During Pride Month I going to post some comments on writing that I've collected over the years from queer writers. Happy Pride, everybody!
The great nonbinary comic book and TV writer Grant Morrison has started a great newsletter called Xanaduum. Whether you know their work on Batman, Superman, Doom Patrol, The Invisibles, The X-Men and a hundred other things or not, they have insights worth filing away.
In a recent newsletter they talked about struggling to get an issue of Green Lantern done while dealing with a the loss of a pet. At some point they were just completely stuck and the deadline was now.
And here's what they said they do in that situation:
In rare situations like these, my go-to strategy is to remind myself that the monthly issue I’m trying to finish will be published regardless. In the future it’s already on the stands, it’s already being reviewed, and all I need to do is play my part in assuring that inevitability. Then I figure out how a last-minute save might go. Usually this leads to me doing something, anything that feels right even if it seems ridiculous. It becomes a case of ‘what would I personally want to read if I’d paid for this thing?’
That last line is advice that's pretty familiar. But for me the bigger insight is that idea of accepting that this thing that you can't seem to figure out how to do right now is in some slightly future moment in time already done. It not only short circuits the drama of the moment, it sort of removes me from the equation. My personal anxieties or sense of my shortcomings are eased by the knowledge that this does in fact get done, that in fact it's already happened.
For me that is a hugely reassuring idea. It helps me get out of my own way. Something you might try the next time you're stuck...
