Start Again
Updated: 7 days ago
The words start again have existed for me as a mantra, an excuse, a trauma, a goal, a desire, and now sit like an unrelenting pressure at the center of my chest every morning when I wake. There is both panic and comfort in the idea of starting again. I think the panic arises from a growing awareness of my own mortality as I approach age fifty. My time is running out. But the comfort comes from me arriving in the same place, time and time again. I know this spot. I have a favorite chair here and a regular drink order. It's kind of a dive, but I keep showing up despite knowing it will end in a bar fight.
How many blogs have I posted and deleted? How many first chapters have I rewritten? How much copy have I drafted for my stagnant website and never uploaded? How many times have I thought, this is the manuscript I’m going to fully edit and query. I arrive in the same place, starting over and over, like an outdated, overshared GIF.
This past month the algorithms have been feeding me the same reel on social media. It’s come to feel like a warning sent from the depths of the cosmic web in the midst of my doom-scrolling and avoidance of purpose and life. The snippet has been loitering in my brain when I’m not viewing it, taunting me daily. The offending blurb is a video clip of writer Leigh Bardugo speaking at an event in response to a question that resembles, what would you say to your younger self, she states, “Get over yourself.”
Bardugo is not the only writer to have ever shared this loaded nugget of wisdom. I’ve sat in no less than ten rooms with authors, whose books and craft I respect, that have uttered some iteration of this statement. It’s been said directly to me by enough successful authors (and therapists) that I could assign them each a finger on both hands and carry them like a tattoo everywhere with me. There is so much tethered to those three words that rings real and true. Yet, each time I encounter the weighty phrase, I find myself wallowing in the same emotions: fear partnered with self-doubt that suffocates a dying spark of hope.
This past weekend I had a small group of ladies that I’ve come to know in what I still consider my new town (even though I’ve lived here for seven years) for a rare social gathering inside my home. I don’t like people inside my house. In many ways, my home is a representation of the inside of my head. No one needs to see that hot mess. It’s packed full of the charming and not so charming manifestations of myself. I don’t know why I did it, but near the end of the social hour we were standing in front of my bookshelves (an organizational work in progress) and as the ladies gathered to leave, I pointed to several thick binders and said, “Those are all manuscripts I wrote.” My admission was met with a polite head nod and smile, as it should’ve been, because who in their right mind points to the writer’s equivalent to a stinky pile of dirty laundry and says, “Look, what I did!” I immediately felt that rush of humiliation and shame that comes with the baggage of not succeeding. Then, that little voice in my head replied, “Finish the damned thing. Why can’t you finish the damned thing?”
If you find yourself inclined to pity me, don’t. I did this to myself.
Once more, I find I’m at the beginning of another completed draft, still having not published a book, and in the same stage of pulling myself out of a mire of self-pity and imposter syndrome. Starting again. And struggling to complete.
I write because it’s who I am. I can’t not write. Cosmos knows, I’ve tried. I know, without a doubt, my existence in this world would be infinitely less troubled if I didn't write. I might sleep at night. I might keep friends. My child might grow up with a little less trauma. But I can’t seem to stop the writing from happening. Yet, with all my desire and identity wrapped into the label of writer, I avoid writing because I see myself as unworthy of the title.
People call me an author and I cringe. People introduce me as a writer and I balk. I say it sometimes out loud and can’t avoid scrunching my nose like I've smelled something unpleasant. It’s like writer is stamped on my forehead under a red circle with a slash through it. I can’t unsee it in the mirror. And I’ve done nothing to earn the removal of the “nope” symbol marring the word.
I’ve been trying to rewrite that next draft of who I am my entire adult life. But here I sit, with the same insecurities and hurdles, even though I’ve been doing this familiar waltz with my psyche for, at least, the last twenty-five years. I should’ve evolved. Instead, I start another blog post I'll probably delete. Then, I start another draft. And then, I make another attempt to put myself out into the world as a writer who writes. Because there are two sides to the coin, and the one that shines brightest toward me is the belief that: you aren’t a writer unless someone reads it. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Today I’m choosing to write this ramble of thoughts, while logging into my unused website and scrolling through my stagnant socials, thinking about what won’t seem absurd after years of inactivity as an aspiring author. All while wanting today to be a fresh start. The beginning of success. Yet, no matter how I frame it, aspiring author never feels like a career path. Never feels like who I am. Never seems like something I'm allowed to pursue. It’s only ever been a circuit of starting again and again.
No need to point out the obvious. I’m hyperaware of the fact that I’ve been here before, writing a blog post while sitting next to a completed first draft that I’m actively avoiding, when I should be working on the thing that’s not finished. Despite everything that writing means to me—to who I am and who I want to be—the writing process induces panic and internal chaos. It's the thing that never resolves. I have a whole shelf of fat three-ring binders I can point at for you as proof that I have done this before. But, it all comes back to the beginning with no satisfaction or success in breaking the pattern. It feels like a skip in a film reel that detonates in a mass of melting celluloid during the denouement, right before the next inciting event or meet cute begin.
Some may say, “Oh, tortured artist.” Some might say, “Welcome to the life of a writer.” All I can think is, “Get over yourself.” But in these moments, when everything feels like extreme pressure and I settle into that strange comfortable discomfort, where avoidance and fear wins, where self-doubt is crowned ruler, what is there left to do? All I can do is start again.
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