The Long and Short of it- by Debra Loughead

Not so very long ago, about six years or so, I had a notion to give up my writing career temporarily if not altogether. After four fulfilling decades of creating stories for young people as well as short stories and poetry for a wider audience, I felt as if I were aging out. As if I should step back and make room for newer, younger voices who, perhaps, had more to say than I did and could tell it better. (I’ve always been plagued by self-doubt, as so many writers are.)

I did so reluctantly, but also because my brain was tired and I thought I at least deserved a vacation from living inside a protagonist’s head twenty-four seven. Because it’s not just the sitting down and writing part. You have to live with your characters nonstop, waiting for them to make a move that you never expected as you travel along on their journey; they often wake you at night, and you scribble some notes about them, bleary-eyed by the light of your cell phone.

It’s a huge commitment to complete a novel, and a mix of elation and exhaustion.

So I did it. I took a five year hiatus from writing. During that time I had enough going on to keep me preoccupied. For one, I started a ‘vintage’ journey, since ‘old things’ have been my passion for almost as long as writing has. One of my very first published pieces appeared in the Toronto Star back in 1992 and it was, in fact, entitled ‘Old Things’. The essay was about the value of vintage, and how we should try to respect and cherish venerable pieces from the past that have led rich and functional preloved lives. I’ve always been a collector and conserver of ‘old things’, and wanted to take a step it further.

I started my new life chapter by collecting vintage bits and pieces, enjoyed scouring thrift and antique shops buying cool stuff, until ultimately I was drowning in a surplus of old things. That’s when it was time to pursue another dream of mine. I started an Etsy shop called Happy Old Glass. And I opened a vintage booth at a place called Arts Market in Toronto. I set up shop in a frigid January 2020…and well, who can ever forget what happened in March of that year. Everything was shut down and luckily the landlord ceased requiring rent payments for the many months of closing, reopening and closing again. But it all came back eventually and I continued on my vending adventure.

At first I revelled in the relief. It felt so liberating to be freed from that persistent and unabating surge of words and sentences pummeling your brain while you walk around in a constant daze having conversations with all the characters that have usurped your thoughts. 

But it wasn’t long before my resolve began to falter. Something was missing from my life, something deep and innate and, well, actually restorative. As much as I was able to feel good about my little shop’s motto of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’, a backlog of unwritten stories and burgeoning words was building up in my brain, practically begging to be unleashed. Although it was less of a burden without the ‘encumbrance’ of a story weighing on my mind and following me everywhere, I was missing the relationships I’d once committed to with the creation of a fictional someone who kept my imagination company all day.

A writer’s got to write, there’s no doubt about it. The pressing urge to commit words to a page is ever present. No matter what you’re doing to distract yourself, there’s always a niggling little voice in your head that keeps trying to lure you back to that chair in front of your computer screen. One that keeps whispering story ideas to your subconscious mind. One that keeps on prodding you, goading you, admonishing you for not even trying. The writing muse is like having a personal trainer living in your brain, constantly badgering you to do better.

So I finally gave in to that mercurial muse of mine because she just would not quit! I’ve closed up my Arts Market booth, but I’m hanging onto my Etsy shop for the time being because I have to try and sell some of the plethora of vintage merch I’ve accumulated over the past five years. Somewhere there’s a story in all this. I’m sure of it, and maybe someday I’ll get to it, since novels about antique hunters are all the rage. Yes, I’m back at my desk again, reviewing novel manuscripts both in progress and completed. And it’s such a relief to unburden myself of all those excess words that were beginning to clog up my brain. It’s almost given me a modicum of hope, as if my well-deserved brain vacation has helped to rekindle that flame.

I’ve always believed that writers never retire. It’s almost impossible, since our buzzing brains just won’t ever allow it. The muse seldom takes a holiday, even when we do!

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