I disappeared for a few days, which in writer-time is approximately twelve years. My body went full protest mode, knee pain, appointments, tiny betrayals whispered behind my patella. I don’t want to dwell on it, but suffice it to say: I became very horizontal.
And while I was dramatically horizontal on the couch, my unwritten drafts were probably throwing a pity party in some dusty corner of my brain. Whispering. Plotting. Judging.
“She’s gone,” they hissed. “She’s drinking cold coffee on purpose now and reorganizing her files like it’s a coping mechanism.”
But today? I rallied. Sort of. I wish I could say I bounced right back. But bouncing is... off the menu. What I am doing is inching. Peeking. Touching the edge of my stories like you’d test bath water: cautious, curious, a little afraid it’ll burn.
There's something strange and potent about writing when you're feeling cracked open, not in a pretty, mosaic way, but more like "Oops, I dropped the whole emotional crock-pot." Pain, physical or otherwise, leaves you raw, and rawness isn’t always inspiring. Sometimes it's just messy.
But sometimes, it makes you honest. You stop writing like a writer and start writing like a person.
Lately, I’ve been leaning into that:
Letting my characters be more afraid than brave.
Giving them the ache I’m too proud to name out loud.
Letting a scene trail off instead of tying it in a bow.
Turns out, vulnerability isn't just a buzzword. It's a freaking plot device.
Scratching Out a Plan
Today I’m switching to a Sharpie pen and a legal pad. There’s something satisfying about that thick, decisive line. It makes even my half-formed ramblings feel Important. The plan is simple: revise my outline with some tweaks I’ve been avoiding, scribble a few scenes longhand like it’s 1997, and then type everything up at the end of the day. Transcription becomes a kind of edit. A sneaky one. It makes my mess look intentional. Also, I light some incense because it smells like calm and covers the scent of anxiety.
Bonus Thoughts
“I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody.’”
— Maya Angelou
I felt this in my bones.
It hit with that sharp, silent click of recognition, like a lock turning. If she felt it, then maybe the feeling isn’t evidence of failure. Maybe it’s part of the calling. That creeping fear, the one that says you’re not real, not ready, not enough, it doesn’t disappear when you finish the draft, or publish the thing, or sign your name in ink. It lingers. It whispers, but it doesn’t get the last word.
What Maya teaches me, again and again, is that the presence of doubt is not the absence of talent. That fear walks beside you not because you’re a fraud, but because you care deeply, maybe even rightly, about the truth you’re trying to tell. So I’m learning to keep going. Not in spite of the fear, but through it. With it. Holding it by the wrist like a misbehaving child, and saying, “We’re writing anyway.”
Because if someone as luminous as Maya Angelou could carry that fear and still create work that cracked the world open, then maybe I can carry mine and still write something true.
Now it’s your turn: How do you write when you’re not quite okay? Do you lean in? Do you retreat? Do you write angry limericks or sad grocery lists? What’s your re-entry ritual after a derailment?
Drop a comment, shoot me a reply, or send psychic encouragement via moonbeam. I’ll take what I can get.
Until next time,
Harlo