On Not Writing

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I’ve done a lot of not writing recently. It’s exhausting and all consuming.

I think about not writing all the time.

I am not writing poetry.

Not the long-form pamphlet-length poem that I’m 3/5ths of the way through. Nor further tweaking of the two full collections I finished over a year ago, which have both been shortlisted and longlisted and commended in style and subject but have not been published. Neither the completion (to at least my own satisfaction) of rough lines scribbled in the night; of half-baked concepts that showed promise and daring, but require time and effort. Neither of which I’ve had for a long time. Not journal entries, not morning pages, not workshop prompts, not a dozen potential collaborative projects. And not fucking NaPoWriMo.

But that’s okay, because this year I told myself I would focus on prose.

I’m not really a poet (capital ‘p’) anyway.

I am not writing prose.

Not the not-quite-finished-first-draft speculative eco-thriller I first conceived back in the easy, innocent days of 2019. Not the half dozen short story ideas that show promise but need work to whip them into shape. Not the nearly finished experimental novella that I naively thought I could finish before a certain submission deadline. Not the other three novels in various stages of incompletion all pressing for my attention once this other one is out of the way. Nor the intriguing and slightly subversive non-fiction proposal that I’d love to immerse myself in with reading and research and writing as a playful mashup of the poetic and academic.

I’m not even writing Substack posts.

About process or craft, or publications or performances, of books I’m reading, or random, potentially interesting, thoughts I might be having. I am not reading any books, nor thinking about any books other than the ones I’m not writing. I’m not having any thoughts, apart from these thoughts on not writing.

And why am I not writing?

Time. More specifically, the lack of it. The literal glimpse of a crack of it, between parenting and a busy full time job, and a chronic debilitating illness. And Too Many Things. My challenge is not procrastination, or motivation, or writer’s block, but diversification. I’ve always been interested in a little bit of everything. How to narrow that down when there’s too much to write about. Too much life, but not enough time.

That’s a rhetorical question, with its expectations set so low it doesn’t even have a question mark.

I’d like to write about how not writing is healthy, and a crucial part of the creative process. That it’s still ‘thinking’ and useful preparation for when one does write. Gestation. I’ve felt that in the past, and found it to be true. But not now. Now, there’s no time or energy for ‘thinking’ or ‘gestation’ or any creative process other than managing to get up in the morning. And give what I have to my day job, my family, my friends, and to eff-able of course.

This is okay, the page will still be there, I tell myself. There’s no rush.

But I don’t believe it. The clock is ticking.

The clock is always ticking.