How to not walk away from your chair

I’ve been a professional writer — meaning that I’ve earned some form of income from my writing — since I was 23 years old. That is 33 years already, and I still battle that timeless problem of wanting to get up out of my chair and go do something else approximately every five minutes!

Today is no exception!

I’ve been at my desk, doing the revisions on Cleveland’s Burning all morning. I am making strides with it, but I am still constantly getting up from my chair and wandering around the house. Why does writing still fill me with anxiety, even after all these years?

When I hit those patches in the script where it flows, then it’s great. But most of the time, I’m hitting patches that need to be re-thought, and re-thought really carefully. There is something in that thought process that brings everything to a screeching halt, making me automatically stop everything, even in mid-sentence, and get up from my chair and walk away.

Look out the window in the living room. Lots of snow out there.

Go into the kitchen and look out that window. Lots of snow out there, too.

Then back to the desk and sit down and try like heck to ignore the anxiety of creating.

When I was a lot younger, creating was always a really, really joyful thing. When did it become so anxiety-inducing? Actually, once I moved away from New York, it became anxiety-inducing. (I had originally thought that getting out of the city and settling someplace quieter was going to be so relaxing! Oddly enough, I was really, really wrong about that. For so many reasons that I won’t go into now. It’s sufficient to say, New York is simply in my blood.)

Well, on one of my many detours from the writing-on-the-page, I once again looked up properties for sale, or even for rent, in Dutchess County, NY; took a look at the price tags; took a look at what I had in the bank, and lo & behold, the reality of those two things created a really good incentive for staying put in my chair!

Okay! My lunch break is over. Going to get back at it on this snowy afternoon in the hinterlands. And it ain’t so bad in the hinterlands. I like it a whole lot better than back in the suburbs, that’s for sure!