The other day I engaged in the grim task of cleaning out my e-mail inbox. It had become loaded with messages, some of which were over seven years old. My long-suffering Eudora program gave me the dire warning to clean this crap out or it would quit on me.

Of course, I couldn’t help opening up messages and making totally sure I wasn’t throwing away anything important. I began reading an e-mail chain from a long-defunct writer’s group. In those days we’d start the week with a friendly e-mail to members telling them about our progress or frustrations or breakthroughs. As I was reading them, I noticed something else: one of the members was either

a) continually chronicling reasons why they couldn’t write anything that week

b) subtly attacking members who did make progress or breakthroughs

I’m really impatient with those sorts of behaviors. I guess you’d call me a bee-yotch when it comes to my writing time, but I don’t let much derail me from my appointment with my muse. I think I might have even written a few replies saying, “wtf, tell your spouse he can make his own tomato soup for lunch. The instructions are on the can. This is YOUR time.” She wrote back that she felt it was her obligation to make sure everyone in her family was happy and contented before she felt she could take time away from their needs for her own selfish pursuits.

Huh?

Much later (after I left the group) I learned from another member how guilty Perfect Spouse made her feel if she didn’t get up at the crack of dawn to make her kids hot oatmeal with a drizzled honey smiley-face and instead chose to write until the last possible second. She also reported that PS tried to derail her progress by calling into question the plot, dialogue, research choices, you name it, on her WIP.

In THE ARTISTS WAY: A SPIRITUAL PATH TO HIGHER CREATIVITY, author Julia Cameron calls these sorts of derailers “poisonous playmates.” These are the people who are afraid to take a risk on their own creativity. Others who have moved past this fear to actually, you know, write, threaten them. It’s like a barfly who has decided to sober up; their bar buddies aren’t going to applaud the act, they’re going to try and them back in the bar so they don’t have to face their own inadequacies.

These “poisonous playmates” try to guilt-trip those of us pursuing our goals. I’ve never had this problem with my own family, and I’m blessed to have a supportive spouse and network of friends who encourage my writing. It saddens me to know that there are others who have to battle not only their muse, but a host of “poisonous playmates” who secretly want them to fail. Or if not fail, project their own fears and doubts on the work they are doing.

My friend eventually had to cut herself off from this “poisonous playmate” and being the tender-hearted person she was, it upset her greatly. But she’s doing much better on her WIP and honoring her creative force by working. It took her a long time to extricate herself, though. Lost time that can never be regained. But a lesson learned is better than no lesson at all.

Did you have to deal with a “poisonous playmate” when it came to your writing? What did you do to free yourself from them? Have you made a full recovery from the toxic relationship to continue your work?

Image by lostdragonfly.

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She has written two novels under the pseudonym Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter--both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President's teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins.
Kathleen Bolton
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