Dark Days, Battle and Joy

I have started several posts in the last few days, too much time having gone by between posts, but ultimately, I trashed them all. My three readers are no doubt disappointed when I don’t get some new bit of “wisdom” up in a timely fashion. But all of those pieces came from a black place and had no business seeing the light.

The long and hard work of writing a novel has few moments of happiness. There are lonely days of work piled one upon another. Add to those the short, gray days of winter passing at a gloomy trudge, the ceaseless toil of farm life and a void my love life used to fill, and you have a prescription for melancholy. If allowed to bleed into my writing, the product is self-absorbed, depressing and unreadable.

The antidote for me is to find joy in the battle. You cannot know at the outset whether you will succeed or fail, so you must enjoy the fight. When I was an athlete, it was the competition that drove me. I would sometimes win, sometimes lose, but I always loved the struggle. I reveled in being pushed by my competition and in pushing back. We drove each other to improve, to perform at our best, win or lose. I do not remember individual wins and losses from decades of athletic competition, I remember moments of extending myself to my limit, one play, one movement at a time. It is the battle that stands out in my memory, not the outcome.

So I sit at the keyboard today prepared to engage my most feared opponent, a blank page. The contest will last an hour, perhaps two. Even at the end, I will not know if I have succeeded or failed. But I will know I have been in a fight. I will come out bloodied, but I will be able to stand up straight and say I fought with all I had. Win or lose, I will have that, always. And I will be better for it.