When Bad Things Happen to Good Writers

Every morning I pray, “Dear Lord, let this be a writing day.” By that I mean a day without strife, without conflict or challenge. No dramas sneaking in while I’m distracted making tea. A good day, I pray, without the bad. I’m a writer; and when I pray “let this be a writing day,” I mean a day I’m left alone to write and be inspired.

Sometimes it happens. Sometimes the day is peaceful and calm but most of the time it defies me. I blame the distractions: unforeseen things that show up like gray hairs in the morning. Things like hovering colds or hot flashes or too much air conditioning when I have no sweater to turn to. I blame the bad, bad things that bully themselves into my life: my father’s death, my friend’s cancer, another friend’s broken heart by way of a cheating husband. All leave me stunned and running to console, the page forsaken.  

Take Yesterday (Please)

Yesterday was a good example of a bad day. I’m a writer with a day job, and the new office space they put us in is noisy and confining. Cubicle chaos. By 9:00 a.m. my head hurt with the effort of not listening to others’ chatter, their phone conversations and coffee-time talk buzzing around me like a swarm of bees.

During a break I’d been coveting for writing time, a coworker came to see me, distraught and in need. She’s suffering through a divorce and I am not one to deny my friend. We talked in depth, yet barely scratched the surface of her story, the same sad classic tale for so many including me once upon a time.

When she finally left she was feeling better. I was glad. But then I glanced at the clock, and my heart dropped. Break time was long over; and time had gone on without me, leaving me without a word.

After work I drove to the drycleaners, the same way I do every week because I fight change by getting in a rut and staying there. I reached to swing open the door and felt something swoop in and snag my hair, then was gone. What? The robin squawked from the roof’s ledge, poised to strike again; and I remembered. It’s springtime with babies in the nests. Mama bird got me one more time before I made it back to my car, laden with clothes and defenseless, oblivious that others had stopped to watch, mesmerized.

Exercise and Epiphanies

Tonight I was at my dance aerobics class, another cling-to routine. As I move to the music, mostly in sync with my middle-age classmates also trying to get it right, I thought about the good, the bad, and the ugly times. I think about my friend at work. She was probably setting the table for her and the kids, leaving an empty place where her love should have been. Why can’t it be Disney every day? Why do the villains always appear? Who wrote them in?

Celine Dion sang loudly and clearly through the speakers. As the instructor guided us through the familiar routine, I think about the stories I’ve written – my stories and those about others, personal essays about finding shining moments among the ashes.

It was then, during Celine’s crescendo that it hit me: My best stories have been about my worst days. Getting through them, getting over them, sometimes coming out the winner, but more often just lucky and unscathed – and yet there’s victory in that. No doubt my dramas are the dramas of many: work-a-day woes, birds gone wild, a circle of friends. No doubt others need to know what I learn everyday: that life is good, so good, even when bad.