Throwback: How Writing Fixed My Broken Brain

When writing became something I dreaded, I decided to write every day.

I can’t even believe that we are entering the final two months of the year.

November marks the beginning of NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month. The goal? Write 50,000 words during the month. In honor of NaNoWriMo, I wanted to share a post I wrote last year, something I wrote before I moved my newsletter over to Substack.

Last year was the first time that I attempted NaNoWriMo. It’s a lot of words but for me, it was really about committing to a project for a month, noodling around with it every day and seeing what happened. The experience was unexpected and opened some interesting doors and creative insights.

But! I haven’t really touched that project since last November.

Maybe this post is as much for you as it is for me, a reminder to not hold on too tightly to our creative pursuits and to leave space for it to be playful. It’s time to finish this draft. I just have to figure out the ending…

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Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Note: This was originally published in December 2022

In 2017, I was in Bend, Oregon for a writing and running retreat. Against the backdrop of evergreen trees, we ran and wrote every day, exploring each discipline both as a craft and a practice—one that you have to cultivate, one that you have to show up for day in and day out, even those days when you’d rather pull the covers back over your head.  When we wrote, we gathered in a large room. Some sprawled out on the floor and on couches. Others perched in window seats. Other times, we took our notebooks outside.

Those four days were the first time I didn’t second guess or immediately edit the words forming on the page. Instead, I trusted the clarity of the stories pouring forth. I also played with fiction and poetry for the first time since I was a kid. The crazy thing? It cracked open the door to a new stream of creativity that I didn’t know existed.

The simple act of substituting “she” for “I” allowed me to explore ideas differently and deeper because not everything was tied to me or my personal experience. It was liberating and fun. I wrote more over the course of the retreat than I had all year. But when I returned home, I packed away those new skills because they didn’t seem pertinent to the rest of my life. 

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash

To be honest, I’ve never wanted to write a novel. It’s never been one of my secret goals or bucket list items. I always thought that it made me a little less of a “real writer” because I didn’t dream of building these immersive stories.

If I’m really being honest, the reason that it’s never been a dream of mine is because I’ve always thought I wasn’t creative enough to pull it off. How do writers do it? Weave this incredibly detailed world and create these stories that are so layered, so resonant, and so universal? There was no way that I could do that.

Sometime in the last year, I started to become curious about writing fiction. I listened to podcasts and attended some workshops. I told myself it was because storytelling is a crucial part of my work as a journalist and I only wanted to learn more about the craft. But, in the back of my head, the tiniest little voice asked, “Maybe you could write a story?”

After working on my book for the last two years, my brain felt broken. It’s hard to concentrate, get excited about work, or come up with new ideas. Writing also became less of a place of solace or even curiosity—that place where I could go to explore different ideas or narratives in order to find something universal to share or as a way to make sense of the world.

Instead, writing became a place I dreaded because I felt this need to prove myself and everything I created felt mediocre and crappy. It was uncomfortable because I didn’t have any ideas and was afraid I’d never come up with another idea again. It didn't help that people were asking me what's next—what's my next book and what am I working on now that UP TO SPEED is finished. 

When my brain still didn’t come back online, even after I turned in my final manuscript and took time off, the voice in my head started getting louder.

I thought I could use fiction writing as an intellectual exercise. It was something hard and I've never done it before. Maybe I could use it to jumpstart my brain? What does it take to write a compelling story? What’s the structure of it? How do you develop three-dimensional characters? 

I started to daydream about a character I’ve had in my mind. Just as the fall approached, I had a glimmer of an idea for a story, something that felt interesting and that might hold together. The timing felt serendipitous since November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), when writers commit to writing 50,000 words in 30 days. So, like any normal, deadline-driven, competitive person, I decided it was the perfect time to try writing a novel.

My goal really was just to work on this idea every day for a month. In the back of my head, I thought I’d try to write 1000 words a day on weekdays.

I just wanted to see what would happen if I worked on this idea for a consistent period of time.

If I just tried.

If I told myself it was important work.

For the first time in a while, my brain felt like it was working. Like synapses were waking up and actually firing. And when that hasn’t happened in a long time, it’s kind of intoxicating. 

Writing became a place of play again. It was generative. It wasn’t stressful. I wanted to be there writing. I wasn't overthinking things. 

Unsurprising to no one, I kept pushing my word count to see how far I could go. I kept reminding myself that this is only a first draft—no doubt a bad one—but that’s the point. It’s just me telling myself the story. I can come back and fix things later.

I always thought it was bullshit when writers would say that their characters reveal the story to them. Like how? The character lives in your brain; they aren’t a separate, sentient entity. 

But you guys, it happened.

As I got to know my characters more, it became more and more clear what would happen, what needed to happen to force them to grow and change, how they would react to certain situations. Honestly, there were days when I didn’t want to write because I realized I had to write scenes that would blow up my protagonist's life and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to protect my characters from the chaos I was creating. 

By the end of the month, I wrote 50,055 words. It’s not a full first draft yet but it’s getting there. I’m not sure if it’s any good but I don’t think that matters because I’ve gained so much more from this exercise than a work-in-progress. Maybe because there wasn’t a professional or career related goal. This was just for me.

I used to say that I never wanted to write a book—any kind of book—and yet, here we are, roughly five months from the publication of my debut nonfiction so who knows what will become of this collection of words and characters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

But I'm curious to find out. 

Thanks for being here. More soon.

Christine