Stepping Back into the Water

When I set off on my long-distance swim three months ago, I stepped into the surf and headed into the unknown water of brain surgery like a swimmer being carried by rapids over the steep falls ahead, hoping that I'd survive the drop and emerge safely in the calm pool of water below. 

Weeks later, the first time that I sat down to write after the surgery, my head still sore and my thinking still woozy from the fall, I felt lost in a fog bank, disoriented, not sure which way to go, or whether to go at all.

I held a pen in my hand but it felt like a foreign object. I didn't have the strength or energy to sit at my desk. I was disconsolate, wanting to write but not knowing how to get back into the water. It felt as if my depth-perception had changed. I couldn't tell the difference between shallow and deep water. 

For weeks I stayed on shore and watched other writers swimming, afraid to go into the water myself. I read a lot. I listened to books on tape. I was blessed with a loving wife and family who cared for me as I recuperated on shore. So many people called, sent get well notes and gifts. Friends drove over to keep me company. We drank lots of herbal tea, and we ate lots of homemade brownies and banana bread. 

When I started writing again it was to send brief notes of gratitude to the people who had done so much to help me recuperate and regain my strength and balance. Everyone's willingness to share stories reminded me of my own love of stories and of the magic of words to bring people together in mysterious ways. 

This is my roundabout way of saying thank you to everyone for the prayers and good wishes sent for my recovery. But it's also a note of gratitude to the many writers who I've never met but whose postings (on Facebook or Twitter or elsewhere online) and whose books have kept me afloat over the past few months. Even as I floundered on the shallows after the surgery, unsure if I'd ever have the strength or desire to write again, I sensed the shadow of your presence in the water as you kept writing, kept believing in the power of words and the magic of storytelling. 

I don't know what form wordswimmer's posts will take in the weeks and months ahead. Brief snippets of inspiration? Long letters of frustration and disappointment? Links to other blogs? Quotes to help us all stay in the water ?  I'll have to wait and see what the water feels like each week. Maybe I'll dive in. And maybe I'll prefer to stay dry and gather my strength for the next week's swim or the next. As Theodore Roethke writes: "I learn, by going, where I have to go."

Little by little I'm making my way back into the water, but it takes patience and time. My fingers remembering how to type. My brain remembering how to form words. My imagination remembering the pleasure of telling stories. What's important, most of all, is the intention to swim. 

I hope you'll keep writing. You never know how your words inspire others to stay in the water and keep swimming, but I can tell you that your words and stories matter. I know this because your comments and postings and notes and stories and poems have inspired me. 

The proof is here: I'm in the water. Swimming with words again. 

Getting Back into the Water

Before taking time off, I always worry that if I stop writing, cease searching for words, forego thinking about how to put words on paper, I’ll forget how to swim and lose the ability to find words ever again.

Every year it’s the same. When I close my journals and put away my works-in-progress so that I can rest and let the well of words refill again, I fear that I’ll never be able to write again, and worry endlessly that I won’t ever again feel words flowing through my pen or see sentences and paragraphs forming beneath my hand.

No sooner do I leave my desk behind, though, than these fears fade away. There is no longer any stress from work. I can sit peacefully and gaze out over the water (where I spent so much time swimming over the past year) and enjoy the view without needing to lift a pen to paper to capture an image, a scene, a thought.

And each year resting from work magically revives the soul and, just as magically, gives the imagination a chance to plant new seeds that will ripen (with faith and determination) into new stories for me to tell in the months ahead once I return to my desk.

Inevitably, the time to return to the water comes, and, just as inevitably, I become hesitant and doubtful and wonder if I'll have anything worthwhile to say. Will the stories that I hope to tell this year be compelling? Will I find the right words?

The only way to answer these questions is to begin work again, to pick up my pen and start writing, to let my fingers play over the computer keyboard, to close my eyes and imagine the words flowing through my pen or pencil as my hand moves across the page.

“Writing is an exploration,” says E.L. Doctorow. “You start from nothing and learn as you go.”

As 2013 begins, I’m stepping to the end of the diving board and jumping, trusting words to come, eager to explore the world, learning as I go.

Best of luck with your own leaps of faith in the year ahead.

When It’s Time To Return To The Water

Vacations and short breaks away from our work give us a chance to rest and recuperate from our daily immersion in water.

Without our goggles, we can view our work with a new perspective.

We can let our mind relax, step out of routines, and explore new pathways.

We can rest on the side of the pool or float on a raft instead of swimming.

There’s a certain pleasure in feeling the warm sun against one's back, the sense of weightlessness, the sudden freedom.

But when it’s time to return to the water, it can be an effort to get back into the pool.

I’m always reluctant to take that first step.

Instead, I cling to the uppermost rung of the ladder at the edge of the pool, not wanting the shock of the water to chill my skin.

And yet, as I stand there, compelling myself to take that step, I can feel the urge—the need—to swim again.

And what surprises me is that just by writing--with a pen or keyboard, it doesn't matter--I let go of the edge without realizing it and step off the ladder.

One moment, I'm standing on the ladder; the next, I’m back in the water.

Swimming!

The shock that I had feared was only in my mind, not an actual shock of cold but a fear of cold, a fear of silence, of nothingness, of a blank page.

The moment my pen starts moving across the page, though, my fear magically vanishes.

Words appear. 

I can see my thoughts reflected on the page in front of me.

And I’m back in the water swimming again.

For more on how to start writing again after a break, visit:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2012/02/how-to-return-to-writing-after-long.html

http://www.fuelyourwriting.com/after-the-break-how-to-get-writing-again/

http://www.darcypattison.com/writing-life/4-ways-to-start-writing-again-after-a-vacation/

http://allwrittendown.wordpress.com/2007/12/10/how-to-start-writing-again-after-a-long-break/

http://amharte.com/2012/02/01/7-ways-to-start-writing-again/