The Writing's the Crisis

Being a working writer means living with inherent contradictions. For fifty weeks of the year daily life involves awaking between 3:00 and 3:30 a.m., writing for half an hour, and catching a bus to over eight hours of work in New York City. Then riding the bus back home again in time for supper and bed. I’m not complaining, just observing. That’s what writers do.

That lifestyle—constantly tired, anxious, and pressed for time to get the mundane chores done (paying bills, balancing the checkbook, taking out the recycling)—wears me down like a grindstone. When the weekend comes I sleep an extra half hour or so and, although refreshed, I awake without the urgency that frames five days a week. It’s a crisis.

Every year I save up enough vacation days to take off between Christmas and New Year’s. As a former professor this is a no-brainer. In my industry (publishing) there’s no such thing as an emergency. Nobody dies if a book is released a week later than scheduled. Even so, publishers don’t get this natural caesura of the year off. My first year in the biz, I sat in the office with no one answering emails or calls because everyone else has this time off.

I save five of my precious vacation days every year to take this time off. To write, I think, to finish projects. To catch up on all the things I don’t have time to do. Then the expensive break comes and inspiration flees. I get enough sleep and can’t think of a thing to write. My half-finished stories collect at my feet. There is no crisis.

Every year’s end I come to realize that the writing’s in the crisis. The stories dwell in that frazzled mindset of never having enough sleep. The constant financial worries. The looking ahead to no retirement because who can afford retirement when the rent is so damned high? The moment I put my foot on that early morning bus, the story ideas begin to flow.

I won’t have time to write them down, though. Not until next year at Christmas. So the working writer’s life goes. They’re called holy days for a reason.

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