“Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”
It’s a mantra as old as time itself, and, until recently, I never really gave it much thought. Maybe that’s because I rarely ever got what I wanted anyway. That’s not to say I was constantly unhappy; I just learned not to desire things. Everything became a treat rather than a given. Lots of things that you might think of as normal, I regard as rewards. So when I recently encountered some personal and professional challenges, I assumed I’d respond in the same way I always had — by shrugging my shoulders and moving on.
When it comes to writing, I’ve been off-the-grid for a lot longer than I’d like. Stress doesn’t impact my creativity, but it takes a major toll on my ability to actually write. It’s an incredibly frustrating duality, as it means I am greatly and consistently inspired until I pick up the pen. I’ve lost track of how many times I sat at this computer, prepared to write the next Substack essay, and closed the laptop after staring at the blinking cursor for twenty minutes. Best case scenario, I’d write half of an essay before hating it, questioning why I thought it would be a good subject to delve into, and closing the document.
Without getting into the details, a project that I’d been working on for five years has been beaten to production by another playwright working on the exact same subject. A more renowned and accomplished playwright with more resources and fewer obstacles managed to bring my idea to life before I got out of the starting blocks. Ask any experienced writer and they’ll tell you this isn’t a rare occurrence, whether it’s books, movies, TV shows, or plays. The first screenplay I ever sold was beaten to the finish line by an Oscar-nominated actor’s production company. My first finished manuscript was continuously rejected when a bestselling author had a similar plot foundation in their upcoming project. Inspiration may not have a timeline, but the world of production does.
You snooze, you lose. And I was fast asleep for far too long.
I wish I could blame my creative lull on this setback, but I’d been struggling for weeks before I got the news. If anything, it was the cherry on top of an unpalatable sundae of personal and professional circumstances. I was (and am) in the midst of a reckoning about who I am, who I want to become, and how I want to get there. It feels akin to standing on the remnants of a destroyed building and wondering if there’s anything worth salvaging from the rubble.
In a recent discussion with my therapist, I compared the experience to slash-and-burn agriculture — the practice of burning wooded areas and plant life for the purpose of leaving a layer of ash which would enrich the soil in the coming seasons. Farmers destroy something so that they might one day grow something in more abundance. Vibrant crops will one day rise from those ashes.
As I ponder my life, another old adage comes to mind: you must “tend to your own garden first.” While the quote is attributed to Voltaire, people often leave out the rest of his statement. The full phrase includes some helpful context.
“Cultivate your own garden; this is the place where your heart is. But don’t neglect the wider world. It, too, needs your attention.”
For all of the focus I’ve placed on being prepared for the things I want, whether they be career opportunities, relationships, or anything else, I hadn’t realized how much time I’ve spent staring at barren soil. It doesn’t feel like a midlife crisis; more like a midlife reflection. At some point, you recognize that your life hasn’t turned out like you’d planned or hoped it would. It’s easy to read that statement under a negative light, but I think that’s reductive. Some things have turned out much better than I would’ve imagined. An easy one to think of is that I didn’t think I’d live this long. Long enough to be a father to an amazing son or see any of my dreams come true. Long enough to discover a passion for theatre and storytelling. Long enough to travel the world and meet so many amazing people throughout this journey. Long enough to fall in love again and finally learn how it feels to not only tend to my own garden, but sow the soil of a brand new one. After years of tilling the soil alone, there is a lot to learn from working the land with someone else. She is bold enough to challenge me to challenge myself. In this considerably difficult phase of my life, it might be easier to stop everything and focus on manageable goals instead of dreams that feel increasingly far-fetched. But she won’t let me. And more critically, she reminds me of the version of myself that wouldn’t dare to even consider stopping.
So I sit with the discomfort of my mind being disconnected from my hands and my words being disconnected from existence. I’m taking the advice I’ve given to writers for years: when you’re struggling to write, write about the struggle.
It’s difficult enough to be in the middle of writing a daring story, and feeling inspired to outline my next novel, while finally putting my first manuscript through developmental edits. Adding self-doubt and imposter syndrome to the mix only makes things worse. I’m not having a hard time with what to write. I’m questioning whether I’m capable of writing anything good. I’m questioning the reality of all the feedback I’ve ever gotten, and whether I have fans or enablers of the delusion that I might make something worthwhile on a larger scale one day. A more grounded version of myself is wondering if it even matters. Maybe my mistake is that I’m focused on writing something good instead of something people will read or watch or pay attention to. I’ve spent a lot more time wondering whether I should succumb to mass market appeal and write something with a title like A (blank) of (blank) and (blank). Or maintain the status quo for Black creatives and write about race in the same way everyone else does.
Then my agent asked me a question so startling, it was almost offensive: “What’s the one word you’d never want anyone to use when describing your style of storytelling?” The question was reasonable. I was offended because she already knew the answer, and was hitting me with an Uno Reverse card. There is only one word that’s so deeply annoying to me that if I ever saw it in a review of my work, I might hang up my pen for good, or at the very least, spend a long time reevaluating my career.
Safe.
Amid my doubts of how to proceed with my writing, I almost cowered to the demons that have followed me since I first picked up a pen. The one thing you aren’t “supposed” to do is forge your own path. That advice is often given but rarely followed and even less likely to be encouraged by the powers that control whether your story will reach the world. No one wants new; they want remastered versions of the old. They want to sell what they know people will buy. They want the predictable. And if there’s one thing my life has never been, it’s predictable. Why should my stories be any different?
I’ve been tilling the soil of this garden for many years. And in that time, it’s been overrun by the weeds and pests of self-doubt, low self-worth, and distraction from the core mission that started this journey. But there is something worth saving from this land. It was beautiful once, and can be again.
But first, I need to burn it all down.
