Getting Through the Rough Patch

When I was nine years old, and my orthodontist told my parents I needed to have a preliminary round of braces, hoping to avoid the expensive second phase. They sort of failed, and I had to have the second phase anyway, but that’s not the point.

Fifth grade was the only year I ever went to public school. The whole first-phase-of-braces thing was apparently pretty common, so lots of the other kids had had braces before. When I told them I was going to get braces, they all said the exact same thing:

“It hurts SO BAD.”

Which, of course, terrified me. I am not a very pain-tolerant person, so I was very afraid.

But the braces were inevitable. My mom came and picked me up and drove me to the orthodontist. They put the braces on, let me pick out rubber band colors, told me how to take care of my teeth, all that good stuff. Then it was time to leave and go pick my brother and sister up from school.

I was exhilarated! Why? Because they didn’t hurt at all! Everyone at school said braces were so terrible, they hurt so bad and they rubbed sores into your mouth and they were a pain to clean… but, I thought, maybe they were all just dramatic. Maybe I had a really, really good orthodontist who made your teeth pearly white and all straight and nice like in the movies without it hurting at all.

When we got to the school, I jumped out of the car and ran to show all my friends, who were out on the playground. I bragged about the colors I’d picked and how good the orthodontist had said I was. They all said the same thing:

“Does it hurt?”

“No!” I told them. “It doesn’t hurt at all!”

Fast forward to later that same day. We were at home, I remember it clearly. I was sitting on the couch, curled up into a ball with tears in my eyes. After dinner, this pain had set in — a dull, persistent ache like I could feel my teeth moving.

My mom was sitting on the other couch, on her computer. I told her it hurt, it hurt, it hurt, why did it hurt so much? She told me all she could do was give me ibuprofen.

“But it’s not supposed to hurt,” I told her, teary and choked up. “It isn’t supposed to hurt!”

Over and over, I pleaded to get them taken off. I thought that it couldn’t be good if it hurt that much.

Think about that. I was convinced that it wasn’t supposed to hurt. All the kids at school had said braces hurt. My mom and dad had said braces hurt. The orthodontist had said braces hurt. But because they hadn’t hurt at first, I thought they weren’t supposed to. Then, I concluded that it wasn’t good because it was so hard.

I think about that a lot, especially when I’m writing. We’ve all got tens of hundreds of half-written stories, half-formed ideas, and documents we haven’t opened for years. I can think of one—no, two, three, four—five off the top of my head—oh, wait, six, seven — you get the idea. I do this so, so much… I start a story. I know writing is hard, I know it isn’t easy, I know everyone says it’s difficult. But when I start writing, it’s so easy! The brand new idea rolls onto the pages, easy and natural.

But then, around page five or ten or twenty or whatever, it starts slowing down. I get bored, I realize that I don’t have a really thought-out plot. I think, why is this happening? It shouldn’t be this hard! This was easy at first, it should be easy now!

Then I think that, since the rest of the story just isn’t coming to me, the whole story is not a good idea.

That’s when I give up.

So what I’m here to tell you is that writing is easy at first, when you have new ideas. Then it gets hard. I want you to know that your ideas are good, and only you can write them the way you will, and that the rough patch won’t last forever.  It’s almost a cycle, like potholes in an old road - you’ll be fine for a while, and then the road will get rough and bumpy again, and then it’ll even out once more.

That’s just how writing is.

Either way, the most beautiful things are hard. The things worth the most in life are very hard. The more you work on it, the more satisfied you’ll be when you get through the rough patch.