Guest Essay #8

Sometimes I don’t write at all. Like, for weeks.

I say this with embarrassment because people often ask me how much I write as a way to gauge my productivity, or because they want to figure out how long it takes to write a 90,000-word novel. When people ask me this, I answer truthfully: on my writing days (usually 3-4 mornings per week) I set aside a chunk of at least three hours without phone, email, or other distractions to immerse myself in the fictional world.

The exception to this is weeks when I don’t write at all—which, recently, has been often.

Now, I know the only way to finish a novel is to write, and that the only way to write is to set aside time for writing. I know how to divide long-term projects into reasonable chunks, and how to schedule my time. Writing’s an important part of my life, and I want to keep it that way. But sometimes, I just can’t do it.

When I can’t write, it’s because I’m too busy, or I’m stressed about my work or personal life, or I’m sick or have pulsating headaches that stop me from doing anything. In the face of these setbacks, because everything in my life is connected, I fall behind, leaving me scrambling to make deadlines or respond to friends’ text messages or do my grocery shopping. During these periods, sitting down to write is the last thing I’m able to do.

Several months ago, my 87-year-old grandfather had to leave the house he was living in for reasons far too long and complicated to explain here. He has dementia and can’t remember things anymore, which means he needs people to help him even though he’s never asked for help in his entire life. While my family looked for a long-term care facility for him, again, for reasons far too long and complicated to explain here, my mother brought him to live in my apartment.

This all happened really suddenly, on a week when I had a lot to do (including writing). I wasn’t prepared to have my grandfather sleeping in my bed, hanging his sweatshirts in my closet, hiding empty tissue boxes he wanted to save in my sock drawer, or moving my carefully ordered stacks of books because he thought they were his. I wasn’t prepared to buy an air mattress and convert my office into a bedroom, or to seek refuge at friends’ houses when I needed time alone. I wasn’t prepared to deal with the mental exhaustion that comes from seeing someone you love struggle, to have them anxiously ask you questions about where they are, to see your family scramble for solutions, and to worry every day what will happen if they can’t find one. The stress takes over every part of you, making it impossible to find solace, and even more impossible to retreat into the world of writing.

With so much to be done and all these worries addling my brain, I didn’t write for the two months it took my family to move my grandfather to a memory care facility, or for several weeks afterward when the stress wouldn’t go away. My life had been upended, and I needed space to process it.

I don’t think any writer or creative person should hold themselves to a strenuous work schedule during a time of crisis. Attempting to do so, in my experience, will only produce work that lacks polish or feels emotionally fraught because you haven’t yet found distance from the events that are wreaking havoc. Writing during these periods also pulls time and energy away from other things you have to do, creating more stress when they don’t get done and worsening the spiraling, anxiety-filled cycle of falling behind.

While some writers openly brag about keeping up their work schedules in the face of failing health, a loved one’s death, excessive childcare responsibilities, or financial disaster, when I have problems in my work or personal life, I don’t try to do the impossible. I set my writing life aside until I’ve dealt with these other problems, then make time for writing again. I take no shame in this, because it allows me to deal with my problems and carve out more writing space in the long-term. It’s how I handle these situations, and how I recommend you handle them too.

The exception to this, of course, should come if a writer is constantly dealing with other stresses that leave no time for writing at all. This has happened to me several times throughout my life, and each time, realizing that my routine didn’t allow for writing anymore served as the cold, hard slap in the face I needed to make a change. It takes real honesty to acknowledge that your problem is long-term rather than temporary, and that it requires making difficult, major life decisions to fix.

Maybe your writing slump is temporary, or maybe it’s long-term. If mine are temporary, I don’t worry about them, but if they’re long-term, I make changes. In this way, planning out a long-term writing setup is far more important than the number of words you write in a given week, because a long-term writing setup affects the number of words you’ll write in a lifetime.

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Ian M. Rogers is the author of MFA Thesis Novel from Vine Leaves Press, a satirical novel about trying to become a writer in academia. He has worked as a copy editor, a greenhouse assistant, a school secretary, a grocery clerk, an online test-grader, a housepainter, a gardener, and a teacher of English in Japan, most recently at Kanagawa University in Yokohama. He lives in New Hampshire, where he works as an independent editor. You can find more on his website, or follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X.