There seems to be a single answer to every predicament in which a writer might find herself; reached an impasse in your manuscript? Start something new. Need a distraction when you’re out on sub? Start something new. In a lull after your project sold? Oh, here’s an idea; start. something. new. 

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Yet as each of those occasions arrived, I did no such thing. For the past decade, rather than splinter my attention, accumulating second and third manuscripts in a drawer somewhere, I’ve had eyes for only one. That book hits shelves this week and given the many moments of stillness throughout the process of writing, querying, submitting, rewriting, tweaking and revising, it strikes me now as quite remarkable that I’ve managed to permanently avoid starting something new.

Each time I refused to redirect my gaze, I gained a greater understanding of my commitment, my tenacity, the wholeness of my belief in what this story should be.

I’m certainly aware of the advantages of being a writer with a drawer full of projects. More manuscripts mean improved odds for publication, to say nothing of the allure of distraction; when you’re stuck or bored or striking out, what could be more illuminating or productive than redirecting your attention, dazzling your brain with an entirely new set of words and ideas. I have a screenwriter friend whose head is full of such abundance. She concocts story after story, and then, perhaps even more impressively, actually writes them into existence. When we exchange updates on our work I have to qualify my questions, saying things like, “what’s happening with the one about…” and “which actress is reading the one where…” I have such deep admiration for her and for everyone whose drawers are stuffed with pages; mine contain stray batteries and Forever stamps.

I was told in a lecture once that the quality distinguishing a writer from an editor was that a writer couldn’t help but write. Putting pen to paper was a fact of existence, a matter of necessity. Who among us had a little pad on our nightstand, a stack of swollen notebooks beneath our bed, pages puffy with scrawl? The distinction has lived rent free in my mind ever since, just the lifetime supply of fuel my imposter syndrome needed.

Because the truth is that for ten whole years my writing has consisted of a solitary project. An infertility memoir-in-essays that I wrote and rewrote, revised and re-revised, queried and submitted, tore apart and reconstructed. Even when I had crossed every nonfiction agent, every Big Five and university press and indie publisher off my list, my inclination was not to shove my manuscript into a drawer, to arc my mind toward the gleam of a blank page, the promise of a fresh idea. It was to begin an application to an MFA program, where I would keep chipping away, adapting and reimagining and improving my existing work until it became the book I believed it should be.

That single-minded obsessiveness, oddly enough, is at the heart of the story I was trying to tell. When infertility came for me, my response was to pursue pregnancy with an ever-narrowing focus, incrementally eliminating everything else in my life—quitting my job, slinking away from friendships, disappearing from the wider world. Back in my infertility days, I couldn’t make myself care about anything but a baby, just as in writing about it, I couldn’t make myself interested in any story but this one. For better or worse, I suppose, my heart beats for just one thing.

I will not claim that this approach to writing or life is smart per se, nor strategic. In fact, it often feels like torture. But for me, that unshakeable, singular ambition did crystallize something useful, something I couldn’t have realized—not really—any other way: my conviction in this project was deep and absolute. It was never about setting out to write a book—the point all along was to write this book. And each time I refused to redirect my gaze, I gained a greater understanding of my commitment, my tenacity, the wholeness of my belief in what this story should be. The physics of that equation—sustained focus fixed toward one point in space—somehow required energy while also renewing it.

I couldn’t move on because I was still spoken for, I suppose, my consciousness occupied by the single story closest to my heart.

By the time I got word that an indie press was interested in publishing my book, my MFA application was well underway. I hadn’t been willing to start new writing, but I had finally shown a willingness to imagine a path to publication that looked unlike anything I had previously pictured. And, suddenly, poof—the thing I had been pursuing so relentlessly arrived. It seemed meaningful that the shift occurred when I wasn’t focused quite so hard, almost like what could have been possible if I’d heeded all the advice over the years and actually started writing something new. In releasing the illusion of control, exerting effort elsewhere, I’d allowed space for a bit of magic to happen.

With a book on track for release but a pub date nearly three years away, I signed up for a writing class—my first since college. This was it: if I was going to hand over money and force myself onto a G train every Wednesday night, after the exhaustion of drop-off and pick-up and soccer and dance, surely I would have no choice but to—at long last—start something new. In the end, after all the prompts and discussions and readings, I produced one essay and made exactly zero alterations to my writing habits, no new practice of morning pages or assimilation into a writing group. I couldn’t move on because I was still spoken for, I suppose, my consciousness occupied by the single story closest to my heart.

Now that beloved book, the object of an entire decade of infatuation, has been released, which means I’m staring down the day when I actually, truly must start something new. I have a folder on my laptop containing fragments of what that might be, a pile of ideas, the vaguest of outlines. The folder is titled—generically, non-committal-y—writing, the equivalent of an unknown number in my phone. But she’s close to getting assigned a real name. With any luck she’ll be the next great love of my life.

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You May Feel A Bit of Pressure: Observations from Infertility’s Heart-Wrenching Ride by Amy Gallo Ryan is available from Unsolicited Press.