Writing What Calls You

I recently talked to a writer who was stuck. Not just stuck, but miserably stuck. In the sense that her writing had become a joyless, grinding affair, full of determination, full of “no pain, no gain.”

She told me there was one scene, far ahead in her memoir, that she wished she could write. “Is it all right if I skip ahead and write that?” she asked.

My answer: “Yes!”

We all have scenes, moments, moods, or places that we’d relish writing. Yet we often don’t write the thing we want to write because we’re on page 43, and the scene we’re thinking about belongs on page 90, and we’ve told ourselves we need to get there honestly, chronologically, linearly, the way life actually happened.

There is a logic to writing memoir in order. Life moves forward. Events have causes and consequences. If you write the ending before you’ve written the middle, it’s easy to think you won’t be able to create the dramatic tension of an escalating plot.

Maybe. Or maybe by writing what is calling you, you’re replenishing your writing well, drawing up new water, and finding the necessary joy, meaning, and sense of accomplishment to re-fuel your momentum.