Why We Write by Meredith Maran

Author:Meredith Maran [Maran, Meredith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101602829
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

I got sober twenty years ago. I wrote my first two books of poetry while I was still drinking. I revised the second one in the loony bin.

I knew I was going to die if I didn’t stop drinking. I didn’t know how, exactly, but I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. I didn’t write at all for the first fifteen months I was sober. I couldn’t concentrate. Every time I sat down I’d start crying. My mind was too agonizing a place to sit in. It was the struggle not to drink, and also, a lot of feelings came up that I’d been running away from. You know the only way out of those feelings is through them, but you don’t have the skill set to get through them. It’s trial by fire. People who get sober show more faith than any saint. We step off the cliff into an abyss. It’s really dark.

When I went into a mental institution after I stopped drinking, my writing took a great leap forward—or at least people started paying a lot more for it. I was more clear and more openhearted, more self-aware, more suspicious of my own motives. I was more of a grown-up.

I had a spiritual director who was also sober who said to me, “You’ve tried antidepressants. You’ve tried psychotherapy. You’ve tried LSD, cocaine, drinking your brains out. What if the solution to all of your problems was to develop a spiritual practice, and you’ve never tried it?”

It was seven or eight years after that when I converted to Catholicism. Since then I’ve been a lot less depressed, a lot less self-centered, believe it or not—as someone who writes memoirs, how dare I say that, but it’s true. I’m a lot less worried about my ego, which makes me a better writer.

The myth of the rich and famous author

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