Hello, I Can't Remember How to Write

It's cool, it's fine, it's not like it's my job or anything

For a few months now, I have been suffering from what I guess you’d call writer’s block. Very inconvenient, honestly, given that I am a writer and I make my living writing things. This particular brand of writer’s block has manifested in the overriding feeling of simply just not wanting to write, with me mentally rearing my entire body back from writing as though it’s a handsy man at a bar trying to yell at me about Crossfit. It’s like ew no, Chad, I don’t want to hear about air squats. Except it’s ew no, self, I don’t want to sit down at my desk and draft a story. Like, total recoil.

I tried to describe the feeling to my friend Amy recently, this sudden weird aversion to writing, and all I could come up with was “it’s like there’s a veil over my brain.” Which was unintentionally poetic, really, but I can’t think of a better way to describe the fact that the thoughts are there, the desire to write is (presumably) there, but everything is just lying limp under a murky layer of apathy and it’s so much easier not to even try to access it. (Except now, when I am simply ploughing through the antipathy by coddling myself like a small child: on the couch, under a fluffy blanket, taking frequent breaks to dip a small spoon into a large jar of Nutella. Maybe it’s self-care. Maybe it’s bribery. Maybe it’s kind of working either way. Was this Hemingway’s process too? Probably! )

Amy, by the way, is also a writer, and has an excellent Substack called Reading, Writing, Ranting, Recommending, which is exactly what it sounds like — in each newsletter, she talks about what she’s currently reading and writing, has a charming little rant about something, and then recommends a product that I almost always immediately buy. Same format every time, and it arrives in my inbox at a cadence I could set my watch to if I actually wore a watch and wasn’t just irritatingly late to everything because my phone died. Amy’s newsletters are very consistent, and very soothing in that consistency, which means I eagerly look forward to each one. Basically, her Substack is the opposite of these herky-jerky little missives I send out with no regular schedule or subject matter, as smooth and efficient as, say, the German railway system. (Mine, comparatively, is Amtrak. Is something coming this week? This month? Who knows!)

Yesterday, I tried to go for a walk to get the creative gears turning and maybe find some inspiration along the way, and all I ended up with was the stupidest injury ever: a sort of low shin pain in both legs. Wait, not even a low shin pain — it was more like…..the fronts of my ankles. Is that a body part? Is there a muscle group there? Regardless, I hurt it — on both sides — from merely walking my usual route around the neighborhood. In supportive sneakers, too! I mean, I’m no spring chicken, I guess, but come on, I was just trying to exercise for mental wellbeing like literally every doctor and therapist and internet article tells you to! What’s next, breaking my arm applying SPF50? Getting food poisoning from kale?

Anyway, I need to get my act together, writing-wise, because in a few weeks I’m attending the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, an event that I applied for and was rejected from twice before being accepted this year. Third time’s the charm! I’m going to be spending 10 days in Vermont, in a small workshop with the incredible Rebecca Makkai — author of I Have Some Questions For You and The Great Believers, among several other terrific novels — and I couldn’t be more excited. For the solitude? For the unparalleled learning environment? For the chance to reunite, summer-camp-style, with some of my peers from Kenyon last year? Well, sure, obviously, all of that. But I have also mapped the route to the Ben & Jerry’s Factory Tour and it is only an hour away. And guess who has her own rental car, baby!