I haven’t been able to write for the last five days. There was so much crap on and around my desk that even the thought of organizing all the papers and mail made my head hurt. And to make matters worse, everything on my desk needed my immediate attention. (There’s an equally bad pile of not-so-urgent papers on the counter in the kitchen.) So rather than confronting the piles, I closed the door and found other things to do.

My cluttered desk!

I read one of the novels off my summer reading list. I got a free makeover from the Clarions counter at Macy’s. I bought my daughter new shoes. I had lunch with a friend. I hung out with my husband all day Friday. And though I managed to avoid my cluttered office, I couldn’t avoid my cluttered thinking. I felt guilty about the unfinished items on my to-do list, not the least of which was writing this blog. I fretted about the nearly finished short story that should really go out for the June 30^thsubmission deadlines. I wondered why I couldn’t bring myself to start the revision process of my novel. I knew needed to work, but doubted any of it mattered in the big picture. I felt bogged down and empty as if I wouldn’t be able to write again. And whenever I start thinking like that, I immediately start to question whether or not I should even be a writer. I begin to wonder if it’s too late to become an accountant.

I mentioned this to my husband.

“You don’t have a choice. You have to write. Stop trying to give yourself an out,” he said.

He likened it to how our relationship changed as soon as we stopped thinking divorce was an option. Instead of looking for a way out every time things got hard, we committed to work together in order to improve our marriage. Sometimes when things are bad between us, I question the wisdom of our pledge. But then we get through it and I can’t imagine life without him. There’s security in knowing we are both in it for the long haul.

And though I’ve often thought of the writing life as a type of marriage, I haven’t made the same long-haul-type commitment in my mind. I still want an out.

Writing is hard. You struggle with yourself to get it down on paper, only to have to rethink and revise it. And then once you’ve rewritten it to the best of your ability, you send it out into the world for the very likely possibility it will be criticized and/or rejected. Next thing you know you’re back at the computer revising it again. Why would anyone choose this?

And I think that’s the point. Writers don’t choose it. It’s a part of who we are.

My desk is part of a bigger problem. I’ve been wavering in my commitment to myself as a writer so I let my creative space become a catchall for clutter. It’s an attempt to bury the frustration and self-doubt that comes with being a writer. If I fill my life up with so much other stuff, I don’t have to go through the process. I can make the excuse of not having enough time or money or space to be the writer I was meant to be.  I can wallow in the statistics that it’s hard to be published and never really have to try.

I recently read “A Contract of One’s Own” in The Oprah Magazine.  Aimee Bender, the author of the article, writes about the power of writing every day. She shares how she has committed to a two-hours-a-day routine for the last 17 years. There is also an example of a time when she co-signed a writing contract with a friend. The contract was the friend’s commitment to write one hour a day for three months. The idea really intrigued me. I even went on-line and printed out a copy of the contract.

I decided that I would commit to two hours a day of creative writing (fiction or creative non-fiction). I had to specify the type of writing because otherwise I would use the time to work on one of my two blogs. And the first day out of the gate was very successful. I felt great about what I wrote and that’s just about the time that I started to feel panicked.  The papers began to pile up on my desk.

If I signed that paper, I would have to take responsibility for my writing life. I would have to write through the good times and through the bad. It was for better or for worse.

It took me a week to realize that writing contract and the clutter were connected.

If I make a commitment to writing and decide to give it the best that I got, there’s security in knowing that I will never be sorry for being who I was meant to be. So I cleaned off my desk and got back to work. The only thing I need now is a friend willing to hold me accountable by co-signing my contract.  Any takers?

Ready to write!