How to Keep Writing When You’re Grieving
Author Kate Clark Stone shares some options on how to keep writing when you’re grieving (that may or may not be from personal experience).
Of the many bizarre things I did after my dad died suddenly, possibly the most ridiculous was Google, “How to keep writing after death of parent.” I was desperate for some way to make sense of what had happened. I wanted to work. I needed to get lost in the work. At a time when everything felt out of my control, I craved the comfort of the page.
The problem was that I couldn’t write.
Each time I tried to put my pen to the page, my mind seized and suddenly I couldn’t form a single word. I would have a profound (to me) thought about grief or my beloved dad or how terrible our society is at loss, and think, I should write this down. But when I tried to write, my brain turned as blank as the page before me.
The search results for advice for grieving writers were overwhelmingly not helpful. Most articles I found encouraged writers to document, to write it all down, to catalogue my feelings, to create a moment-by-moment record of my agony. The general advice was to “find control” through writing.
But as anyone who has lost a loved one knows, there is no control. There is no quick fix to grief. And for me, there was no rapid way back into writing. Eventually, I found my way back to the page, but it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fast. I lurched forward, with trial and error and the only true healer: time.
Here are a few things that held me close to the work of creative writing during the worst time in my life:
- Engage with art. Any art. Pot some plants, watch a new-to-you movie, crochet, go to a museum and cry while looking at century old pottery (ask me how I know). Observe, read, or touch anything that keeps your mind absorbing creativity, even if it isn’t your own. I didn’t know I was subliminally doing this, but in retrospect my heart and mind were searching for creative input even if I wasn’t capable of creative output.
- Read. Any genre, any time. Maybe a particular formula works for you—cozy mysteries, thriller, romance, something predictable or something outside your usual preference. I found myself fearing surprises or twists, but took comfort in formulaic genre novels. I remember very little of what I read in 2023, but I kept reading and that simple act kept me from feeling 100% disconnected from writing. When writers can’t write, we can read.
- Meditative activities, especially ones that feel comforting or expansive. For me, it was going to the car wash. My dad was a car guy, and washing my car felt a little bit like visiting with him, but also required nothing of me. After a while, I noticed that I was thinking writing thoughts while vacuuming floor mats or wiping off excess water. Eventually, I left a notebook on my passenger seat and started jotting those thoughts down.
- Move your body. I know, I know. But little windy walks and yoga in the dark basement did something beneficial for my nervous system. By moving my body, I could get out of my mind and have a moment to catch my breath in between crying and overthinking. That’s perhaps an overall grief tip, but walking is a solid activity for all writers so just keep walking.
- The one way I could write was in morning pages, a.k.a. stream of consciousness journaling. Some days I wrote, over and over, “I hate this, I don’t know what to say, I want my dad back.” Somedays I wrote line after self-indulgent line about my sadness. Mostly, I planned out my day and raged about the unfairness of it all. I was going through the motions of writing, and I was certainly not creating anything worth sharing. But journaling physically kept my hand on a pen and on the page. All that mattered was the motion. It’s a great way to keep “writing” without the pressure to create anything specific.
- Editing existing work might feel better than producing new writing. Looking at old documents and not having to create new material, but digging into past thoughts and words might feel doable. Nerd out over a word choice or a comma, maybe even cry over an abiding love for em dashes (again, ask me how I know).
- Do not force writing. Do not feel guilt over not writing. Do not think that you need to document your feelings and actions so that you can later mine your scribbles for material (I read too many articles that encouraged this. You do not need to document your grief unless that feels right and good to you!). For me, documenting the moments of loss was impossible, even today. Not everything has to be memorialized in writing.
You will write again. You will possibly even write your best work. When I finally returned to the novel I’d been writing when my dad died—coincidentally, a book that heavily features a woman and her beloved father—I was able to enhance the father-daughter relationship with a richness that wasn’t in the story before. It felt like the final gift from my dad.
One day, words will return and you will put them on paper. One day, it will even feel right again. Until then, take care of your broken heart. The writing will always be there. You are a writer, and you will write again.
Check out Kathryn Clark Stone's The Last Sunday in May here:
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