Image by Gerhard Gellinger from Pixabay ​

​As a creative writing professor, one of the things I often see students struggling with is making the transition from using writing as an escape from the world's trappings to allowing writing to become the bread and butter of their lives. Many people still live under the mistaken impression that creatives must starve for lack of career opportunities, but there are so many avenues to make a great, creative living. The big things that can stop a creative career from happening have more to do with what goes on inside the artist than what's available in the world. This transition from hobby writing to professional writing is both a doorway and an obstacle to a creative career. 

Most school programs don't build in much information about how to navigate this, so I thought I'd share the most recent version of what I tell my students when they come to the place where the pressure is greater than the joy.

There's something wonderful and terrible about going to school for the creative thing you love. More so in making a profession out of it. 

The wonderful is that you can completely immerse yourself in the work that matters most to you, develop your ability to make that work more authentic and of greater quality, and build a community of people who care about pursuing their craft.

The terrible thing is that suddenly this creative play that has always been a way of escaping the drudgery of life is now the drudgery. It is the stuff you must do, not just the stuff you choose to do. In school, it's the stuff you must do for grades. In career, it's the stuff you must do so you can eat and keep the lights on. 

One of the hardest things about going to school for writing or any art is that for the first time you must find the balance between these two. 

Sometimes you're going to turn in work that isn't your best. In a deadline-driven world, that will always be true. But one of the best ways to get your work closer to your best is to find a way to have fun with it, even when it's required. 

Art is rebellious and personal and universal and wondrous and scary all at once. When you're finding yourself under enough pressure that it stops being fun, notice, give that a nod, and look for ways that you may be able to let some of the adventure back in. I recommend artist's dates (see Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way) and rebellion. By rebellion, I don't mean jumping in a tie fighter or heading off to the Hunger Games. I mean look for something else that you can safely put off in order to have a little fun, something that is not your writing. Maybe it's laundry day. Take yourself to a coffee shop and write instead. Live with the pressure of not having clean underwear for a couple days instead of the pressure of not having freedom to write spontaneously, when you want to. 
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Or look for an idea in the world that drives you mad because people seem to think this is how reality works, but it's not - write a bit that rebels against their misconception. This can be satire, fiction, whatever. Just something that gives you that subversive satisfaction that you're doing something you're not supposed to. 
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Of course, that has to be balanced, too, because walking around in dirty clothes for too long has its own bad consequences, but you see what I mean. 
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Look for ways to keep writing an adventure, or you'll grow to hate it. It gets easier to maintain the balance the more practice you have, but we all need to refresh our sense of wonder now and then.

When I was twelve years old, I watched Robin Williams wake up the questions that lead students to become owners of their own choices as Professor Keating in Dead Poets Society. I knew then that I was a teacher.

I'd been writing stories and making art since I was old enough to do either, so those just felt like parts of me: My eyes are blue, I have a slight bump at the bridge of my nose, I write stories, make art, and love cheesecake - personality traits. They were not something I suddenly discovered, but something that naturally grew from how I existed.

Teaching felt like a calling.

I started keeping notes in class - not just information for the test, but how my teachers delivered that information. What teaching techniques worked best? When did the whole class pay attention? When did they fall asleep? I did this all through high school. I started teaching preschool over the summer when I was 17, began working with children with autism when I was in college, led art workshops and youth groups and anything else I could that gave me a chance to build and deliver curriculum, to wake up the questions, to help people see how to own their own choices. Eventually I got certified, and began teaching in traditional classrooms and college classrooms.

Robin Williams died last year, the month my very last school year started. I let my teaching certificates - all four of them - expire in June. I was 38 years old. While I always wrote and painted, because my eyes are still blue and I still like cheesecake, teaching was the only outwardly-focused component to my career. I spent 26 years cultivating myself as an educator. The public school system, even the public university system, doesn't want us to wake up questions anymore. They don't want educators. They want trainers.

I still teach, and I still love it, but it is now in the corners of my life: a 6-week module with once-a-week meetings, a few evenings  of private lessons, a writing conference. I have found a great fit for myself at HD Counseling because people come there with questions already on their minds.

I love the same three things I've always loved: writing, painting, teaching. But now I do them in different proportions. And I have felt a little empty. A little numb.

I've finally admitted to myself that I am grieving. You don't spend a quarter of a century pouring yourself into something and walk away from it unaffected.

I've done this before. From 1999-2005, I had a mural business (in addition to teaching). I was in an accident, and in 2005 I closed my business because I couldn't carry ladders or paint for 8 hour days anymore. I learned to draw with my left hand, and am now ambidextrous in art making so I can give myself some relief. I can paint every day again, but not for 8 hours like I once did. There is a peace in this, but I spent two years grieving before I found this peace. After loosing that business, I turned inward and wrote. From 2005-2007, I wrote the novel that would eventually make me decide to go to grad school to become a better writer.

Thursday, we went to Universal Studios to celebrate my husband's birthday, and we walked around Diagon Alley and Hogsmead. And I thought, what must it be like for J.K. Rowling to walk around there, physically moving through a world that didn't exist until she wrote it into being, now a place she can touch and smell? Yesterday my daughter and I joined some friends and watched the last Mockingjay movie. It's good, but, unlike the other films, not as good as the book. So tonight I reread most of the third book.

Something is waking up in me. I've been writing all this time, and painting all this time. Not all of me left the classroom because I lost the fight. Part of me left teaching to be able to focus more on painting and writing. And with these two visits to worlds that authors created, I am remembering what has always been there when the rest of my world falls apart: the writing. I've been going through the motions, like you do when you're numb, but today, I've been feeling like it's me here instead of my ghost.



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