“You’re a F*cking Failure”
A year into grad school I realized that academic writing killed my ability to do fiction writing, and vice versa. So I had to make a choice. That was over five years ago. A month and a half ago I finished the culmination of my Masters/PhD and sent it off to the proofreader. The sudden cessation of my twelve-hour, exhausting but satisfyingly productive days came to an abrupt stop when my committee said “okay, we like this round of revisions, you’re done.”
I had a Master Plan for the finish. I would get back to the three novels and two novella series I was working on when I stopped being a writer and committed to being an Academic. I would finish working on those three Skyrim mods that have been bouncing around my head. I would transform our first house together into a Pratchett-esqueTower of Art to annoy the neighbors… from the next village over. But for the life of me I cannot sit down to write. I can’t even remember how. And it’s hard to get lumber for new-house DIY projects when trips to the city are typically only once a week and the back of car is always filled with your fiance’s HEMA gear.
To top it off, I originally intended this blog for research publication. Yesterday I took my folder with 54 blog drafts outlines and notes and official renamed it the “I don’t care anymore” folder. Absolutely the last thing I want to talk about is mythology, cultural heritage, and game design. So if I’m not a writer and no academic, the what the hells am I? Study in the post-dissertation slump, that’s what.
A Bit of Reassurance
With that confusion of post-project depression came a crisis of identity. Also, a crisis of future paychecks to offset student loans. Those who have been following my blog have no doubt noticed this in the “I’m at this website now! It focuses on this!” followed a few months later by “No, I’m over here focusing on this!” and “Guess again, I’m back where I started and my blog posts resemble the drooling mess that greets me in the mirror every morning!”
This latest rendition of my disillusioned-academic-returned-to-writer blog had me look to my favorite authors for ideas. That’s how I stumbled upon Neil Gaiman’s blog (that fact that he’s this big and still blogs astounded me). In a wonderful post titled “It’s Been A While” from April 2019, he opens with the following paragraph:
I finished the process of making Good Omens into television at the end of January 2019. It’s been ten weeks since then and I’m only just starting to feel human again. And not yet a laughing running tapdancing human, more a sort of baffled, awkward vague human who only remembers the word he was searching for about five minutes after he no longer needs it. Like Charlie on the last page of “Flowers For Algernon”. I’ll probably arrive back at normal humanity-with-a-brain somewhere in June.
This spoke to me on a deep level, but the sentence that hit me came in the following paragraph: “I’m a home-husband, trying to remember how that writing thing I used to do went.”
Amid my existential crisis, Neil Gaiman inspires me. This icon of contemporary fantasy who has publicly struggled (and continues to do so) with imposter syndrome and depression also struggles to get back to what he loves after two years on Good Omens. He goes on to talk about his wife Amanda’s tour schedule and his son’s obsession with singing (I now have the dinner scene from Beetlejuice stuck in my head) and the Guinea Fowl in the woods. He’s just plain human. So why am I beating myself up about not being able to jump right back into writing after merely six weeks following a 7.5 year stint in academia?
Welcome Home
Following Neil’s example, I am giving myself permission to be in the slump. I don’t have to think about my dissertation and pressure myself into the freelance and consulting business. I don’t have to stress that the ideas don’t come tripping from my pen onto the page right after a major project using a completely different set of writing muscles. I don’t have to worry about building up my tribe and author brand and mailing lists and affiliate programs and whatever I can do to help pay for student loans (yet). A few months, maybe a year down the road and I’ll pick up my research again. This means I haven’t totally wasted the better part of the last decade and all my future paychecks. It would be nice to make my training work for those paychecks.
Of course, Neil doesn’t need a mailing list or hooks to get people to read his blog or catchy headlines. He has a cult following. I have published nothing in over a decade. But right now I’m making it okay to not care.
So for a while my blog and I will take it easy. I just need to take more time and take the pressure off. Build some shelves, do some natural dying, forage the nearby ancient woodland and see what bracken tastes like (spoiler: terrible). Write about it all. That means there will be a series of posts that are just personal ramblings in a no-pressure, writing-practice sort of way, and with no semblance of regularity. Neil Gaiman style. In fact, I think I will sign off with the closing quote from Neil’s own post:
“It’s been years since I’ve blogged regularly. Let’s see if I start again now. (I might. It’s a good warm-up for writing and I’m looking forward to being a writer again.)”