A funny thing happened on the way to finishing my novel.  I quit smoking.

Actually, it wasn’t funny at all.  It was depressing.

I quit smoking four days after my last post, and found I could not no longer write fiction.  I could write business letters or personal correspondence, but not a scrap of fiction.  Initially, I assumed that this would subside once I got through withdrawal.  But a month later I still couldn’t write.

Thinking that my brain might need to rewire, I pushed on under the assumption that eventually I would learn to write without smoking.  I wrote garbage day after day, hoping that it would eventually improve.  Months passed, then years.  Depression set in.

Finally, I told my doctor that I couldn’t take it anymore.  I had to write, and if that meant dying younger, so be it.  I was going to go back to smoking.  What I did not realize is that this was a well-documented phenomenon, particularly among writers.  Nicotine temporarily enhances concentration, alertness and memory, effects that help writers focus.  And nicotine increases dopamine release, which can help maintain flow during writing.  Apparently, decades of smoking had cemented the connection in my brain.

To my surprise, he rattled off the names of several famous authors who had the same problem, including Mark Twain, one of my favorites.  The surprise, incidentally, was more at my ignorance than his knowledge.  Why hadn’t I known this already?

So, my doctor suggested vaping as a much healthier alternative.  He said that the nicotine, the habitual motions, and visuals of exhaling a cloud of vapor would probably do the trick.

And it did!  I am back at it.  I have rejoined NCWW (Northern Colorado Writers Workshop), resumed work on the novel (nearly complete), and am as happy as a lark.

*Note – I am not an expert in these matters, but have these observations that may be helpful to other smoking writers.  Everyone is different.  Some writers successfully quit with little or no impact on their writing, so don’t be afraid to quit smoking if that is what you want (I loved smoking, and only quit because it was starting to seriously impact my health).  Also, I will note that I hadn’t had a cigarette in over three years when I attempted vaping as a solution.  This gap may very well have made it easier for me to transition to vaping.

**The Pictures, in case you don’t recognize them, are of (top to bottom) Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter Thompson, three of the four writers most influential on my writing style.