It’s said that you don’t forget how to ride a bike. It’s a somewhat true statement. If you have ridden a bike in the past and decide to start riding again, you have a slight advantage over the person who has never ridden one. Then again, maybe you don’t have an advantage. You rode in the past, but your final ride was horrific. You had to stop riding, not because you chose to, but because you were physically incapable of riding due to an injury. For you, the challenge is not in the pedaling but in the images and memories that fill your mind.
Regardless, you get the bike. You start over again. You wobble a bit. You feel the unsteadiness of finding your balance. You tell yourself not to look at the ground – a lesson that was engrained during your first experience with riding but now requires actual thought and consideration. It takes a few goes on the bike, but you eventually ride like you once did.
Or another example –
If you learn a particular dance and study it for some time, you’re unlikely to forget its basics. Even so, if you quit dancing for a while and go back to it, you have to start over again. You’ve accumulated the rust of not dancing. Your muscles retain some memory, but it has to be coaxed from them. You have to go back to counting the steps until the rhythms become familiar to you. You have to work on the turns. You have to remember how to follow or lead.
If both examples sound a bit like the writing life, it’s because they are. The writing life – the creative life – is one of starting over and over again. Every time the writer faces the blank page, no matter how long or short the break from it, it’s like facing it for the first time. She fights to get words on the page, but she refuses to quit. She exercises self-discipline. She sits in the chair and writes the words until she finds her rhythm and balance again.
Image: Moyan Brenn (Creative Commons)