Resistance

The daily battle of sitting down to work

Writers at Work: Poet Anne Sexton

Resistance is real. It may be invisible, but it can be felt, says Steven Pressfield in The War of Art. We experience it as “an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It's a repelling force. It's negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work,” he says.

This implacable, impersonal energetic force fueled by fear manifests in countless distractions and obstacles, some I create unconsciously and some everyone must deal with. Like doctor visits and cracked windshields and the fact it will take you hours on the phone to straighten out an insurance problem. I won’t mention the more daunting tasks of parenting and elder care.

I’m the queen of resistance. In fact, I’m writing this Substack post on resistance to avoid working on an article that needs my attention yesterday.

When it comes to sitting down to write, suddenly the kitchen needs cleaning, the laundry folded. Or I find myself scrolling and scrolling, my god, more scrolling, anything but sitting down to face the work. No matter how excited I am about it.

I resist writing, in part, because I know how obsessive I am. The minute I go deep and start writing that’s all I want to do to the exclusion of everything else. I’m irritated beyond belief when I’m interrupted. Hugo calls himself a “writer’s widower” because this is what happens. Even when I’m present with my family, my mind is on the piece I’m working on. I’m musing and reflecting.

I ponder endlessly about my work because I’ve learned the universe conspires to help me. I hear snippets here and there that open me up to insights. I read a passage in a book that resonates. I run into someone who knows someone whom I could interview.

The universe conspires to help me, but it also conspires to distract me. Endless errands, another trip to the grocery store, that shoe sale, someone who is sick and needs my attention. In my office, the dogs sleep at my feet when I’m writing, but they also go psycho when a squirrel scampers up the bird feeder outside my window and disrupt the quiet I need to focus. So many interruptions keep me from sitting down to work, and when I do, I toggle from barking dogs to email to going to retrieve the mail.

Daisy watching for the squirrel.

I know I can’t wait for inspiration. Writing is a daily practice I need to sustain that encourages the creative spirit to show up. Inspire literally means “in spirit.” But I also feel the rip tide pull of avoiding what I perceive as a hard, scary, challenging practice no matter how many times I engage in it. So I’m a master of self sabotage and attracting other people’s dramas to skirt my own responsibilities.

Kerry Madden, who recently published the middle grade novel Werewolf Hamlet, says she fritters aways hours by innocuous endeavors like a trip to the nursery Petals from the Past, walking on Vulcan Trail or sneaking another episode of “Younger” on Netflix. Lord, how can we forget how Netflix has crept into our lives and stolen hours away from our own stories and dramas?

My friend Patti Henry Callahan, whose most recent novel is The Story She Left Behind, says when she’s feels resistance, she knows to push her “Just do it button.” First, she determines if she really needs a breather or if she’s avoiding working. If she feels stuck, she reads poetry or a chapter from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act.

Another friend sees writing as catching a wave and finds the best time to do this is in the morning before the world clutters her thoughts. She also knows that dragging herself to the desk to force the matter doesn’t always work for her. Instead, the more contemplative practices of walking, watching the sunset and reading bring her into a place of receiving.

A desert sunset from one of my brother Billy’s hidey-hole locations where he lives during cooler weather.

This idea of attunement makes me think of Elizabeth Gilbert’s wonderful book, Big Magic, which explores the spiritual practice of being an artist. She believes ideas are an energetic force, just as resistance is.

“Ideas are a disembodied life-form. energetic life form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body but they do have consciousness and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human effort that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual,” she says.

But how we court our ideas and escort them into the world is different for all artists.

To spark another way of knowing and seeing the world, I’ve attended generative workshops like Ann Randolph’s Unmute, which means an hour of writing to each day for several weeks responding to different prompts. Kerry told me about 40 Days 40 Writes, which is another helpful way to “loosen the ligaments of the mind” as Virginia Woolf says. I find helpful writing tips and prompts from Meghan O’Rourke, Jeannine Ouelette’s Writing In the Dark, and Ariel Lawhorn’s fiction writing series on her Substack, I’m So Glad You Asked.

But when it comes to a consistent practice, I’m compelled to sit down and write because the not doing it becomes more uncomfortable than the inherent frustrations of grappling with and shaping my words on paper. The only cure for my low grade misery is to write. It’s like standing on the edge of a swimming pool afraid to jump in because I believe the water is too cold, but once you’ve taken the plunge and swim around for a minute, you wonder why the heck didn’t you take the plunge earlier.

The creative life is more than cranking out the work. It’s a spiritual path, and I don’t say that in some lofty, superior voice. I mean it’s an act of devotion and whatever and however we choose to create and align to the magic is different, but we all must battle procrastination and resistance—which plays for keeps and ramps up its energy closest to the finish line—daily. Every day, we have the power of this moment to change our destiny, but first we must make the conscious decision to attune and honor our creative life by doing the work, regardless of the endless excuses and distractions.