Dealing with the Past

Recently, as I returned from a business trip out of town and settled into a grueling schedule of physical therapy to try to regain full use of my right hand, I received word that my father had died unexpectedly. I had two books to write, as well as freelance assignments to complete. I had a book tour to schedule. But suddenly, I was dead in the water, spending my days in my pajamas and managing only to keep up the intensive physical therapy, primarily because someone was waiting for me with the meter ticking.

My father and I had been estranged for many years. He had problems with alcohol, gambling, women, and violence. He made my childhood a hell in many ways. He also taught me to read and write at a very young age, turned me on to Shakespeare and Dickens before I started school, taught me that all people had a right to be treated equally, and encouraged me to write from my first poem written before kindergarten. Much of the good I am as a person today is due to his influence. Many of the problems I’ve dealt with through the years are due to the emotional and physical damage he caused me.

Suddenly, all these conflicting memories and emotions from the past were colliding inside me, as I dealt with the legal and logistical aspects that a death in the family always brings. My books, my list of tasks that had to be done, all of these were going nowhere.  A dead man had reached from the past to grab me by the throat and insist I deal with all of this right now.

These kinds of events and issues are the bane of the writer. We may be able to keep going through illness and injury, but the emotional whammy of the severe illness or death of some family member can throw us right off the tracks. It’s that combination of present worry or grief combined with past issues of emotional intensity that can make it impossible to write or do much of anything else.

The only way I know to deal with it is to keep trying, to keep going through the motions, and one day the emotional pressure releases just enough to get a page or two down. That’s the beginning, and it gets better from there. I’ve lived long enough, gone through this process enough, to know this and to just keep trying in despair and barrenness. The work can see you through anything—even if it looks like the work is not being done—as long as you are sitting down to do it.

Neil Gaiman has famously said, "When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician — make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor — make good art. IRS on your trail — make good art. Cat exploded — make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before — make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and that doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: Make good art. Make it on the bad days, make it on the good days, too."

And, as usual, Neil is right.