by Michael Bracken,
Reacting to Lan Samantha Chang’s essay on LitHub.com, “Writers, Protect Your Inner Life,” Trey R. Barker (my Guns + Tacos co-creator/co-editor) posted on Facebook:
“[The essay] at least partially misses what is actually the death of a writer’s inner self: the outer world. The world must take precedence, which makes it incredibly difficult to find time to do the actual writing, much less time to a) think up the story, and b) do the foundational thinking that leads someone to the questions that become the basis for any writing. That is the inner life writers need to protect. It seeps away little by little, and most often a writer doesn’t even realize it. Not until it is nearly completely gone do they recognize what they’ve lost and by then? It can be too late to get it back.”
The loss or significant constriction of a writer’s inner life, which results in a reduction in creative output, is not the same as writer’s block. Writer’s block is an inability to write. Losing one’s inner life degrades, and potentially eliminates, one’s desire to write.
I should know. Events the past several months wreaked havoc on my inner life.
The eighteen-hour-a-week job that provides a steady base to my wildly fluctuating freelance income turned, for several months, into a thirty-hour-per-week job; health issues (nothing life-threatening, thank you for asking) demanded time I didn’t have to give and attention I didn’t want to give; and editing projects I voluntarily took on consumed much of the time not otherwise filled.
When I wrote—and I did write—the stories I completed were adequate, probably even publishable, but lack a key element that comes from a rich inner life: they lack heart.
Without a rich inner life and the time to explore it, one loses heart, the quality of one’s creativity diminishes, and thus the desire to write evaporates.
Temple has noticed the light fading from my eyes—she says I’m happiest when I’m writing and happiest of all when writing goes well—and she’s asked what she can do to help me re-engage with my inner life. She’s even offered to use part of a recent bonus to fund a weekend getaway for me lock myself in a room somewhere and do nothing but write. Though tempted by the offer, I know now is not the right time. I would likely spend much of the weekend mulling over the many outer-world concerns that already invaded my inner world.
As Chang writes in her essay, one must “[h]old onto that part of you that first compelled you to start writing.” She further notes that “[t]he single essential survival skill for anybody interested in creating art is to learn to defend this inner life from the world.”
So, I think I need to regain a firm grasp on the part of me that first compelled me to start writing—the youthful exuberance that made me think other people might be interested in the stories I told—and combine it with a careful rebuilding of the inner world that allowed me to write so many stories over the years. Only then will my stories have heart, and only then will I regain a compelling desire to write.
Michael Bracken writes short stories, and edits anthologies, a gardening magazines, his Guns and Tacos series, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and so much more. His story “Blest Be the Tie that Binds,” was included in The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2021 and was one of six stories chosen by The Book Reporter.com that stood out in the collection of bests.
