The devil I know

Last week I was in a frenzy to prepare a sermon, create a course outline, and arrange an interview. This week I don't even feel like opening a doc file. Someone once described me as a "rabbit driving stick shift." I'm either racing ahead or lurching to a stop and hiding in the grass. I used to think I was crazy; I've realized, no: I'm just a writer!

I've begun reading famous writers' thoughts on their careers. (Why didn't I do this sooner?) It's so good to know, for example, that Annie Dillard writes one page a day and says that's success. Or that she sees the thought that her work in progress is terrible or the thought that it is wonderful as mosquitoes to be swatted. But the biggest revelation came about the writing life came from Kathleen Norris:

"I am both an extrovert and an introvert, energized by other people, even crowds of people, but also content to keep to myself for days on end...My energy levels are set on high or low: I can happily juggle any number of activities or do very little. At my most sluggish, I experience a mild agoraphobia, which makes it hard for me to meet outside obligations, even to shop for bread or a quart of milk."

Oh boy, does that ever sound familiar! I'm not sure if writing attracts extremists, or drives sane people to extremes, but there you have it: they go together like long ears and cottontails. It makes sense: you go from the stress of the deadline to the exhaustion that follows, from the elation of being published to worrying whether you'll ever have another story idea as good as the last one. Write and cut, write and lose to a computer crash. One page forward, ten pages back. Up. Down. Up.

"Were I to approach an abba or amma asking for a 'word' to help me cope with the assaults of acedia [despair] on my soul," writes Norris, "I would likely be reminded that if I am especially susceptible to acedia, it is because I harbor within myself the virtue of zeal. That comes as a relief. It helps explain the extremism that lies beneath my more or less sane facade."

There's something freeing about making peace with your internal yo-yo. On the other hand, God may have something slightly less jerky in mind for my life:

Norris says, "One of my mantras is a plea from Psalm 51: 'Put a steadfast spirit within me.' I pray it, but I must admit that I don't always mean it. Would a more steadfast spirit deaden me somehow, or dampen the writer in me? This up-and-down, unsteadfast person is who I am; this is the devil I know."

We prefer the devil we know to the one we don't. But, when you think about it, there's only one of him; both devils are the same guy, and I prefer door number three. I've had the same fear of dampening the writer in me, but like Norris, I have to say a steadfast spirit sounds really good.

"To Edmund Bergler, the twentieth-century analyst who coined the term 'writer's block,' and once remarked that he had 'never seen a "normal'' writer,'" Norris says, "I can honestly reply: That's all right. I am not certain I have ever seen a 'normal' psychoanalyst."

I have no idea what sort of transmission their inner animal drives...but I'll bet the upholstery is nicer.

(Photo: Rabbit in the Dryer by Tim Moore)