Writing everyday is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it. (T. S. Eliot)

I’ve got friends who, when life is stressful, bury themselves in their writing.  The more the world crashes down around their ears, the more they write, turning out pages and pages in their escape.

I am so not one of those people.

When I get stressed out I shut down, and unlocking my creativity is a task somewhere on the level with raising a long-sunken ship.  It can be done, but it takes a lot of work and extra time, and often the result isn’t particularly pretty.  For me, writing when I’m overwhelmed with stress is exhausting and not very productive.

Which is all fine.  I am a firm believer that the writing process doesn’t take place just on the page – there’s a lot of brainwork to be done, and a lot of experiences that need to be had before things can really bubble forth.  If now and then it’s better for me to skip a day or two of writing, okay.  That’s fine, as long as I go back to it.

The hard part, though, is the actual getting back to it.  Even a break-with-a-good-reason seems to rust up the wheels in my brain.  It’s not just a matter of habit, nor a matter of momentum.  It’s like the creative part of my brain begins to fade back into dormancy the moment I take my hand away from the keyboard or pen.  Waking my creativity is a lot like waking me: there’s a lot of clumsy staggering involved, some whining, and usually a desperate hope that caffeine might help.

Still, there’s enormous comfort in the knowledge that once I get past that groggy wake-up period, I always find my way back to that place where the words come smoothly and there’s that joyful feeling that what I’m writing is vivid and real, or could be when the rough places are smoothed over.  I love that part.  It’s what keeps me writing.

This has been a stressful week, but the biggest stressors have passed.  Time, now, to get the wheels turning again.  I’ve got deadlines!