When Writing Seems Impossible: Staying Focused in Times of Chaos, Turmoil & Existential Dread
By Matthew Norman | October 4, 2024 |
The key to getting anything out of essays like this about writing is to tweak the specifics to meet your individual circumstances. While it’s clear who I’m writing about here, the sentiment can apply to nearly anyone or anything. If there’s an external force in your life that you know is hurting you and your writing, do everything you can to simply turn it or them off. The burden won’t go away entirely, but I promise you it’ll ease.
Back in November 2016, on the night that He Who Shall Not Be Named somehow became President Elect of the United States, I was plunged instantly into the worst writing drought of my professional life.
(Oh, right, I probably should’ve started with a trigger warning. If you count yourself among the “Shut up and dribble” crowd, you might want to move along.)
I was well into the first draft of my third novel, LAST COUPLE STANDING. I wasn’t an outliner back then, but I had the plot and character arcs all laid out in my mind. Every time I sat down to work, though, the words simply wouldn’t come. For starters, the sadness I felt—something akin to mourning—had left me listless and completely void of intellectual energy and curiosity. Worse, though, the need to follow the chaos of those weeks and months in real time on social media and cable news had stripped my attention span down to its bare minimum. The country was a continuous car crash, and I couldn’t look away.
As time passed, as the cursor kept blinking, as the pages went unfilled, I knew that if I ever wanted to write another meaningful sentence of prose again, I’d need to make some changes.
Nine years later now (Nine years?!), as we enter what is sure to be among the most distracting months of our lives, I thought it might be helpful to share what I did to get through that administration, a deadly worldwide pandemic, the gutting of the Supreme Court, the stressful election of Joe Biden, a full-on insurrection, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the end of President Biden’s re-election bid, and, so far, another ugly political season of constant car crashes.
Turn Him Off
I don’t specifically remember when I decided to never watch HWSNBN again. Whenever it was, though, I’d seen enough to know that watching and listening to him speak for more than ten consecutive seconds had the power to upend my mood, ruin my day, and pulverize any chance I had of getting work done. So, one afternoon in 2017, I told my wife that I was done with him forever. She laughed, assuming I was kidding—or at least exaggerating. I assured her, though, that I was dead serious. I’m happy to report that to this day I’ve kept that promise. I catch bits here and there, of course, because it’d be impossible not to. I haven’t watched a single HWSNBN press conference, though. None of his State of the Union addresses either. No debates, town halls, rallies, interviews, or speeches. No nothing since. I’m a more productive writer for it, and, more importantly, I’m a happier one, too.
Turn Them Off, Too
Turning HWSNBN off was actually pretty easy in retrospect—and downright refreshing. Because, however, HWSNBN is a product engineered specifically for 24-hour news, turning everyone else off was and remains far more difficult.
I noticed two destructive things about my behavior back then. First, for some masochistic reason, I developed a mild addiction to watching and listening to those who supported HWSNBN. Suddenly I was tuning into right-wing media and going down the worst political rabbit holes imaginable on my phone. (I believe the kids refer to this as “hate watching.”) As I’m sure you can guess, the results, along with nausea and sleeplessness, was a constant, low-level anger. It simply had to stop.
The flip side of that coin of distraction was that I also developed a mild addiction to watching and listening to those who disliked him as much as I did. The Daily Show, the late-night talk show monologues, Morning Joe, pretty much everything on MSNBC, blogs, think pieces. It’s perfectly understandable to seek comfort through commiseration. Whatever comfort I found in like-minded thinkers, however, turned quickly into more anger. That had to stop, too.
Avoid the Doom Scroll
There are so many bad things about social media that listing them here would be like trying to count grains of sand. Among the worst, though, surely, is the dreaded doom scroll. If something is bad, you know it’s bad. Looking at an endless stream of reworded versions of that bad thing won’t make it any less bad, and, worse, hours and hours will pass in which you haven’t written a single word. For sheer practicality purposes, many of us may not be able to sign out and log off forever. You can, however, limit social media and give yourself full breaks when you need to. Don’t worry, it’ll all still be there when you return.
Immerse Yourself in Art
The three points above are all about subtraction. Now, finally, some glorious addition. Along with committing to the removal of HWSNBN and all the noise he created, I also committed to inviting art into my life to a degree that I’d previously only fantasized about. I read everything I could get my hands on. I listened to music constantly—old favorites, new bands that I heard were cool, genres I’d always avoided, everything. I embraced prestige television and watched every movie that looked interesting. It was wonderful—and nine years later it’s still wonderful. Writers are born with a special tank somewhere up in our brains that’s full of energy, curiosity, and creativity. In a world that’s hellbent on depleting that tank every waking moment of the day, it’s essential to fill it up whenever you can.
Just Write
Sometimes just getting to your keyboard is a win. So, set a writing schedule and stick to it the way you would a job. And if writing a thousand words seems like your personal Everest, write a page. If writing a page is too daunting, write a really good paragraph. For better or worse, you were born to be a writer. Don’t let him—or anyone—take that away from you.
Good luck, everyone. Whatever happens, we’ll get through it.
Has our current Era of Endless Car Crashes negatively affected your life and writing? What strategies have you used to overcome external writing distractions? Have you ever cut something—or someone—out of your life for the sake of your writing? How do you refill your tank? Books? Music? Art? Espresso?
Matthew Norman is the author of five novels. His latest, Charm City Rocks, is out now from Dell. His debut novel, Domestic Violets, was nominated in the Best Humor Category at the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards, and his second novel, We’re All Damaged, was an Amazon bestseller. His upcoming novel, Grace & Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon, will be out in October. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Baltimore and holds an MFA from George Mason University.
Hello Matthew. Thanks for a post that must strike a chord if not a nerve with many WU readers. Certainly it does with me. The flip side of how the 24/7 HWSNBN Blather Express can paralyze is by offering a convenient alternative to work. If the writing is going well, no problem. HWSNBN is white noise. If the writing is not going well, the white noise becomes a siren song. But the media has come to my rescue:
“If something is bad, you know it’s bad. Looking at an endless stream of reworded versions of that bad thing won’t make it any less bad….”
Exactly. The nightly parade of the same putative experts repeating each other has caused “breaking news” to lose its power. The pundit parade members no longer even bother to reword what’s been said or reported earlier in the day. In other the words, the exhausted nature of reporting has made it easier for me to Get Something Done. That, and the not-so-veiled threats from my wife about what would happen if I didn’t stop telling her what she already knew.
Thanks again for your post. Philip Roth complained that the increasingly bizarre, exaggerated nature of today’s news had left novelists and their imaginings in the dust. I think he was wrong, but not because things have gotten any easier.
Hey, Barry. I’d never heard that quote from Roth before. Interesting. The all-day-every-day nature of news is what’s so harmful to our productivity…and our health. You can never totally trust an industry that has 24 hours of air to fill. Take care! -MN
This is a very apt description of my own struggle to settle down and write for quite a long time, but especially during the last few months. However, if all one does to manage one’s anxiety about the present crisis is simple cocooning, that falls short for what each of us owes our fellows citizens and ourselves, in my opinion. DO SOMETHING. Postcards, letters, phone calls, door to door canvassing. Do some of that, schedule it in like part of THE JOB as you describe above. And then write.
An excellent point, Deborah. The “do something” angle is noticeably absent from my post, and I’m glad you pointed that out. Go get ’em. -MN
Oh, boy, can I ever identify with your struggle, Matthew. Yes, this Era of Endless Car Crashes has negatively affected me; I’m often keenly aware of how the stomach turns on the daily. Back when HWSNBN was in office, I tuned out for a time, because I began to feel…outside myself. That’s when I knew I had to find escape in the world I could control on the page. That worked for a while, but here in 2024 my nose is against the glass again.
If anyone out there reading this is beside me near that glass: First, hello. This sucks, doesn’t it? But second: If you cannot look away, take notes. This is what disinformation does, what gaslighting looks like, how priorities are weaponized, how people are fundamentally and unwittingly destabilized. This is how propaganda sedates and manipulates the masses, how rot spreads. This is how history is erased. This is how chaos works — and story often finds its fuel in chaos; just look at what it’s done to our story’s stakes. Use it, however you can.
I find comfort in music, music, music. Alexa basically says “the regular, T?” and puts on some classical tracks.
If we get past this, I will never, never again complain about being bored. Write on, Matthew.
Hey, T. OMG! Yes…music has absolutely saved me. Free dopamine for the taking. Your point in that middle paragraph is so important, though. We can do what we’ve gotta do to get work done, because that’s life and we have to pay the bills. But that can’t come at the cost of no longer acknowledging what’s going on around us. Write and and fight on! -MN
Thanks Matthew, I love the process of writing and that’s a good thing as I have published a small book of stories and yet my novels remain unpublished. In these times, after I have visited Twitter to discover that yes, how I feel about the coming election puts me with the majority, I can open my document and hope for the muse. These are times when writing can be a challenge. But also a gift.
Agreed, Beth. I talk about writing as a job a lot–this never-ending responsibility. But it really is an escape, too. And I absolutely welcome it. -MN
For me it started with the pandemic—watching the news and the death toll and all the horrible misinformation. I finished a book during those days, but the sad subtext of real life actually shows through the story for me. Fortunately, it was a story about the rise of the Nazis behind the fantastic facade of the 1936 Olympics, so the subtext of doom was appropriate. Everywhere you look these days politics are divisive and ugly (I’m in Canada, but we are far from immune to the direness of American politics. As one of our past Prime Ministers said, ‘when you’re lying in bed next to an elephant, you feel it every time the elephant rolls over’. Not that our politics here are any more comforting at present. Or the horrors of other crises happening in the world. We can’t look away entirely even if we try— there are protests on the streets, hateful bumper stickers, and overheard conversations in coffee shops, even when you try to tune out the TV news. No, I’m not writing at the moment either. Can’t. Just not able to make it happen. I’m paralyzed like a deer in the headlights. I’ve even tried writing something humorous just for fun, but it falls flat and false. I was away in England for two weeks last month, and not watching news of any kind, and I was so much happier not knowing what was going on. Looking away somehow felt like I was ignoring the suffering of others, but it only feeds my anger and despair and freezes me from doing what I need to do in my own life. There have been so many posts like this recently, about the paralyzing effects of current events, and it’s slightly comforting to know that I’m not the only one. It gives me hope that when enough of us are fed up, we’ll find a way to make things better for ourselves and our world, and we will write again. We need some kind of hope that things will improve, and if that starts with turning off the news for our own sanity, let’s do that.
So true, Lecia. The pandemic was such a difficult time for writers. The anxiety, the cabin fever, the boredom, the constant uncertainty about the state of the industry. Regardless of our output, we should all be proud of ourselves for making it out with our artistic identities intact. -MN
Thank you for this, Matthew. The HWSNBN (love the acronym) thrives on sowing dissent and chaos, on making normal, sane people despair in a world that already has so much to worry about. Like you, I refuse to listen anymore. I maintain a cone of protection by prioritizing self care, which includes exercising, reading the news judiciously, and, of course, writing. And I try and flame that tiny kernel of hope that says that most of us are good, despite what the HWSNBN and his minions would like us to believe.
Love this, Liz. Thanks for pointing out exercise. Absolutely vital! -MN
I’m barely functional (due to chronic illness) AT BEST.
Last time writing was difficult – this time it’s difficult for the obvious reason, but even more for the aging-added-to-illness factor, but I have a trilogy to finish>
I break the writing (I’m an extreme plotter, and that part’s already in place, more or less) into TINY fragments – as you say, even a paragraph – and get something done every day the brain is even remotely usable. I record everything I do obsessively, as I go, because I can’t trust memory to back the brain up, and that shows the progress, but more importantly, lets me go back and RELOAD when a bunch of days in a row are NO GO.
The latest two were getting my flu/covid shot (lost about 5 days on that one to brain fog) and getting a new assistant up to speed (she just started, and we have the summer to clear away).
I know I can write. I know I can plot. I know where the story has been and where it’s going. I even know I can publish, as the first two volumes are up and available (marketing is taking a hiatus for a bit).
Every usable day moves LIMBO forward. It will have to do. And is far better than anything else I know for self-worth (the reviews are very kind).
Keep at it, Alicia. I like what you said about plotting. I think outlining/plotting is a valuable tool for writing in distracting times. When the conditions are bad, follow your road map. -MN
It may be cold comfort to watch “Truth and Lies” on PBS now. I’ve learned that, since ancient times, warriors, politicians and the press spun falsehoods to bolster their own image, demonize their opponents, and leave a legacy that is untrue. So much for the “good old days.”
Matthew, yeah, reduce to jelly by the endless ocean of foul news. For such long years I wanted to be a reporter, and thus spent so much time scrutinizing the work of reporters, but alas, the layers of muck now need seven league boots to move. I still read some news, but draw back in fear, and spend more time reading, and lately, coloring in illustrations of animals in crazy hues. Beats the news blues.
Hey, Tom. Reading has been great for me, too. So, so many books! -MN
Matthew:
Interesting that you should end an essay on surviving chaos with the admonition to “Just Write.” That’s one of my go-to passages from Natalie Goldberg: “In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definite act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.” Sometimes, being able to make sense of something, anything, is enough to get you through.
Hey, Christine. Absolutely love that. -MN
Here in the Carolinas, so many are struggling with the aftermath of Helene tearing through their communities. We pray, we help each other, we make music, and some of us sit in a corner of our porches to write, to try make sense of things.
Keep at it, Vijaya. My parents are in the Carolinas, too, SC to be specific. -MN
Thank you for identifying a huge source of my ongoing angst, Matthew. I researched and wrote two novels set in pre-war Germany, so HWSNBN makes my skin crawl. I am often, as the Germans say, verklempt.
I will try to heed your sound advice to improve my own creativity and maintain my mental health.