The mid-life crisis of writing

I’ve been reflecting deeply on my writing career lately. The other day I joked that my writing path is having some kind of midlife crisis.

I am going through a ton of reconsideration and re-evaluation. I am also asking myself a lot of questions, and searching for a lot of clarity.

Where do I go from here? What’s next? What should be prioritizing as a writer?

And, perhaps most importantly: What exactly is it that I am supposed to be saying?

It’s not the first time I have circled around these questions, but it has been a good while since I’ve really gone deep with them.

I started taking my writing seriously when I was 19. At that time, I was interested in pursuing poetry and fiction, but I ended up building a path as a freelance journalist. When I was 21, I went back to school to pursue a diploma in the field.

I felt like it would be a good opportunity to find regular work as a writer.

And it was for a while. And then the internet changed everything.
Still, I was already transitioning into writing books by then. And when I started taking myself seriously as a poet, I had a lot of grand ideas.

I wanted to be a voice for experimentation. I wanted to write things that women aren’t “supposed to” write about. I wanted to push boundaries – especially my own.

And I think sometimes I did that. But other times I failed to break through, or to find my audience.

When I started my tarot business in 2015, I thought self-employment would bring me a lot of creative freedom. I greatly underestimated how much creative energy a business takes.

I also didn’t anticipate how my business would make me feel toward my writing. See, I thought my tarot work would support my art.

Instead, it made me question where I was putting my energy.

If you are measuring success by numbers and metrics and audience size – and I know these aren’t always the only metrics, but they are tangible – I am undoubtedly more successful as a tarot reader than I am as a writer.

My writing has not supported me financially in a very, very long time.

My tarot work has always supported, right from the beginning.
The audience for my books has also not grown, or responded, with the same kind of enthusiasm as it has for my tarot business.

These realities I have been sitting with for a long time. When my 2017 poetry collection, The Truth is Told Better This Way, was released, I thought I was putting out some of the best writing I’d ever done.

It was hard to watch that little book try to find its way in the world at a time when I was beginning to question whether anyone was really interested in my writing.

Should I just focus on what’s growing for me? I often wondered.

It’s hard to pour into a creative practice when it’s not getting a lot of validation.

And even though I have written books that had done something – some have been taught in university courses, some have been the first of their kind, some have been nominated for awards – it’s hard to keep going when your wins feel further and further in the past.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I’m not. I constantly remind myself, and other writers, how hard it is to get published, and how big of a deal it is to even finish writing a book in the first place.

But it’s not uncommon for artists to wonder, “What’s the point?”

Even though we love what we do, and are driven to create, it gets tiring. Especially when other areas of your life are pulling for your attention, or you’re experiencing success elsewhere.

And you start to wonder if you’re a fool, pursuing something that doesn’t seem to be working.

Would you pursue a relationship with someone who didn’t love you back?

Sometimes it has felt that way with me and my writing.

Yet the last couple of years have brought about a change within me. Having my vampire novel, The Mouth is a Coven, published set something into motion for me.

The book didn’t go off with a bang, but when it was picked up by a relatively new U.S. press, with a publisher unknown to me, say yes meant a lot.

It inspired me to write another horror novel. It inspired me to challenge myself to grow.

Similarly, having my poetry collection Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea published last year has also stoked a fire within me.

Again, I am asking myself: Where do I go from here?

I have had opportunities in the past that I have carelessly thrown away – that might be a story for another time.

I don’t want to keep casting my dreams aside.

At 43, I am not inspired by the same things I was when I was 19.

But I am still inspired, and that counts for something.

I am digging deep now to find what my writing means to me at this point in time.

I am also accepting that writing isn’t about reaching an endpoint and thinking you’ve made it.

I didn’t know that when I was younger, and it caused me to question whether what I had was “enough.”

One of the decisions I made earlier this year was to invest in myself as a writer again.

I am dedicating time every week, near daily, to my writing.

I am working on my fiction and my poetry, and I am finding mentors and teachers and communities that are helping me grow.

And I am asking myself what this means to me at this point in my life. Who am I know, and what do I want to say, and how can I re-centre and re-prioritize my art so that it becomes the focal point it should always be?

I have so much more I could say about this, but I will stop here for now. I wanted to share as I know it’s not always easy to keep creating, and it helps when we talk about the ups and downs this path can bring <3