of writing, I’d scurry through without giving myself enough time to think—then publish pieces I’d find, months or maybe just days later, I hated. While I maintain that no artist is ever immune from the past-works ick factor, these days I find it happens with far less frequency. Through some combination of life experience, practice, and, yes, the development of some healthy level of shame, I often open in-progress documents and breathe a sigh of relief that its contents remain, as yet, private. 

Giving myself time to think has also allowed me to work with more complicated topics—to write essays whose goals are to ask a question rather than state its answer. It’s difficult, for the kind of Virgo perfectionist who has a color-coded calendar and lives by her to-do list, to let things go unfinished. But sometimes, unfinished work isn’t abandoned—it’s in progress. Like bone broth or beans, the longer it simmers, usually, the better it is. Sometimes I’ll pick back up with a piece I’ve left alone for months, even years. In the interim, I’ve usually found some answers—and some new questions, too.

Meanwhile, I do still touch those high-flying moments of pure creativity, though the high is usually more diffuse. I have to be more creative in carving out time to touch base with the muse in this fuller, more distraction-filled life. It’s taken me a while to see this not as loss—or maybe as loss, but one that clears the way for something new and different. It’s like maturing in any other way: in your body, in a relationship. Intensity and vigor may wane, but in their place arise gifts like steadiness, reliability, and intention. You just have to stick around long enough to receive them.