The Lull

I just got a letter from a writer friend of mine asking how I deal with "The Lull." The Lull is when you've finished one project and you have absolutely no interest in writing anything ever again. You know that you need to get back in the saddle and just do it because that's what writers do. Yet you're suddenly like the worst kind of couch potato. And you feel guilty about it, which couch potatoes do not!

The Lull always fills me with a kind of anxiety. My identity is so wrapped up in writing that if I don't have a project I'm writing or brainstorming I feel like a slug. I also start worrying that maybe I don't want to be a writer any more, that maybe I'm done before I've even achieved what I've always wanted.

I've gotten a little more relaxed about it these days. I have accepted that I will never lose that ambition -- if I were, it would have happened already! But I always have to have something I'm brainstorming about. It gives me hope that not only will I write again, but that I'll want to write again. So the way I get through the lull is to know that it's all part of the ebb and flow of the creative process. As a participant in that process, I just need to keep an eye on the surf so I can catch those waves!