Editor’s note: the original version of this article was first published on the C2C in 2010.
When I finished the first draft of my novel, my first impulse was to dive right into revision. I had been on a roll for months and thought: “Hey? Why stop? I’ll just keep writing!”
But I couldn’t get myself to do it. I started to push myself harder, and keep writing, but then I caught myself. I was doing it again. I was demanding more than the situation called for. I wanted to fill in the empty space, before the empty space made itself known. You know what empty space I’m talking about, right? The empty space that comes between the end of one phase, and the beginning of another? That empty space.
I didn’t want to dwell in that empty space, so I tried to force my writing. But it was no use. I couldn’t move forward, no matter how hard I tried. So I let go. I let the novel go and now I’m dwelling in that empty space.
I’m starting to realize that my habit of trying desperately to fill in the empty spaces of life was learned from growing up in a culture that demands that its members fill in EVERY empty space in life.
For instance, if we are not busy talking to someone, we’re texting. If we’re not texting, we’re twittering. If we’re not twittering, we’re facebooking. If we’re not facebooking we’re watching TV, or listening to music, or surfing the web, or watching YouTube, or working, or exercising, or reading and if we’re not doing any of those, we try to frantically search for the next thing to do that will fill in the empty space in between one thing and the next.
We are desperate to fill in every silence, every piece of stillness, with something–something we deem more desirable, more worthy than that stillness. Something we think is more important and urgent than that damning quiet underneath everything–that damning quiet that always exists. That quiet that starts to drives us crazy when we first notice it, in those brief moments when we accidentally drop our guard, and all the clamor we worked so hard to create dies down.
It’s as if we are afraid that the empty space in between things is so large and so vast that it might swallow us up. Sallow us up into what, we don’t know, because we’ve already filled in the empty space we would have needed to think of an answer to that very question. Continue Reading »