New Year Relief; or, Not a Fraud Quite Yet!

This week and a bit, thanks to the timely completion of the syllabi, has been sponsored by the letter H for Holiday-ing and the letter N for Novel-Prep.

Between hanging out with family and friends and reflecting on the blessings of the year past and the audacious goal of writing a novel in the year to come, I've been reading more source materials for my novel, delighting in picking up a lot of useful facts and a few highly useful facts.

Hoping against hope that this huge amorphous project would eventually start to jell and I could think my way into a few characters and plot points.

And finally, yesterday, little bits of a sentient, moving novel began to squirm and kick within me.

Woohoo for not being a fraud for telling people I was going to write something this spring!

It's coming, folks. I'm going to have something to write. Love it!

On the Joy of Research

So last night sometime around 1 or 2 a.m. I got inspired to do some research.

This research had nothing, really, to do with my studying for the Big Nasty Tests I've been studying for.

It was only rather tangentially related, or so I thought, to my dissertation.

Primarily, it was (primarily academic) background research for one of my creative projects.

In searching through Google Scholar and WorldCat for sources to interlibrary loan (reminding me of the beauty of having full access to the academic library system) I found a source that will help my understanding of my dissertation topic, as well as inspiration and good material for that and other potential creative projects.

I also remembered why I like researching these kinds of things. The thrill of the unexpected discovery is fabulous. It's these moments that remind me why I started doing this grad school thing in the first place, and why it's worth sticking it out through the annoying and difficult times.

Now just to plow that delight back into all the other projects I'm supposed to be working on.

Trying Not to Be Slightly Offended by This...

From a book on conducting qualitative research, talking about writing up field notes from participant observation of people in a setting:

"It happens that observers differ enormously in the detail and length of the field notes they keep. Some seem to be frustrated novelists and have been known to write 40 or more single-spaced pages on a three-hour period of observation." --Lofland and Lofland, Analyzing Social Settings (1984), p. 67

And people (well, maybe it's just me, but today it's an editorial pluralism) wonder why, although novelists and qualitative field researchers both learn from observing people in settings, these two groups are somewhat estranged from each other?

Stereotypes, stereotypes...My primary question is, since when did any frustrated novelist write that much? It seems most frustrated novelists' problem is more of the writing too little than writing too much...

But maybe that's just my perception of the way the writing world works.

The larger question is, why can't we all just get along, since fiction writers and qualitative researchers are doing remarkably similar things (I should know, since I'm part of both groups)?

Dear Semi Driver on I-57 N,

This is an open letter to the semi driver that brushed (not quite the right word, evoking gentleness instead of crunched steel and a shattered window) against my car Monday night at 7:50 p.m. in Urbana Champaign, then, after slowing a bit, continued to drive.

My writer's brain immediately thought through all the possibilities of your motives. Chances are, you just didn't look before coming over into the right lane. Not that that excuses you at all. But it's a fairly easy and logical explanation--likely the right one.

What is less simple is why you didn't stop. A witness stopped and called the police. I saw you slow down, so I know you had felt the weight of my little car against your large bulk. Why, I ask?

The most simple explanation was that you thought you'd get in trouble, which you probably would have, to be frank. But that doesn't mean that you are excused for not doing the right thing. Sometimes the right thing involves sacrifice.

Then again, maybe you are a Decepticon (ala Transformers). That's not really an excuse either, though, you know...you could always join the good guys if you wanted to. All you had to do was stop.

Whatever the reason, I just wanted to let you know that by not stopping, I'm afraid you removed the possibility that you would be on my Christmas card list. I hate to say it. But that's how it is. Without contact info, I simply can't put you on it.

So yeah, if you see this, please leave your info so I can add you back in. If you don't want to contact me directly, I'm sure the Illinois State Police would get in touch with me if you passed the info on to them.

In the meantime, I do hope life goes well for you. I hear that the Decepticons lose in the end, so I'm sorry about that ahead of time. I do wish you well--or at least I'm trying to. Sooner or later, forgiveness is likely to come, but frankly, it might take a few days.

Oh, and I hate to tell you this, but as I'm a writer, a version of this incident will likely appear in some of my work sooner or later. I'd contact you to make sure that's okay, but then, I don't have your contact info. Please consider this my attempt.

Sincerely,
Deborah Leiter

P.S. I should admit that I'm pretty bad about actually getting Christmas cards out. But if you were on the list, I'd make an extra effort.

Dreams into Fiction

I've had a series of unpleasant dreams this week. No need to get into what they were--I'd just like to state for the record that they were all pretty unpleasant. (Not nightmares, just unpleasant.)

The point is this: I've spent the last half-hour trying to figure out whether it would be useful for one of my characters could have a different series of unpleasant dreams, in one of the stories that's been on the backburner.

It's a beautiful thing when the creaky wheels of that part of my brain start to move. Love it.

About to (Finally) Write

Okay, so I finally finished my analysis and I'm ready to plunge into the first of three 20-page papers. (This one's due first.) Actually, I already have 3 pages of it done, from an earlier proposal that was due. I'm going to see if I can just plow through and write most of the rest of it today, leaving Monday open for grading and such.

At any rate, here's my tally on the note-taking for this paper: 18,513 words, which, in my new scheme for word-counting, is the equivalent of 4628 new words.

I'm looking forward to really challenging myself to plow through quickly now. Writing all those notes and doing a thorough analysis really did help me come up with some good examples and bits of analysis I can then translate into actual new words. So here's hoping the energy and focus holds for the day.

Okay, and with that, I'm off to the races.

In Which Creativity Is Instigated by the Academic...

So to catch you up, this semester I'm taking the following 3 grad classes:

1. "Culture and Society," which is an anthropology class.
2. "The Rhetoric of Everyday Life," a communication class.
3. "Modern European Thinkers on Rhetoric, Poetics, and Narrative," a course taught by a French lit. prof and cross-listed with the English department.

Considering these classes are all in different departments, I'm finding interesting interrelations between their subject matter. I'm also finding unexpected creative ideas from them.

For instance, reading Roland Barthes' structuralist analysis of literature from the authorial perspective (for class #3) helped me to break out of my usual ways of thinking about creative stories--much more helpful for my creative writing than many of the creative writing manuals I've read. It gave me a brainstorm for re-structuring my dormant novel manuscript--don't know if it will work, but it's worth a try when I get more time this summer. It will also be potentially useful in my dissertation work.

And I'm pretty sure that my fieldwork project for class #1 will be able to do triple duty:

1. Give me a co-written paper that might work as a conference paper or article publication.
2. Serve as a base for another communication article I've been wanting to write.
3. Work as background research for another novel I've been thinking about for awhile (I've written 2 chapters, then got stuck because I realized I needed to do interviews and such with one of the populations, which is the one we might be looking at for the project).

And then of course, course #2 will feed my dissertation, which is helping me with another series of academic studies and creative projects.

Ah, I love it when the academic feeds the creative...

Zen and the Art of (Public) Transportation

Okay, so I don't believe in the whole Zen thing, but the title still gets at what I'd like to talk about, and a good part of I like to travel so much.

And I do like it. Despite the feeling that your skin is layered in some sort of film by the end of the day, despite unidentified foot-long smudges your jeans pick up somehow, somewhere, along the the way, despite the delays and the frustrations and the missteps, and the tired back and feet and the required watchfulness over one's ambulatory possessions, I appreciate travel, particularly that by public transportation (though as my friends know, I also wouldn't slam the door in the face of a good road trip that came calling--Alaska, anyone?).

Of course, public transportation is time-consuming and I'd be annoyed with it if I had to do it everyday (witness my driving to school), but on vacation, my writerly self quite enjoys it for three reasons:

1. Serendipity. Although I've been traveling "alone" this weekend, I've never lacked for companionship. Airports, airplanes, and trains are fabulous breeding grounds (liminal spaces, some academics would say) for fabulous conversations. I've certainly experienced that this weekend. Beyond giving me good material, this stretches me and reminds a girl who spends a ton of time beyond a computer screen that there are other people out there. Sure, there was one ride where the person was a bit too much of a chatterbox, but forbearing is part of being part of community, and I like that public spaces are spaces where I get to exercise my community muscles.
   
   
2. Eavesdropping. This wouldn't work for academic research, but for my creative writing self, public transportation is a great place to overhear conversations of people, keeping my ear open for interesting types of dialects and bits of characterization through dialogue. Besides, sometimes overhearing on public transport is inescapable, so one might as well keep its useful purposes in mind. :)
   
   
3. A Step toward Peace. Sure, if I did this on a regular basis, I would feel the need to be fully productive during my public transport time, but this same liminality, disjointedness from what's come before and the place you're going to, is a great space to relax and allow one's brain to calm down, to either give oneself space to dig into a book deeply without so many distractions or just to be still, to stare. As Eliot put it so well, that point when "an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations / And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence" (Four Quartets, "East Coker") can be a jumping-off point into that stillness, that listening mode, that in my everyday life I can be so bad at. That point from which both prayer and writing can grow so well.
   

And that, I think, is at the heart of why, despite the hours and hours spent moving around this weekend, I can go home retaining a level of stillness and a measure of refreshment, ready to plunge back into the page and the screen. (Of course, remind my jetlagged self of that Wednesday morning when I have to get up early and go to school after a final day of buses and airports and airplanes tomorrow.)

The Thrill of the (Paper) Chase: A Documentary Romance

Take One: Bodleian Library, Oxford, England, 1997. Deborah, on a jaunt during her Semester in England, stands chafing at the polite barricades keeping her from the stacks of the Bodleian library in Oxford. Later, when I heard that there were 16th century books stacked up in corners within the library's depths, I felt my heart beat a bit more quickly, and I was jealous of those who had permissions to go in.

Take Two: Morgan library, New York, 2006. Deborah, on a pre-thesis-on-Thoreau-and-Eliot jaunt to New York with slightly-impatient friends, stands and copies down the information she can glean from the behind-glass pages of one of Thoreau's journals while steaming up the glass in front of them with her breath. Earlier, having had the usual visitor's look-but-don't-touch access to the amazing three-story library room, she wondered whether any of those enticing books were getting read, but by no means felt qualified to figure out whether she could do so.

Take Three: Huntington Library, San Marino, 2008. (This coming Saturday, to be exact.) Armed with the knowledge I've learned in my Archival Theory and Practice class, I know much more, and therefore, having filled out all the necessary paperwork and been granted limited access, I will walk in, show my ID, receive my reader's permit and the three documents I've been given access to, and be able to actually page through them for hours. Sweet victory!

Still, if this is a romance, it will be more like a conjugal visit in prison than anything else--I'm not allowed to take any bags or pens into the reading room, only paper, pencils, and a laptop. I had to tell them exact days that I would be there so I could get access to these materials. If I want photocopies I will need to fill out a form at the end of the visit. All of these specifications...

From the midst of my archival theory and practice class, I understand the need for such precautions--after all, it's important to keep these things in good condition for their preservation. All the same, I find it fascinating that the metaphor I keep coming up against is visiting these documents in prison. I suppose, though, another metaphor would be that of going through all the checks to become a day-long visitor to the White House, to see some of the parts people rarely see on tour. That's probably a more apt metaphor, really, because it is quite a privilege.

And I am looking forward to looking at these documents, making friends with them and seeing whether this pen pal relationship of ours will blossom into something more, maybe even a dissertation chapter. No matter whether this particular documentary flame sparks or fizzles, I'm thankful that takes 4, 5, and 6 are likely to be even happier scenarios. That's important, as I'll likely need to do this down the road again, in both my academic and non-academic writing (historical fiction or non-fiction alike).

As GI Joe used to say in the cartoon of my youth, "knowing is half the battle."

What to Read, What to Read

So yesterday both Mark Terry and Terry Whalin posted about reading the kinds of books you gravitate to, and then writing those kinds of books. I find this a fascinating concept that's probably true, to a certain degree. But I'd like to point out that reading entirely different kinds of books than the ones you gravitate to, and trying to write different kinds of genres than what you're reading, can be pretty amazing.

That, of course, is said from a girl who's been reading a lot of theoretical tomes lately. I have to admit that theoretical tomes haven't necessarily always been the first book I'd pick up when strolling through Borders, and yet, I'm finding that material incredibly enriching. Yes, I've been writing papers that respond to that theory, but I've also been finding it's been raising desires in me to write creative non-fiction, to try new fiction genres, to add deeper layers to my thought and to my characters in my fiction.

See, the theory I've been reading has touched on some pretty basic questions about who we are as humans. About meaning and communication. On the nature of story. On how we conceive history and why we like to keep and throw things away. About how we influence one another, and questions of agency and free will. This semester, I've been busy theorizing and writing academic papers in response, but I can feel my confidence toward other writings improving as I feel my ponderings on these topics gathering me lots and lots of writing material.

So yeah, I'd like to encourage you writers out there to, sure, read what you want to write and write what you want to read, but here's my two cents: don't limit your reading to that. Don't shun the hard stuff. Stretching your comfort zone is good, and can stretch your imagination along with your understanding.

Oh, and one more thing--don't forget to "read" the "texts" around you in your quest for figuring out what to write. Pay attention to what stories you like to listen to from other people and watch on TV, what locations you like to visit, what your interests are. Observe how people communicate with each other and how the cultures around you work and how they interact with each other. These things, beyond what you like to read, could open up whole new universes of kinds of things to read and to write, and add new depth to what you do write.

Wist; or, Giving One's Inner Nerd a Hug

So as I look around at blogs written by people in the world of general-audience writers (such as here, here, here, and here) at this time of year, I sometimes feel wistful. I see people preparing for NaNoWriMo and so forth. I see encouragement to finish creative projects and get one's stuff out there for publication.

I stare outside at the colorful leaves doused in golden sun, and I think of all the writing projects stacking up in my brain behind the (mostly academic) ones I'm working on, and I feel wist. Great wist. I look outside, and it seems that far away, just beyond what I can see, there's this shimmering vista of greener-than-green grass with springtime crocuses popping out of it. My stack of academic tomes on historiography, archival theory, and even the fascinating rhetoric of conspiracy look pale and anemic beside this green vista, as does the stack of term papers and conference papers that is my October's goal.

These papers are important for me to do. They're intellectually stimulating. They are helping me prepare for other future writing tasks I must do, both inside and outside of the academy. But it's hard to remember that some days when the just-out-of reach crocuses seem to pulse with their purple brilliance.

I think there are good reasons for me to feel that these current tasks are marginalized ones from the perspective of the general-audience writing world--after all, they will not be concise, beautifully sounding writings for public consumption, which is the most acceptable thing in the world of writers that write to sell. Nor are they going to be the kind of aesthetic production that's seen to be acceptable to those in the writing world that aren't so concerned about sales.

(If one were to represent the whole writing world as a social landscape not unlike high school, then, I'm clearly a nerd on that landscape, even if within the academic world, I'm the artsy one in the corner. No wonder I feel a bit fractured in my identity.)

But I think my sense of wist is also, at least in part, a crocus-is-prettier focus on what I want to do that isn't so possible right now, rather than being content with what I have, and recognizing that the journey takes time. This stage, my doctoral work, is a process of learning--a time in which I don't have to focus on broad audiences all the time, and a time to collect material for all sorts of writing projects of all genres. A time for germination. And while I may occasionally chafe at having to perform certain writing tasks when there are others that look prettier in my head, this stack of books beside me has some fascinating stuff in it.

And the leaves are pretty.

Not So Bad for an Awful Day...

Okay, so I had an awful day yesterday. No point getting into the details--in fact, I don't want to give away the details, because I'm treasuring them up, dang it.

Yes, it was a horrible, awful, terrible, really no good, bad day. And I hated every minute of certain parts of it.

But at the same time, there was this little writer's voice in the back of my head saying, "this is great material. Talk it over with those close to you, get the frustration out of your system. But learn to tell the story, and most of all, remember it. It could come in handy for some creative writing story you have to tell later on."

And then, at that point, I knew. I knew that this year is and is going to be a better year than last year. Last year that voice deserted me way too often, and with it my sense of humor and my perspective on my life.

That's right--I'm healthier when I've got voices in my head (at least that one). The thing is, really bad days are the stuff of story. Who wants to read about people that are completely happy all the time? When I can remember that, I remember to not take myself too seriously, which helps me keep spiritually aware and generally sane at the same time.

Plus, it leaves me with the odd sensation that my bad days are good in some way--at least they're good material, eh?