On Being Driven to Write

by Jeffe Kennedy

What happens when I don't write?

I get depressed.

Wow - this week's topic was super easy. You all have a great week!

Okay, okay. I'll elaborate. But it really does boil down to that for me. If you've been reading my personal blog for any length of time, then you'll know that I periodically trot out this quote from Mark Rutherford:

"There is in each of us an upswelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground around it into a swamp."

This perfectly sums up the feeling for me. There are times when I've let the writing slide. In the dark days before I figured out that's what I really wanted to be doing with my life. Since then, when I thought I was "too busy." Even sometimes on vacation, after a few days of deliberately not writing. The bogginess starts to accumulate. I'll feel both restless and blue. It's like a barely perceived stench, of stagnation and rot, that gradually grows stronger until I wonder what the hell my problem is.

Oh yeah.

Not writing.

I don't know how many times I've rediscovered this about myself. A day or a few without writing can be a lovely break. Then I cross this boundary where, like low tide, my internal critters begin to dry out and die. Fortunately they seem quite resilient. A wave of fresh brine rejuvenates them and brings them back to fluorescent life.

Even better, writing seems to beget writing. So the more I do it, the easier it is. This is another thing I have to relearn, every time I "take a break" or get hopelessly sucked into the dayjob. Getting back into the groove can be painful, full of irrational resistance. Only all that accumulated swampiness around me drives me to keep going then.

But when I've cut course and all that upwelling in me is roaring along it, pure and clean?

There's no better feeling in the world.