Behind the Book

I have a friend who thinks The Shining movie is hilarious. She says she can’t watch it without laughing. Her favorite part is when Shelley Duvall finds the manuscript Jack Nicholson has been working on all winter, only to realize every page is the same sentence, typed over and over again. It’s a chilling moment in the movie as the character realizes the mental state of her husband.

But to my friend, it’s also a perfect punch line.

“It’s a whole movie about writer’s block,” she tells me. If the funniest things are supposed to be a little bit true, then yes, this is a hilarious moment. Because when you’re working on something as expansive as a book, there are a whole lot of moments when you stop seeing the work clearly, when you have no idea what you’re doing, when you’re pretty sure all those great ideas you had before you started were actually garbage.

There are moments in which you might not be that surprised to look down and realize you’ve written All work and no play two billion times. There are times when your whole apartment can start to feel vaguely haunted, like the viny wallpaper in the hallway is a manifestation of the plot tangles you can’t seem to work through, and it’s coming to life, slowly tightening around you.

And there is a kind of twisted humor to the idea that maybe this whole horror movie really is just about how lonely, confusing, and maddening writing a book can be.

When friends ask me what Beach Read is about, I tell them it’s about a disillusioned romance author and a literary fiction writer who make a deal to swap genres for the summer. When other writers ask me what Beach Read is about, I tell them it’s about writer’s block.

The summer I wrote Beach Read, I was feeling absolutely sapped of energy and inspiration. I felt like I had nothing left to say, no new characters drifting around my brain, no story I was desperate to tell. And yet, the sudden change to warm weather had me itching to write.

Every season this happens. The way the smells and colors of nature transform, the way the air itself feels a little different always makes me want to create.

I tried Netflix bingeing. I tried sinking into some fizzy, light, summery reading. Tried talking myself into doing some yoga, or walking the dog. I did a lot of unproductive pacing, and some lying in various positions on the floor.

But all I wanted to do was work.

Which wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d had an idea for a book.

No matter how I strained my mind, brainstormed, Googled stupid things like “what should I write about,” I couldn’t find a single kernel of inspiration.

And so obviously the only thing I could write about was not being able to write. It didn’t sound like a good idea to me. It definitely didn’t sound like something that would turn into a real book. But it was all I had.

So I started writing about an author with writer’s block. And I thought back to every time I was stuck, every season when the words just wouldn’t come out and the plots wouldn’t untangle themselves, and I thought about all the different reasons we get stuck, creatively and otherwise.

The things that come up in life that make it very hard to do the things we care about. The crises that make us question whether we really do care about those things, or if it’s okay to still care about them when the whole world seems to be falling apart around us.

I interrogated my writer’s block. I asked how it connected to all the other parts of my life. And the ways in which it seemed dissonant from the rest of my life.

And the more curious I became, the more inspiration found its way to me. January grew far outside of me, until she was a full, real character. A thorny, messy, heartbroken woman with a lush, meaningful story.

She became a romance writer, which, at the time, I didn’t consider myself to be. My questions shifted: What would make it hard for her to write? What would have to happen to make her doubt she could ever write again? How is her writer’s block connected to what’s going on in the rest of her life? What would it take to make her fight for herself and what she wants again?

Sometimes we lose the ability to create simply because we’re tired. We need to rest and recover. But other times, we can’t move forward because there are hard questions we have to ask first. Hurdles in our path we first have to jump or walls that need breaking down—interrogations demanding to be made.

And when we’re brave enough to do so, we can make something beautiful. Something we didn’t know we were capable of before we began.

So yes, sometimes making art is a horror story.

But other times, you fall head over heels in love.

Either way, you’ll probably laugh.