For the Writer Who is Not Currently Writing

Or the creative who is searching for the way out of darkness

We made our slow and bumpy way down in a pickup truck all the way to the terminal end of a nickel mine in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan. 3,000 feet of rock above us, then a layer of trees so beautiful in reds and yellows and lodgepole pine green it would make your heart ache. But we were under all of that, where one shiver of the earth could send it down on our heads, where one small fire could make the shaft impassable, the air unbreathable. Snuff us out.

Would the earth itself, the rock and the ore and the clay and the sand, even notice such a small compression? The subtle flattening, like an exhale?

You might think it would be utter darkness there at the bottom of all things, the kind of darkness where you could hold your hand out and move it around right in front of your eyes without seeing it, the kind of darkness rivaled only by death itself. How far down do you have to go to filter out all the noise of the world, every last tremor and ding and cell phone reminder? Every last terrible thing? All the way down to the edge of death, I suppose, and that’s where we were.

Except it wasn’t dark in the mine. There were little bits of light that shone a path all the way, whether it was the bobbing headlights of the truck we drove down in, or the approaching lights of the massive trucks bringing up the rock, or the pinpoint head lamps donned by miners making their way from here to there, or the ceiling lights illuminating signs labeling the bay we were at, or the level we were on. There were spotlights above the drilling machine prepped to make the holes that would clear the next twelve feet. Green strings of LED lights, easiest to see in smoke, showed the way to refuge chambers or 300-foot ladders that led up to the next level.

Even there, deep under the rock, there was light.

Let there be light.

* * * * *

Take a moment to reflect where you're going
Let reason guide you,
See old tracks take you out from the dark
See old tracks lead you up to the stars

May the life lead you out
May the life lead you out
May the life lead you out
May the life lead you out

- Jose Gonzalez, “Leaf Off / The Cave”

* * * * *

There is a deep dark we sometimes enter as writers, a hole in the ground we all end up in now and again: the place where we are not writing. It’s a terrifying place most of us avoid because we are afraid we will never emerge, never find our way out. It’s a maze down there.

Maile and I recently had one of our final coaching calls with a writer who took one of our classes this year, a conversation that reminded us once again how much we love fellow writers and encouraging them along the path. This particular writer bemoaned how work has been taking over her life, how other circumstances have left no space, how family demands are intense.

In short, she was sad that she had stopped writing. She wondered if she would ever finish writing the story she was working on.

Of course, there are as many ways out of this mine as there are people in it. We could have suggested she

work harder,

make a daily word-writing goal and stick with it,

grind,

put writing before everything else,

be a little harder on herself,

read more books about writing,

read more books that make her want to write,

get an accountability partner and workshop together.

And perhaps some of these would have worked, but I think sometimes, when our own headlamps have gone out, instead of wandering around in the dark and falling over things and hurting ourselves, sometimes, just sometimes, it might be a good idea to sit in the darkness and wait. And listen to the subtle shifting of the rock.

The way out might be nothing like what you expected.

It’s nothing to be afraid of, these quiet times of non-writing. Stopping for a season, contrary to what the voices say in our heads, doesn’t mean we’re not writers anymore or that we’ll never ever write again, that we’ll never finish anything, that we might as well give up. In fact, there are more ways out of the not-writing than we can even imagine: escape hatches and alternative exits and refuge chambers in case things get really dire.

There are, most importantly, the head lamps of others waiting to join us in the dark and help us walk back out again.

* * * * *

I lost track of where we were, down there in the mine. The truck had made so many turns, gone up and back down so many times, that my inner compass broke. I could barely tell up from down.

Fortunately, our guide knew where we were at and where we were going. And then, on our way out, circling and rising and turning and dipping and turning and rising again, the air thinned out and a fabulous, brilliant light pierced my eyes: the light of the exit, the gray sky like a sun on a dark horizon, and up we drove, and out into all that dazzling brilliance.