The Story Stone - How a Rock Brought Me Back to Writing

There’s a public wetland area near my home where I walk every day. It’s a tranquil place. Every season announces itself there and isn’t shy about it.

In spring and summer, there are riots of green, fresh feathers, and birdsong. Turtles sun on the banks and then plop into the water when you walk by, sounding as if you chucked rocks into the murky shallows. In the fall, everything fades to a crisp, colorful carpet under your feet and in the mornings the air nips pink into your cheeks. In winter, the wetland is disrobed and quiet, a bare outline of itself. Resting. Waiting.

As I write this, it’s spring. The pond and the walking paths are bustling with people and their dogs, birds of all kinds, and a family of mysterious critters whose classification I can’t quite determine. Could they be some kind of beaver or otter or…muskrat? I wouldn’ know a muskrat if it came up and introduced itself. Do we even have muskrats in Nevada? I have no idea but I rather prefer the wondering to the knowing.

Wondering is what writers do.

I haven’t felt like a writer in a long time.

In fact, I’m an author but I haven’t written fiction for over a year.

Other writers will understand when I say that even if I’m not actively writing, I always think like a writer. Writers are perpetually on watch, observers to our core. If we see an interesting character ambling toward us on our walk, we have the sketch of a book character forming before they’ve even passed us by. We pick up overheard bits of conversation like litter and stuff them in our gloves. Writers stockpile pieces of the world and save them for when we need them: Images, dialogue, the particular way a teen walks like he’s tipping forward into adulthood, or how a woman tucks her girlfriend’s hair behind her ear as they share a bowl of ramen at an outdoor café and argue about whether Oprah should run for President.

For a writer, story snippets are all around.

But thinking like a writer and actually writing are two very different things.

It’s not that I haven’t strung words together at all. I started this blog for midlife women and am having fun speaking to a different audience and getting real about this time in my life. It’s new. Authentic. It’s me disrobed—like the pond in winter—but without the fulfillment of writing fiction, I’m a bare outline of myself.

The reasons why I haven’t worked on a book for a year are complicated and to air them out fully carries the risk of sounding whiny-baby about the business of publishing and the business of life.

I still remember what it was like to be obsessively hopeful about getting an agent and being published. My dreams kept me at my writing desk for longer hours than were healthy. Sitting here now on top of a different hill, with one of the best agents in the business and with multiple books to my credit, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m not grateful.

I am grateful.

Me from ten years ago would have killed to be me now.

What I’m guilty of, is wanting more.

So much more.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic, is a stunningly TRUE book, resonant with meaning for anyone who sees that their inner spark of creativity is a light not only for themselves but for the world. Art lights our way. It’s an important book.

My takeaway from Big Magic is that there’s something I intuitively understood and got very right once upon a time. It was this:

“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner–continuously and stubbornly bringing for the jewels that are hidden within you–is a fine art, in and of itself.”

Here’s one thing I failed miserably at:

“Recognizing that people’s reactions don’t belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you’ve created, terrific. If people ignore what you’ve created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you’ve created, don’t sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you’ve created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest – as politely as you possibly can – that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.”

Not only did I fail at that, I committed another atrocity against my art…

I made it responsible for my livelihood.

Being entirely transparent here… I’m what you might call “uneducated.” I have enough self-esteem to elbow forward and say that I’m uneducated but brilliant. A gifted mind but a high-school dropout who left school early, tested to get my GED, and started working full time to earn money for travel, I later married and happily became a stay-at-home mom. As the laughing Universe would have it, right around the time I was gaining some traction in my craft as a writer, my marriage fell apart.

I decided with the stubborn tenacity I’m known for, that I was going to have to support myself as a writer; the only thing I’ve ever been truly, naturally good at. The only thing other than being a mother that I felt called to do. I had multiple books under contract. I was going places! My writing would save me!

Poor art.

It collapsed under the weight of that pressure.

I’m sorry, art. You didn’t deserve that.

As the financial stress mounted, I felt inept to produce anything good. My stories were half-baked, shallow, skimming the surface of what I knew myself to be capable of. I worried so much about selling and succeeding commercially as a writer that it paralyzed my creativity. I got a “regular” job and to this day, I ride a teeter-totter of gratitude and resentment for every hour I spend doing the job instead of doing what I love.

I know…I know. Poor me. Don’t come @ me. You can’t say anything meaner than I say to myself about the first-world luxury of fretting about losing the time to do what is most cherished and fulfilling to me.

Mothering is the only other thing I value more than writing and if mothering and writing paid the bills I’d be buying steak tonight, honey. And the BIG-ass bottle of A.1. Sauce.

What I’m trying to say here, is I’ve missed being a writer.

I’ve missed who I was when words were my magic. I was a sorceress. I controlled entire worlds and everyone in them. I miss thinking in puzzles. I miss who I was as an “author” – interesting, creative, imaginative, dedicated, special.

I missed it so badly that I’ve cried on my way to work. It hurt so much to give it up that I hurt myself to cover the hurt. I overate. I drank too much. I avoided writer friends and events. I felt depression’s tight grip around my throat whenever I spoke of it. I felt my stories dying inside me, like ash I’d swallowed to hide the evidence of my previous beautiful fire.

I missed the piece I cut out of my soul.

What I haven’t missed is the desperation for success.

I don’t miss the time lag between creation and publication (the longest was two years between contract and publication date) or the waiting for my art to be deemed worthy by faceless strangers. I didn’t miss the pressure to produce a book every six months or even every year. Certainly, I didn’t miss the months of creating books that “almost” sold but ultimately didn’t for whatever reason. (A truth: all writers get rejections, even after being published, even after being bestsellers. It’s a tough biz, Y’all.)

I didn’t miss the cattiness, the infighting, and cliques, or the toxicity. Writing a book is a two-ton boulder that you roll uphill for months or years but the whole boulder sometimes gets smashed by others into easy to throw bits that are hurled back at their creators. I wondered if I’d ever be able to create without obsessive worry that I’d screw up.

And I have screwed up. I own that. My art is as imperfect as I am.

So, I retreated. I listened. I learned a crap-ton about myself and about the world and the responsibility to write it honestly without doing harm. I had to construct the space in which to understand and regenerate. Backing off was the only thing I could do to save what was left of my insecure heart and my fledgling art. Together, we hibernated.

Now it’s spring.

Recently, I found myself gathering small, smooth stones on my walks at the pond. I brought them home, washed the grit from them, and marveled at how the colors deepened and changed when immersed in water. I realized that it was a perfect metaphor for a writer. Our colors are deeper, more vibrant when we’re immersed in storytelling.

One day, I found myself pulling Sharpies from a cabinet and writing the words “Story Stone” on one side of a rock. On the other side, I spontaneously wrote a short few lines about my childhood and my strength. The story was heavy in my pocket as I walked it to the pond and left it there for someone to find.

I don’t know why I did that. I suppose it was a desperate impulse to communicate in the way that I’m most comfortable.

That’s essentially what writers do; put our work and our hearts “out there” for others to stumble upon and hopefully, see a spec of their own hearts in what they’ve found.

The act of leaving that story stone out by the pond roused what had gone quiet within me. It roared itself awake.

I realized something huge – Telling stories isn’t my want. It’s my need.

Maybe, like the pond, I had to experience a fallow season. Maybe I needed to go dormant to remember that I have fruit to bear.

I’m ready again to etch my heart in the story stone of my life.

My highest ambition is to do my best work and leave it to be found without any attachment to the result. I hope you stumble upon it and, if it speaks to you, carry it in a pocket of your heart. A gritty gift from one immersed soul to another.

Tracy Clark is an author of books for young adults. If you’re interested in reading her work, you can find it here: