The Research Phase in Writing Feels Like Falling in Love

Join my on my honeymoon with Sylvia P. - we can fall in love with a subject again and again

May 28, 2023

I am buzzy as I write this. Giddy. I used to say that my very favorite feeling in the world was inspiration. In recent years, I’ve realized that cozy is my true favorite but there’s really nothing quite like the buzz of inspiration. It’s that feeling of first falling in love with someone, when I suddenly have so much energy and my insomnia isn’t filled with fatigue but instead with excitement, that amazing period when music is more ear-catching and jokes are funnier and everything glitters a little bit brighter. Falling in love is such an amazing feeling and every once in a while inspiration feels a lot like falling in love. I am falling in love right now … with Sylvia Plath.

Bear with me …

I just re-read The Bell Jar, having not read it since I was in my late teens. At the time it was just one of a series of books that reflected a certain emotional truth back to me … I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Prozac Nation, Girl, Interrupted … I cut my teeth on those tales when I went through my own first wilting experience of depression. I wouldn’t admit for another ten years that it was depression and then only because I had nothing left in me to deny it.

I have read many, many memoirs and novels since then that are in the same vein. Memoirs by women about their internal and external truths are my favorite genre. The Glass Castle, Educated, Untamed … my list is long. But I’ve never gone back and re-read those original books. Until now. And it’s opened up this gaping cave that I’m strangely eager to go spelunking in. Perhaps because the cave of my own mind isn’t as dark as it once was and I feel like I have the headlight to see more this time around.

In any case, my resumed relationship with Sylvia Plath may have remained just a one night stand, a nostalgic chat with an ex who holds up a mirror to where I was when we were once entwined, except that then I read The Last Confessions of Sylvia P … and now I am smitten. I am falling head over heels. At the very least, I’m ready for an intense summer fling. I returned to the library, grabbed every book by and about and inspired by Plath and am committed.

It’s funny the way that falling in love happens - with a person, with a project.

I have pretty much always met people online, so when I’m ready for a relationship, I get on the apps (or before that the websites, Craigslist even, it’s true.) And I am excited and nervous and bored and confused and unsure … but I swipe and I go on the dates and most are fine. Just fine. I meet someone, we like each other okay but not well enough or there’s not a spark or it’s clear we want different things or whatever. Sometimes it takes a few dates to figure that out. And it continues to be exciting to get that dopamine hit of “maybe this is a match” but also disappointing and annoying when it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and I’m wondering if I’ll ever find my person, if I am being too picky, if … And then suddenly the right one is there and it’s totally different. Somehow, in the big world of all the options, the person who is exactly right at that time arrives … and we fall in love, and the whole world glitters for a little while.

I’ve fallen in love like that a few times. I think now I might be with the person I’m going to spend a really long time making a life with. We’ve been together about three and a half years and we are in a comfortable, happy place. But I still vividly remember the first weeks and months of falling head over heels in love. Being in love is amazing. I don’t want to trade it. But oh falling in love is the greatest thing. Everything else ceases to matter because all I can think about is falling in love but also everything else matters so much more because I’m grateful and happy …

Falling in love is about the other person but I confess that one of my favorite parts of falling in love is getting to articulate myself to someone new again. This sometimes happens in great new friendships as well. As I put words together to explain who I have been and who I am now, I get this new picture of myself, I integrate new understandings I didn’t realize I had. In falling in love with someone, I fall a little more in love with myself. Does this happen to you?

They say love finds you and you can’t get it if you’re trying too hard … and yet … You kind of just have to put yourself out there, though, and look for it, and keep looking even when the dates are mediocre and you’re not sure and then one day suddenly the person across the table from you sparks that thing that turns you head over heels. And that’s how writing is. You have to show up to the page, again and again, even when it feels like it’s really boring and you wish you were drinking wine instead of coffee or you wish you were back in your jammies snuggled up with your dogs watching crime dramas instead of dragging on this conversation with someone who is perfectly fine but you just don’t have the energy for them … you have to show up to the page and keep trying to find the right one. And then one day, suddenly, you do, and you’re in love, and you can’t wait to get to the page, and everything glitters and your words come flowing and you fall a little bit more in love with yourself because you are inspired.

I never know when it’s going to happen. I will go for months on end writing routinely and following various interests down rabbit holes that go nowhere. That’s okay. Those dates are fine. But then somehow something will grab me and shake me and I’ll suddenly be so excited to research and write. Last summer it was Yoko Ono … and then I thought I knew who it would be next but that fizzled out. And I just kept following ideas until finally, finally, I fell in love again.

And that’s where I am with Sylvia Plath. I didn’t expect anything more than a date. But then I found that novel, and I started falling in love. And now all I want to do is read Plath’s work, read books written about her, watch movies and talk about her. I didn’t expect this. But I’m here … The thing about here, though, is that here is the research phase, and it feels so hard to articulate any of what I’m thinking about what I’m reading because everything is so new. Have you ever wanted to protect a relationship for a while before bringing it into the world? (My partner and I met a few months before the pandemic. We had met each other’s families and a few friends then March 2020 happened and honestly it was this perfect timing where we were falling in love and could just incubate together with no shame for a bit.)

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

I spent some time in this little bubble of my Sylvia Plath research. And I have a huge stack of books to spend time with now. I haven’t decided if I want to start Wintering, which is another novel based on The Bell Jar, or if I want to move into biography or if I want to read another short story by Plath. Do I want to go to dinner or the theater or to walk in the park? It’s all good. There’s no wrong choice. If the relationship keeps developing like I feel like it will, there will be plenty of time for all of it. But also this falling in love brightness only lasts for a little while. It’s a heady, amazing, wonderful, energizing feeling. But it’s brief.

After the honeymoon phase comes a different kind of nice period where you’ve realized this could last a while and you start to return to the rest of your life and the relationship goes through some bumps in the road … You only get this short honeymoon and that’s the time when I have to dive deep into the research and jot down all of my initial messy thoughts and reactions and keep reading and reading and talking and writing. Because after that, my relationship with Plath becomes something different. Either it fizzles out or I commit to a long-term project (a series of articles, a book …) and at that point there are some beautiful things but there’s also a lot of hard work to keep the relationship going. So right now I’m just going to embrace that I get this brief moment in time where I’m just absolutely infatuated with the person I’m “writing” (reading) about.

Art for Thought:

Are you in love with your work? How do you keep the flame going when the initial fire begins to fade?
What neural pathways light up when inspired by creativity that are similar to those inspired by falling in love with another person?
Is it possible to experience toxic relationships with your creative work?
How do you know when it’s time to end a relationship (move on from a project) or when it’s better to push through together?

If you read this far, perhaps you liked the work. The work does take work. It only continues with support, so please consider subscribing. My annual rate starts at $10 per year.

Pick a rate that works for you