To tell you the truth, I’m in a slump right now.
In fact, that might be a bit of an understatement. In the two and a half years I spent at my most recent full-time job, I came home so drained that I wrote almost no fiction at all. Since then, I’ve bounced back somewhat, but as often happens, I stalled out after the creative burst of October subsided. Between that and having an entire manuscript I don’t know how to fix, I’ve been pretty down for some time.
It’s more than just my writing. After quitting said job, I was able to find part-time work at a library, but nothing full-time ever panned out. Eventually, I was in such a tight spot that I ended up moving back to my hometown and leaning on the help of my family.
I won’t attempt to explain how frustrating that is for me. I’m an independent person, and not only did I leave my dream city and the sacred space of my apartment, it feels like I’ve lost so much of what I’d achieved. I feel numb most of the time, and days go by without feeling like myself.
However, giving in to despair has never gotten me anywhere good. So to renew my grasp on an “onward and upward” mentality, I want to share a recent moment of my fiction career that renewed my hope and sense of wonder, if only for a moment.
A couple of summers ago, my church held a day of casual TED-style talks where we could present for five minutes about anything we liked. It didn’t feel right to plug my book directly, but I wanted to share that side of myself in hopes of finding like-minded people and opening myself up to making friends. So I gave a talk about what readers could expect from my fiction, my interests and boundaries as a writer, and how my faith figures in.
I actually got the date of the talks wrong, so when my alarm went off while I was cooking dinner, alerting me that I only had about thirty minutes rather than a week to prepare, I panicked. I thought about bailing, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity. So instead I came up with my topic on the way to the car, propping up a notecard on the steering wheel to jot down my main points before turning the key in the ignition.
I made it in time, and it went surprisingly well. People had good questions, and a few even ordered my book. I felt seen.
Years went by, and I had all but forgotten that cool experience. I didn’t stay in touch with anyone from the talks, though I could recognize a few, and I once more faded into the background, unsure how to sustain connections with my community.
Then one day I was meeting with a woman from my church to find other ways to get involved, and our conversation happened upon that day. She had been another of the presenters (I think her topic was karaoke) and she remembered my presentation.
Her next words were what arrested me. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, who had also given an excellent presentation that day, had been struck by the notion that writing a book and publishing it was something you could just do. Ever since then, this woman had found bits of stories scribbled on loose leaf paper all over her house, written by her children.
Further, this teenage girl had always been friendly and outgoing, but she was having a tough time fitting in at her new high school. Some kids were mean to her, and she found refuge in spending hours devouring book after book of fiction. That was exactly what my friends and I did at her age! And now she was creating her own stories.
This conversation gave me a glimpse of the hopes that often seemed so far away, because it showed that even though I haven’t even broken even financially, I’ve already begun to accomplish two of my most treasured goals as a writer: to secure a refuge for people who can’t escape their current circumstances, and to hold out a light in the darkness.
I was touched that my writing had inspired this girl. I was floored that the mere example of writing my own fiction had somehow set her free. It reminded me that sometimes the moments of our lives that leave the greatest impact are the ones we don’t realize mean anything to anyone but ourselves. You may not even know the good that you’ve done, but I hope you get to glimpse it here and there.
In the trophy room of my heart, that conversation occupies a top shelf.
