Writing Through the Slumps: Why Bad is Good
Well, that didn’t take long! Less than three weeks into January, and I’m already struggling with some *depression* issues. By that, I mean my to-do lists mostly look like this:
Shower
Write a poem
Nap
You get the idea.
Photo by Maria Teneva from Unsplash.
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
But seriously! This week has been rough. But that’s also a reason to talk about why my to-do list has contained one consistent item that I’ve regularly completed.
Write.
Like I said when I first made this pledge to write a poem, every day, for 365 days, I’ll have to write through some tough spells. Admittedly, I didn’t expect a tough spell so soon, but here I am. Writing.
It’s not good. It’s not good at all, actually. Even now, writing this post, I’m like -- is this quality? Probably not, but we’ve to keep going, even if it’s bad.
Why? Because that’s how we get better.
Better in a lot of ways. One, better at writing. You can’t expect to shit gold nuggets, to be crass about it. But if you expect everything you crank out to be the best thing you’ve ever written, you’re going to end up disappointed and dejected. I can look at the writing I’ve produced this week and see, hmm, I’m in a bad spot, and this is pretty shit. But it’s not going to deter me from writing every day. Because I know, eventually, I’m going to come up with something really good, and probably publishable. Also, I like writing. Why deprive me of something I like?
Two, better. Just better in general. Breaking the depressive slump, muddling through the muck of wanting to lie in bed and watch the entirety of Criminal Minds or Bridgerton in one sitting, or worse, like how I’ve been, wanting to hurt yourself. That’s a hard part to get through. But writing about it, seeing it laid out in front of me, can be helpful. There’s a fine line to toe, of course, as there is with anything, and I have no intention of sharing the poems I’ve written this past week just because of their nature (and also how bad they are), but it was useful. To schedule 30 minutes every day to write something. Even if it was bad, in more ways than one.
There’s more to say, of course, which is why I’m happy to share my FREE eBook, Healing From Trauma: Writing Your Truth in Creative Ways. If you already subscribe to my blog, find the PDF in your inbox. If you don’t subscribe, sign up below with your email address and the page will automatically direct you to the PDF version, available for you to download! I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, as well as any other free eBooks you’d like to see. I’m happy to write more for you, more poems, more writing advice - just let me know what you’d like to see!
Anyway, here’s a poem! So far this year, I’ve written…24 poems! Let me know what you think in the comments.
Ode to the midwife
To the birther of words, to the
stories we keep tucked in our
pockets that she peels away, that
she washes with holy palms. An ode
to her, she the indiscriminate, the aloe-
scented, fresh soaped, pink-cheeked
thing that wipes muck from our lips and
swallows the whispers we are too afraid
to mouth ourselves.
To original sin, or the skin of ourmothers. To carnality, she sees instead as
beauty, and she wraps our would-be in soft
sheeted blankets colored in pale greens, in the
color of an outside we were not blessed to
be born in, so an outside that is at once stripped
to the bone, naked trees clipped to the dusted
earth, and she is the words that bubble at the
edges of us, while our mothers hold us, while
the world spins out against the inevitability
of ending, and she is it.
