The writing had been going so well. Despite massive scheduling and parenting responsibilities, I’d managed to pile up blog posts. I started writing a book and had 20,000 words written in a month, mostly during baby nap time and after the kids were in bed.
And then it hit me full in the face. Precisely when the work was going well, I was smacked down by resistance.
I fumbled, I fussed, I fidgeted. I read the news, I played games on my phone. I complained about having the exact same tight schedule I’d had for a year.
I had looked forward to the first day my baby went to daycare. I was going to take my oldest for a walk, come home, and make to-do lists with a cup of coffee. Then I was going to execute those to-do lists. And I was going to read. And I was going to write. Quiet time was close at hand.
Relinquishing my baby into the arms of another woman was harder for me than I thought. He went happily and then tried to close the door on me. I tried to just laugh it off.
Now procrastinating, I took my oldest for that long, slow walk. We came home. It was quiet. That’s what I’d been longing for. But instead I curled up under the covers and cried. I cried that I was cut off from my child, and I was scared because I’d lost my excuse not to write.
I got up to make lunches. Part of me wanted to go back to sleep. Part of me told myself to write. I split the difference and read a book about resistance that a friend had recommended to me: The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. When my friends are suggesting books on resistance, and I resist reading them, that should tell me something.
Turns out it’s a good book. And I realized I was resisting writing by lots of means. My resistance was pointing to exactly what I needed to write. And my resistance was fueled by fear.
I acknowledged, not for the first time, that I am much more afraid of success as a writer than I am of failure as a writer. If I fail, no one will even notice. If I succeed, people might have opinions about my writing, and even share them with me. I’m not sure I want that. I’m not sure what that would do to me.
Knowing that the only cure for this is to write, and to write NOW, I picked up pen and paper for the first icebreaker, to write a slightly vulnerable piece to name the resistance that is interfering with my writing. There is power in a name.