How to Write While Rusty: A Guide to Working Amid The Tumult and After a Pause

I WENT TO WRITE SOMETHING the other day and discovered I was – uh-oh! – rusty. Really rusty. I write all the time, and I have published four books, but these days I write mostly for this blog or for my newsletter. As a teacher of online memoir classes, I write courses; as a memoir editor and coach, I write comments on others’ writing. But when I sat down to write a piece for mass-market publishing, I was rusty. No doubt about it.

So how do you write while rusty? I went back to my own material, and decided it was time to update – and follow – the five well-earned suggestions I give other writers.

The very phrase, “write while rusty,” suggests that one can push through it. And that is absolutely true, so let me start by telling you not to despair if you have been away from the keys for a while. Maybe you are caring for a sick relative or small children. Maybe you just moved to a new place. Perhaps you are simply having a hard the time amid the distractions of life, which are endless. Maybe you just have not felt like it, or are doing research, and it has gone well, but the writing part is now at hand and you are feeling the effects of the onset of all that rust.

Okay. Fine.

Let’s agree that writing rust takes its toll. But let’s also agree that we cannot succumb. Here are the five steps I just re-learned to combat writing rust.

First, Acknowledge the Problem of Writing Rust

The control over any problem begins with acknowledging you have one. We all know this. No one has ever corrected anything without first admitting that it needs to be corrected.

I recognized the signs of writing rust immediately, though, I must admit that it has been a long time since I had experienced it. What were those signs? Simply put: An abominable time writing a first draft.

Now, as you may remember, I refer to all first drafts as vomit drafts, suggesting I have very low standards for what my first drafts represent. Low as they are, though, I still have some notion of what a first draft should be. That is, it should contain much or all of what you’ve got to say – not beautifully, not poetically, and not really completely — but it should be a great big heave of the general territory you are planning to cover.

What I was experiencing was the inability to produce any such thing.

First, there was the difficulty just sticking in the chair. This piece was being written in the early weeks of our Covid-19 shut-in period – so the news was beckoning, other people were in the house full-time for the first time in years and, as I suddenly remembered, it and been while since I had tried to do this kind of writing.

So I began by saying aloud, “Wow, you are really distracted.” Having acknowledged my problem, what came next sounded like something I might say to the trusty writer’s dog always at my feet: “Now sit. And stay.” I obeyed.

Next, I reminded myself that a very bad vomit draft was all that was expected. That helped. And, as the name, “vomit draft,” suggests, that draft only needs to stink and be a big, sloppy mess with no real, discernible appeal (in this case, to anyone except you).

Ultimately, I got a lot of words on the page, but I was not particularly happy with what I read.

First of all, it was enormous, weighing in at double the size of the submissions guidelines. Filled with too many stories about too many different things, it had gone off on several really wild tangents that were connected to my argument only by my own, tired mind. Also, along the way to writing it, I had thrown myself into several research rabbit holes that each had taken their own amount of time, only to find that none of these offshoots were related to my topic at hand. I had spent half a day trying to make them fit – wasting precious time attempting to hammer a square peg into a round hole, and all that.

Huh, I thought, as I read it through the first time. What’s wrong with me?

That other voice that lives in my head – the editor – replied, That’s writing rust. And you’ve got it bad.

If you have read my work, you know I do not believe in writers’ block. Not a bit. Not for a second.

But I do believe in rust.

What distinguishes one from the other is that writers block, by virtue of its name, suggests that you cannot write, making it absurd from the start. Of course you can write. Stop believing in writers block and see what happens. It’s just an idea, after all. So drop it from the things you believe in. Rust, though, can be scraped off – so recognizing it includes the knowledge that writing is always possible. So, let’s scrape off the rust and write.

 Second, Scrape Off the Writing Rust

Writing rusty is harder than writing rust-free, and different tactics are needed.

Under the best conditions, I always try to start writing with gratitude – grateful, that is, that the thoughts and words are connecting. When writing rusty, I immediately lower my standards. Yup. You can almost hear the sound of the nosedive I take as I willingly accept anything that comes into my head. I figure it has had to drive through the hazard of rust, so if it shows up at all, I’m extra-special grateful. I’m willing-to-share-my-chocolate grateful. As soon as I began writing that lousy first draft and realized anything at all was coming out, I bowed my head with that special kind of gratitude saved for writing-rust writing.

Try it. And if anything shows up, my advice is to take it. Whatever else comes after? Take that too. Forget reading it on the page as you write. Just continue to bulk up. If a list of gibberish is all you get, take delivery on it with the full knowledge of experience that maybe, just maybe, there will be one shiny object there amid the pile of rubble that lands on the page.

At this point, writers, you are merely taking dictation. Take it, be grateful, and let ’er rip for a while. Accept that you are not really writing, but merely typing. And good for you, since typing beats shopping online every time.

Third, Build a Runway

 Whenever I experience writing rust, I think of those getaway movies placed in some tropical locale. You know the ones: Some couple must flee via the last plane out, and always, as they make it to airport, bringing with them only what they can carry, they find that the runway has been bombed or ravaged by a hurricane. Movies are famous for these plot twists. So is writing rust, where one delay begets another. And then, at least in the movie version, out of the palm fronds or old building slats someone builds just enough runway to let the plane take off.

And they do.

You need to do the same. You are sitting there amid the rubble of your own non-writing, or over-writing. Things look bad. But all you need – and no, it’s not to get more caffeine (are you kidding? Have you noticed that you are actually shaking?) or dark chocolate (ditto, the caffeine) or go tweeze something or rearrange your shoes – is to build a way out of this mess.

How? You’ve got it right there under your nose, there amid the stinking, seeping mess on your screen or on the page. Find it: the one thing in that vomit draft that works. Locate the single word or phrase that reads like a truth or an argument. It’s a declarative word or sentence; it’s something that gives a voice for what you know after what you’ve been through. Move it way up in the piece. And then give it some company.

Write to that one true thing. Put a sentence before it and one after it – something you can use to launch this piece. To learn to write while rusty you need to merely build that runway out.

Maybe what you found in that messy first draft is a word like “territory.” Maybe you thought you were writing a piece about how relentlessly hard it is to be a caregiver of someone who is old and ill and with whom you’ve had a long, uneven relationship.

And there is that word “territory,” beckoning you. Why? Because it’s declarative, interesting and very much revelatory of something you know. What do you think about that word? Do you believe that successful caregiving has something to do with territory? Is that what you are saying?

I was a caregiver for eight years for my father, and then for fifteen for my mother, whose early-onset Alzheimer’s immediately followed my father’s death from a terrible cancer. In my early years of caregiving I thought that caregiving was rushing in and doing everything until you are exhausted and hate everyone involved, including yourself. Happily, I learned a different definition. As I learned about it being territory, I progressed to thinking that successful caregiving is all about boundaries – knowing them, respecting them and letting others into your territory.

Fourth, Oil your Equipment

This kind of thinking is what I refer to as “oiling your equipment,” as you slide along that word “territory,” and see where else it leads. Here, the process begins to look very much like writing a first draft, no matter what the conditions, of course. Notice how my thinking went from territory to boundaries, now that I’ve got those years of caregiving behind me. That’s the kind of thinking that will liberate you from writing rust.

What would I have written while I was in the teeth of those caregiving years? That’s my first book and it neatly chronicles my failings that were eventually met with my awakening about the distance I needed to bring to the task. And that is where I learned the skill of writing rusty – because I wrote that book in real time, meaning while my mother sped from diagnosis to home care, to being placed in a nursing home at 56 years old. The stressors of that life made me rusty all the time and gave me the chance to develop these get-rid-of-rust skills.

Every time I’m rusty now, I do this kind of thinking, moving from word to phrase to concept. I call it “oiling my equipment.” The process moves more slowly than usual when you’re rusty, definitely, but it’s the same process. And this is when the familiar will help you most. You have done this before. It’s a simple gathering of wits. It’s just more creaky and a little slower than before. But go with that familiar feeling. “Oh,” you can say to yourself, “I’ve done this. I know what to do from here.” Yup, like riding a bike or casting a fly on a line, the skill is in your mind, heart and hands. The trick is to coax it out.

From that vomity first draft, you pluck the language to build yourself that runway, build it, oil your equipment and start your plan to add some words.

Fifth, Take Out the Ear Buds

Here is the hardest of the steps. You’ve got to remove those ear buds from your head. You know the ones: Those that are tuned to the voice of criticism that channels only your mother, your second grade teacher and/or your pretentious college writing prof (who never published). You know this voice – the one that is screaming in your head that these words are no damn good.

This time, the critics will be right. It won’t be much good. What I wrote was no damn good. Own it.

But then take out the ear buds. Silence the critic. And write.

In my own recent experience with writing rust I let myself do this: I saved all the crap. Yup. I made a separate file and, using the name I gave to the piece – a slug, as it’s called at newspapers – I made another file that will sit right after that in my writing folder. In my case, the original file was named “In Defense of Memoir” for the piece and its drafts. The file with the crap I cut from it is called “In Defense of Memoir Outs,” referring to anything I took out of that piece.

After I finished the piece and submitted it, I went though and read all those outs. The difference between what the piece is now about and what is in that outs folder is the difference between what’s on the shelf at a shoe store and what’s shelved in the produce aisle. Wow. I was really off track. But guess what? There, amid the stuff I took out, is another piece, entirely unconnected to the first, but a piece worth exploring.

So, from the rust, stuff. That’s my motto. I may get it translated into Latin and stitched onto a patch for a blazer. Or maybe I’ll needlepoint it onto something. Or, perhaps I’ll just chant it next time rust seizes me up: From the rust, stuff. Go get yours.

And write on.

Want more? Come take a class with me. They run all the time.

• Memoirama: The everything-you-need-to-get-started-writing-memoir class. Live, online memoir class with Q&A. 90 minutes. This is the class to get you started writing what you know.
• ​Memoirama 2: Book structure. Period. No one is born knowing how to structure a book and no book can exist without structure. Book structure was taught to me by four of the best editors in NY publishing for my four published books. This course gets your structure up and supporting your story. Two hours. Live. You and six other writers.
• ​How to Write Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live. Ninety minutes. Co-taught with a former Pulitzer Prize juror, newspaper editor, weekly newspaper columnist and host of a nationally syndicated public radio show. Get your voice our into the world.
• ​The Master Class: Open to those who are writing book-length memoir. Seven writers. Six months. Once a month. All live. Get your first draft written.

And don’t forget to listen to my podcast. It’s called QWERTY, and it’s by, for and about writers.

Photo by Thomas Kinto on Unsplash