Damien and I watched a documentary about Raymond Carver the other day. The documentary itself wasn’t very good, but Raymond Carver said something that’s been slowly building to a boil in my mind ever since. I don’t have the exact quote (we already returned the DVD to the library), but it was something along the lines of how every story he ever wrote was, while he was working on it, his favorite story. The excitement of watching the story become truly good was, I couldn’t help but assume, what helped Carver develop that famed revision ethic that, in my opinion, all would-be writers should (but don’t always) emulate.

It’s finally hit me, just now, what it was about that quote that seemed so significant to me. It’s the fact that I once felt that way, too. Once. But I haven’t felt that way in a while, not since I got the phone call telling me my first book was about to be published.

Even though I have been writing lately, which sometimes feels like an accomplishment in and of itself considering how distracted I’ve been with my thoughts of the little girl who is growing and growing inside me right now, I haven’t really been producing anything particularly worthwhile. Writing and producing something worthwhile, of course, are not always the same thing. While I can say I’ve definitely spent some time in front of the computer for the past year, I don’t really have much to show for that time, just a bunch of hollow drafts and half-assed revisions. Nothing feels like it’s coming together the way it should, and I don’t, really, feel all that excited about any of my current projects.

Nothing that I’m writing now feels important. On top of that, I feel discouraged by the fact that very few people will likely ever read the book I’ve already published. I realize that’s not supposed to be the point, that we should write for ourselves, but it is a difficult realization, when you discover that this thing you’ve been dreaming about for so long—publishing a book!—is so anticlimactic, is of so little consequence in the end.

It’s strange, but actually winning a fiction prize and publishing my first book has made me ever more cynical about my career as a writer. About writing in general, as a serious endeavor. It’s different when you dabble in writing for fun, but when you reach a point where you’re really invested in it, where your writing is one of the most important things in your life, it can be a hard reality check when you publish a book. Once that short-lived excitement about having “made it” passes, you realize that readers don’t know who you are, that most of them will never even hear about your book, and of the ones who do, few will buy it, and even fewer will actually read it. The thrill of the accomplishment wears off fast, and what you’re left with is the realization that you’ve been so very naïve all these years, when you told yourself that publishing a book actually mattered.

And so, I guess, what it comes down to is that I’m having trouble rekindling that flame that was sort of snuffed out by the harsh reality of actually publishing a book. Where once I felt so excited about each new project, now I find myself wondering, sure, but what’s the point? Who cares about this stupid story? Even if I publish it, who cares? The excitement that Raymond Carver spoke of has left me, and I’m not sure whether it will ever come back.

But I did speak last time of how this shift in perspective is a strange sort of relief. It’s depressing sometimes—I feel it as an acute loss—but at the same time, it’s kind of liberating, too. It used to feel essential that I wrote and wrote a lot, that I produced and published, that I pushed myself to be the writer I wanted to believe I was. Suddenly, now, those things don’t seem to matter. So what if I don’t write today? So what if this story ends up going nowhere and I give up on it? It doesn’t matter in any real sort of way.

The things that really matter, I see now, are my baby, my marriage, my ability to extend, in whatever way I can, the few moments of true happiness that ever come my way. Sometimes writing brings me that kind of happiness, but thinking about my baby delights me in a way that no story and no publication ever has. There’s something reassuring about that. It’s reassuring to be reminded that writing isn’t all there is, that whether I publish something or not doesn’t really matter, that there is more to life than ambition and drive. That sometimes, just sitting back and living is enough.