Dear Dried Up: Join Me in Perpetual Chasing & Holy Gratitude

Lit Salon addresses the question of severe writer's block, dead muses, and dried up inspiration + three research-backed methods to get yourself writing and keep yourself writing

I have a story about the so-called muse, and why I don’t wait for it. Which is, in part, the subject of this week’s Lit Salon which addresses a question from “Dried Up.” So I’ll get to Lit Salon shortly, as I always do on Mondays.

Before we dive in, a reminder that we are only two weeks away from the start of Writing in the Dark’s next seasonal intensive for paid subscribers, “Essay in 12 Steps.” Paid subscribers need not sign up—you will automatically receive the 12 essay prompts via email. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you’ll need to upgrade to receive the prompts, and you can do that here for only $6/month or $60/year. You can read all about the challenge here.

Now, back to the preamble to “Dried Up” and this week’s Lit Salon. First, some context. I’m writing today from our historic log cabin on the edge of the wilderness—and today is something of a milestone moment.

Here’s why.

Tomorrow will mark the exact three-year anniversary of the day, in July of 2020, when my husband and I drove up on a whim to see this tiny lake cabin which was then for sale on the edge of the Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. When I say “the edge,” I mean, literally, the edge. This cabin is the very last cabin before the wilderness area begins—our property line to the west abuts federal land and waters. And when I say “tiny” I mean this is an original, historic one-room 1935 log cabin with an addition to hold a bathroom (more on the bathroom later), and another structure mere inches from the water that was once a boathouse but was at some point converted to a shoreline sleeping cabin.

We came up to see this place because, during the pandemic, in the weeks after the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, our youngest (adult) child, Billie Oh, got into the habit of doom scrolling Zillow for cheap land, like some undeveloped field or something, that they could potentially buy in order to escape, well, everything. It was a pretty unrealistic fantasy, but it provided some tender relief, nonetheless. Back then, Billie was working as the assistant director of children and family services for the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery, which provides a 24-hour, 365-day crisis line for families in need, including on-site residential care for children for up to 72 hours at a time.

You can probably imagine how stressful that job was in the middle of the acute, pre-vaccine portion of a global pandemic amid the simultaneous racial justice uprising in a city on fire after the senseless, unspeakable murder of a Black man by a white police officer. Minneapolis has one of the widest (and at times the absolute widest) disparities in income levels between white and Black residents of any U.S. city, so it’s not surprising that most of the families served by the crisis nursery are black, as are many of the nursery’s part-time, hourly childcare workers. The people who run and fund the nursery, on the other hand, are mostly white. During that first pandemic summer, shift workers and families alike were bearing the brunt of continual Covid-exposure-related nursery closings, which Billie was involved in coordinating as part of their assigned duties. It was a brutal time, and after many hours of marching, protesting, and dodging (not always successfully) pepper spray, Billie, like many others, started to feel despondent about the state of the world and their ability to make any meaningful difference.

Thus, the doom scrolling.

Thus, happening upon the listing for this little cabin.

If you’re thinking to yourself—wait, a lake cabin is not some cheap, undeveloped field—that’s true, of course. I don’t know quite how this listing came up in Billie’s searches, except to say that Lake Superior—while not in our family budget, is in our family blood—and somehow, we can’t ever stop looking at listings near Superior’s North Shore. Maybe that’s how this one got in there one afternoon when Billie and I were mindlessly searching together, since it’s technically (by way of address, anyway) in the city of Grand Marais, which is on Lake Superior, even though we’re actually 53 miles inland on the Gunflint Trail.  

Whatever the case, the listing photos were just so dang cute, with their one-room log-cabin vibe. Plus, this rocky, rugged one-acre parcel, loaded with old cedars and birch, balsam and poplar, is nestled into a rocky outcropping on a clear cove protected by a beautiful rocky point demarking the actual entryway into wilderness, a place where loons swim under rainbows and teach their babies to dive, which is what we have been watching from our dock this week. This place’s quirkiness (water access only!) also made it confusingly affordable, as far as lake cabins go, which is partly how we decided we just had to go see it—and, after a five-and-a-half-hour drive and a ten-minute boat ride on a stunning July day—we fell in love with this place, which is where I am writing from now, because we cobbled together every last cent we had that summer to get the loan and make it ours. And yes, I can work here, and even teach on Zoom here, which I frequently have done, because apparently these days, even on the edge of wilderness, broadband internet is a thing. That’s partly, I’m guessing, because of all the wilderness outfitters and lodges along the trail. Whatever the case, we’re glad for it, because being very much not retired, internet allows us to work up here, which in turn allows us to use this cabin exponentially more than if we were truly off grid.

Anyway, I’m telling you this story because it’s about negative capability and showing up, which are two of my mottos when it comes to my writing practice and the creative life in general. Jon and I were not looking for a cabin and nor did we know we were (barely) capable of acquiring one. But when possibility flickered on the periphery our known world, we paid attention. We also took fast action and froze all spending while consolidating every resource we had as we embarked on a journey governed by the principle, “say yes until you have to say no.” Which is relevant to this week’s Lit Salon question about the muse, from a writer who signed their query, “Dried Up.”

Lit Salon

Dear Dried Up: Join Me in Perpetual Chasing & Holy Gratitude

Dear Jeannine,

I’m afraid my muse has died. About five months ago, I quit my job in order to pursue writing full time. I was working in healthcare—I’m a nursing assistant—while trying to build some kind of a writing life. Before the pandemic, it was working. Not only did I publish several poems and short stories, but I have a half-finished novel in the works as well. Then came the pandemic, and everything changed. It’s hard for me to describe how stressful my work became and remained. I had nothing left to give to my writing. And I’m lucky enough that, with my partner’s income, we can afford for me not to work, at least for a while. So, late last winter, my partner and I agreed I could take a year to invest in my writing life. It’s hard to describe how ecstatic I was while anticipating a year of dedicated writing time. I don’t know if anything could have made me happier than the idea of spending all day every day immersed in the craft, producing new work, improving existing drafts. A dream, I thought.

As it turns out, maybe I was right: that kind of life is a dream. My year off is almost half over, and I’ve barely produced anything at all. Every morning, my partner leaves for work and I sit down with my laptop and try, but it’s as if the muse has abandoned me entirely. I used to feel excited to write. Now, I feel dried up. To make matters worse, my lack of productivity is making me anxious. I don’t want to tell my partner how little I’ve produced. I also don’t want to open my laptop in the morning. I get a rush of dread just thinking about that awful, dead feeling of sitting there, blocked, no inspiration anywhere. It’s breaking my heart. It’s possible that if I were actually doing something meaningful with my time, I could keep writing and postpone returning to my healthcare job. But if this dry spell continues, I just don’t think I could justify that to my partner, or even to myself.

Why is this happening? I have a hunch it’s not a coincidence that my inspiration dried up when I quit my job, but why?

Signed,
All Dried Up

Dear Dried Up,

First, thank you for your service in healthcare during the scariest time of our lives. I am so grateful. Second, I cannot tell you how much I love this question. Mostly because it’s a question I feel I have an actual answer to, an answer that might even help you salvage what is left of your year off. That’s because I don’t really believe in inspiration—or at least, I don’t believe in waiting for it. Instead, I believe in courting it, befriending it, and, most of all, seizing it. Here’s how I do that using a trifold method that has not only worked for me throughout my writing life, but has also worked for many, many other writers I coach. It’s simple, but effective, and involves three evidence-based tenets that not only work to dissolve paralysis, but also work to boost productivity, creativity, and literary inventiveness for anyone.

First, you must let go of any concept of “the muse” and imagine instead that you are