the struggles of not writing, not reading, and not wanting to be read

begin musing 

I had gotten to the point where the mere act of reading a book was nauseating.

Flipping through the pages, inhaling the stink of years-old cigarette smoke they had sucked up from a lifetime on the bookshelf at my parents’ house, brought me no joy. Even childhood favorites, the books that made me want to write in the first place—Redwall, The Long Walk, The Outsiders and so many more—did nothing but churn my stomach. These books got packed up in a box, tossed in the closest. I didn’t want to read them. I didn’t want to see them. Even just skimming the words brought me nothing but guilt.

Writing is all I did. All I have ever wanted to do. Yet…I don’t really know how to write about this. Somehow, it’s easier to talk about, and I’ve thought a lot about why that might be. Maybe, when I talk about it, when the words flow freely from my rambling mouth on a morning walk with Scott, or a late-night, in-bed conversation with Amy, it doesn’t feel real. I can say my piece, I can tell my truths, then I can walk away, and in seconds those thoughts and feelings will crumble, cease to exist.

But once you put pen to paper and start jotting thoughts down, they become real. You can rip that page out of a notebook and toss it in the trash. You can backspace an entire file and delete it. But they were given permanence, even briefly, and thus purpose. And maybe that’s why, as I sit here, drinking my morning coffee, pup snoozing with his head on my foot, it feels like there’s a pipe clogged in my brain. Like all these thoughts, feelings, emotions I so desperately want to pour out are blocked, swelling into a headache, drowning in anxiety-sludge.

But that’s the point of all this. To write through the fear, the guilt, the…whatever.

Deep breath. Count to ten. Close my eyes. Don’t think, feel. Live in the moment, don’t think about the future, block out everything except what is directly in front of you. Don’t think about what you can’t control, focus on what you can. Taste the air around you, feel it moving through your lungs. Let your wrists scrape the grooves of your desk, let your fingers race around the blocky edges of the computer keys. Live not for what comes next—absorb the here and now.

When those obsessive, intrusive thoughts start nipping at all in the good in me like a pack of swarming buzzards, this is what I tell myself. It isn’t always the same. It isn’t a set of rules or a guideline to follow. It is just something to do. Like it says, something to feel. It grounds me. I learned it in therapy. I’m doing it now, as I try to sputter through that sludge. As I try and find my way to where I want to be.

All right. Here goes. I’m just going to say it.

I went three years without finishing any prose projects or reading a single book.

The heart is racing. Breathing speed has picked up. Thoughts are spiraling.

Permanence.

It’s real, now. Once you write something, you can’t just pull it back. Words spoken dissolve with the passing breeze. Words written live on, and that’s important—I need these words to survive. I need to feel them, let them fuel me. There was a time even just last year where they would have melted me. But now…well, now they’re the reason I’m here, writing this.

I started doing this when I was sixteen years old. Like everyone, I had brief bouts of creativity when I was younger. Around seven or eight, I remember filling pages of composition notebooks with nonsense inspired by Captain Underpants. By ten I was trying my hardest to imitate Goosebumps and Fear Street. By thirteen I was chewing up Stephen King books and regurgitating cheap parodies of them. But my interests bounced around too much, lacked any real focus. I was a kid, doing what kids do, just exploring, having fun, playing games, instruments, reading, writing, drawing—just doing whatever I wanted.

But in my Junior year of high school, Scott and I started making comics, and the coming year, my Senior year, and the summer that followed, would be some of the best times of my life. Staying up late, rambling to one another as we drank too much soda, ate too much pizza, played Minecraft and paused every other minute to jot down the ‘next great idea.’ I remember sitting in physics class (which I missed 80 days of and got an F and still passed, woo) cramming my thumbs against my phone screen, saying ‘what if we did this, or this, or this.’ I remember twenty hours of hard work in one day, him shading and lettering, me writing a synopsis, and bios, and cover letter, as we submitted our first comic to places like Dark Horse and Top Shelf, dreaming we might get in. I remember showing my dad that comic, him sitting at our old HP PC in the dining room, turning around, and saying with a big grin: “You guys are really serious about this, huh?”

I was. I am.

Yet for nearly three years, my notebooks sat, unopened. My books, most of them gifts from that proud dad of mine, things he read growing up, gathered dust. The kid who used to write ten thousand words a day and read ninety books a year became a man who couldn’t ink out even a single line without scratching back over it and starting again, starting again. The next one will be better, it has to be, oh no it’s worse, it’s worse.

It happened slowly. Miserably slowly. As time ground on, the “failures” piled up. Short story after short story got rejected. Novel after novel never escaped the clutches of a first, second, third draft. I wrote quicker, sloppier, trying to compensate, trying to convince myself I just needed more mileage. I wasn’t trying to get through this draft because I was afraid it was all going to fall apart again, no no, I just like to write quickly. It’s my process. This is what I do. Then, I needed a break. That was the answer. I’ll focus solely on comics. That’s all I ever wanted to do, really

Writing was my life. My job, yes, but I mean more than that. Writing was all I thought about because, for many years, it was all I had. I graduated high school and did nothing afterward but sit in self-seclusion, typing, and scribbling, and thinking. I’d fallen madly in love with it, ignoring friends, family, even myself. I cast off my hobbies, spouting that I would live when I’m older, and ignored the real world in favor of the ones I dreamed of creating. Soon, the ebb and flow of my pen matched my own mind—when it was moving well, I was doing well. When it was stunted, unable to put even a mark on a page…I found myself unable to get out of bed. Unable to do anything but self-loathe.

Soon I was throwing away those teenage notebooks, all because I was too afraid to open one and find something I loved but wouldn’t be able to finish. This was when I gave up.

But I don’t want this to be sad. I don’t think it should be. I spent a lot of my adult life sad, fighting thoughts that have taken many long hours in therapy to smooth out, and now, for the most part, I’m happy, and the key to it all is that I’m not happy because I’m writing. I’m happy because I’m living.

Last year, I left my home. I left my family. And, in a way, I left that old Bryce, too. I moved from Maryland to Kentucky, and what followed was a year of deep, intense personal growth. I came into this state as a recluse who wouldn’t even say hi back to a passing stranger and couldn’t order food at a restaurant without having a panic-attack. Now, well, I don’t know what I am. I’ve learned not to like labeling myself, either. But I’m happy. Really happy.

I got my driver’s license. I bought a car. I got a dog, Pork Chop, who I love dearly and who is sleeping on my foot right now. I started going out to eat more, local places for lunch, chains for dinner. I started going to baseball games, to movies, rock-climbing, hiking, going on walks, meeting people, talking to them—hanging out with friends.

And all this? Well, it happened in a blur. It was a whirlwind of a year. But it taught me there was more to life than just words. Words are beautiful. Writing is beautiful. And as I sit here, it does have permanence. Once I put these words out there, they exist, I said them, they are forever attached to me. But, you know, it just isn’t that serious. I’d trade a night of inspiration for a night of memories with my friends.

Because what I learned is that when you make something everything in your life, it will eventually take everything from you, and by the time you achieve whatever success you hoped for, there will still be more work to be done, because what comes next?

Last year…it got me writing again. I almost didn’t even notice it because it came out of nowhere. It was June or July, I don’t remember, and Amy and I were out, yes out, at a Half-Priced Books, exploring, having fun, giggling as we thumbed through old, musty books with handwritten notes in them. And I bought a book. The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett. And I read it, sitting on my porch, across a few lazy summer days, the first book I had read, and enjoyed, without any guilt, in years.

Before I knew it, I was writing. Little by little, day by day. Running through a pack of Bic pens which had been tossed in a drawer and forgotten since before I moved, I jotted ideas in a Navy blue Paperage notebook. As I did so, I didn’t think about where it was going. About what I was going to do with it. I just…wrote. Watched the birds. The cars. The trees. Thought about swimming. About barbeques. Listened to the Orioles game on the radio. Called my parents. Read another book, then two more. Masters of Doom, I think. Slaughterhouse-Five, definitely.

Soon I had a rough draft for Whisperwind. A draft I, Bryce Beal, liked. One I wanted to reread. One I wanted to write more of. One that made me smile.

More stories came on that porch. More stories are coming now, in my office. It’s been a process. Life, I think, is a process. One of constant regrowth and endless learning. One where we can always strive to be happier, to figure out what ever-changing thing puts a smile on our face. What we work toward, what we live for. Years ago, if you had asked me, it would have been my work. But now…? Well, the future. Watching my dog grow up. Having kids. Wanting to raise them well. Marrying Amy. Wanting to love her right. Wanting to…just not take everything so seriously.

Because if you let them, the stories will come naturally. And honestly? I’ve written better stuff this past year than ever before, working at a slower pace and just having fun with it.

This website…it’s the first step in another long journey. I don’t know where it’s going to take me. But I’m excited. I’m filling notebooks up again. I’m imagining reactions, and pouring over details, and loving creating things on my own again, without fear. Now it’s time to put them out there and live without fear.

On August 25th, 2014, I fell in love with writing comics with my best friend.

Now it’s time to fall in love with writing, and living, for myself.

end musing