My Goal for the New Year: To Let Myself Fall in Love with Writing Again

A friend texted me this morning: "Been wondering if you've given up on your blog - I keep checking for a new post." Why, yes, I HAD given up on my blog, because 2021 was for me the year of GIVING UP ON EVERYTHING. Or at least, giving up on everything that had to do with my career as a writer.

The year started with a devastating rejection on a project I was very proud of. Like all writers, I've had my share of rejections over the past 40 years, but this one hit me particularly hard. But I recovered enough from this disappointment to start pinning extravagant hopes on my new book, due out in October, the book of my heart, the best book I'd ever written by far. I sent it out into the world expecting the world to love it as much as I did. And the world . . . didn't. 

Mind you, they loved it just fine. The Lost Language got two starred reviews, had audio rights and German translation rights sold, and was named a Notable Verse Novel of the year by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and also an NCTE Charlotte Huck Recommended Title, as well as a Blue Ribbon title from the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (the review journal I most respect). Not too shabby! Plus, friends near and wide read the book and told me they loved it, including the daughter of my fifth-grade teacher, who told me how proud her mother would have been of me. All good! Or good enough! 

Except that it wasn't good enough for me. No amount of praise would have been good enough for me. So I pouted. And sulked. And moped. Even as I reacted in this way, I knew I was being ridiculous, that the search for external validation is ALWAYS doomed to disappointment because NO amount of external validation will ever be enough. It is a trap. It is a treadmill. But I just couldn't stop.

A wise friend of mine told me this tidbit of advice from the Al-Anon meetings she attends: "Expectations are just resentments waiting to happen." Sure enough, I became resentful. And insanely jealous of friends whose books were getting the kind of acclaim I had dreamed of for mine. And deeply depressed about whether the world of children's book writing had any place left in it for me any more. I decided that, after a full four decades as a published children's book writer, I would retire at the end of the year. Writers can retire, too, can't they? 

Then, somehow, I somehow started to believe in myself as a writer again. It helped that I read a terrific book called Breakthrough: How to Overcome Doubt, Fear, and Resistance to Be Your Ultimate Creative Self, by my fellow children's book author Todd Mitchell. It helped that I reread Elizabeth Gilbert's brilliant and delightful Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. 

Mostly, though, I just got bored with being miserable. I desperately missed writing. I found myself having fantasies of being rescued from the retirement plan by some freaky miracle. But I knew that the only person who could rescue me was. . . me.

And for 2022 my goal is to let myself fall in love with writing again. I'm going to write poetry. I'm going to journal. I'll try the creative form of the personal essay and even try a short story or two for grownups - and maybe a memoir? And also... yes, more children's books! I have an older manuscript to revise... and the glimmer of an idea for something new.

Now, the best place to let oneself fall in love with writing - or in love with anything! - is, of course, Paris. So I bought myself a plane ticket to Paris and booked myself nine nights at a suitably Bohemian hotel on the Left Bank by the Luxembourg Gardens. I love Paris when it's gray and gloomy. I love Paris in the rain. I will love Paris even masked and distanced and spending much of my time alone in my sweet little hotel room. 

I'm supposed to fly there... tomorrow!!! My flights (Denver to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Paris) could still be canceled for wintry weather or COVID-related staff shortages. If this happens, I'll be disappointed but also relieved to be spared the challenges of travel during the pandemic. In that case, I'll make my own little writing retreat right here in Boulder. But I hope this trip happens. How can I NOT fall in love with writing again if go to Paris to do it?

May good things happen for all of us in 2022.