Dishwater Revelations

As has become custom, clarity came to me as I was elbow deep in hot, soapy water.

Doing the dishes is my go-to procrastinating activity.  When you’re in a family, there are always dishes which need doing.  I have an excuse to crank the music up loud, my wife appreciates it when I go above and beyond with the housework, and I always feel a sense of accomplishment when I’m finished.  It’s the perfect excuse to not be doing my job, which is putting one word after the other until I hit “The End”.

For all its benefits, washing dishes is not writing.  I have been gifted with a three-day weekend out of the blue (one that I am actually getting paid for) and instead of making my fingers bleed from keystroke trauma, I’m in the kitchen getting dishpan hands.  I’m in full retreat, white flag raised, making myself do something useful so I don’t feel ashamed at being frightened off by a blank page and the empty chair in front of it.

Like many authors in my position, writing is something that I squeeze into the cracks of my life.  I have a full-time job, as does my wife, and we are raising a tiny human as well.  I have to take my tiny human to school each morning, and each evening I have to help around the house, make sure I spend quality time with the wife and tiny human, and try to get enough writing done to keep telling myself being a full-time author is a possibility before I die.  Finding myself with an extra day to do nothing but write is manna from heaven, and there I was searing my hands while scrubbing the grease from pot after pot.

I knew why I was running, of course.  We always do, don’t we?  I slaughter myself to make my story posts happen.  I cannot even remember the last Monday where I wasn’t operating on two hours of sleep or less.  Mondays already suck, and I keep cranking that suck up to eleven.  What had me fleeing once more into the land of sloshing water and drying racks is the knowledge that even if I continue to slaughter myself, it won’t get me where I want to be.

So I scrubbed, and I seethed, and I tried to find a way to break through.  It’s always been this way with me.  Three years in, and my most prized asset is that I just don’t know how to quit writing.  Even buried in soapy water and sporting seared fingers, the only thing that would happen once I was done would be me sitting my happy butt back down at that desk to try and eek out a few new words. Despite my pugnacious attitude, I knew that a big change was necessary if I wanted to make any progress.  The path I had been walking until yesterday would make me lose everything.  Going sleepless twice a week as an overweight thirty-five year old who’s already had a heart attack is a good way to get yourself killed.  Chugging endless energy drinks to try and counteract the bone-deep weariness is just doubling-down on danger.

As I stared at the dirty dishwater, an answer came.  It isn’t quite what I had hoped for, but it’s the answer I need.  It’ll involve a lot of new aches, a fresh set of tiny agonies which have come to define my time in the chair, and above all it’ll require me to actually knuckle down and finish some things that have become the omnipresent hanging chads of my career.  What answer I found in the murky water is unimportant: writing is different for each author and the direction which suits me best will not work for everyone.  It may not even work for anyone but me.

What I hope to accomplish with this post is to shine a light on an important and often overlooked aspect of being an author.  Even when I was running away from my desk, immersing myself in soapy water to hide from words unwritten, I was still trying to find a way forward.

Keep struggling, keep writing, and above all, keep calm and wash on.

Scrubfully,

The Unsheathed Quill