NaNoWriSpr: On Guilt, Conference Season, and Novel Writing

Okay, so no new pages lately--teaching and other academic endeavors have been winning the cage match lately, with two academic conferences this week and next at which to present my dissertation research, subs to get and prepare for when I'm gone, midterm grades having just been finished and handed back, various professional development opportunities to apply for, etc., etc., etc.

When it comes down to it, Livelihood has quite the right hook, especially just after spring break, when midterms coincide with Conference Season. It's a good thing an amazing stack of well-written midterms softened the blow. I love seeing my students learn and begin to grasp difficult concepts in depth.

But that doesn't mean Creative Writing and the DNiP are down for the count, by any means. For one thing, I just workshopped my third and last novel installment of the semester in my fiction writing class yesterday, and it went well. It feels good to know I'm on the right track. And I'll be taking the files with me while traveling in case of a spare hour or two. Hotel rooms can be good places to write.

Furthermore, it's not like my academic activities are really divorced or separate from my creative writing endeavors. My diss was about author-audience relationships in storytelling situations, after all, and I love that I get to go talk to others who are interested in the same things.

Plus, after a week away from the novel-writing absorption of spring break, I was reading through my current manuscript again last night and could see the benefits of the down time. I'm a bit worried about spending TOO much time away, but I'm in a really good place with it right now, so a couple of weeks of lower writing activity won't hurt, I don't think.

Plus, talking to other humans who are interested in similar things--and hearing interesting papers about a wide range of topics--will be good for me, and I'm sure to enjoy it. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, stimuli that doesn't always seem to move my immediate projects forward can inspire me in ways I would not have expected. And as I've been realizing more and more lately, one of the things I most love in life--that animates me the most, and drives projects stemming from all my selves, whether professional or creative or social--is a good nuanced dialogue about interesting and important things.

[With great effort, picks up boulder of DNiP guilt and sets it outside of the suitcase she's packing.] This will be a good week and a half.

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.

Swallowed Up...

I'm finally feeling better from my sinus infection, but have been knocked over the head and ignominiously dragged off into a cave by the assignments that were lurking outside my door while I was sleeping off the infection. They tell me, if I'm good, I can get out for Thanksgiving dinner and a few hours in October, but other than that, there's no chance of being let out for three more months. I feel like Jonah.

It's sort of warm in here, in the belly of grad school. Sort of womb-like, and comforting in a way (though there are emotions in here, they're not so frequent as in the world of creative writing). And it's not so bad, seeing around me by dim light. I know those shadows back there, in the corners, are tunnels leading to the concrete parts of the world I've left behind, along with those other worlds whose characters are waiting for me to bring them into a more concrete-ish existence in words.

I know there are people out there in the world, on vacations, getting errands instead of research for papers done on Saturdays, allowing themselves those odd distant things called "hobbies." Or at least allowing themselves to get that tire finally replaced on the car. Maybe I can stage a revolution in a week or so and bust out into the open air for some time--maybe even a Saturday--of non-grad school-related activities, maybe even some novel editing (while sitting at Goodyear, of course), once this presentation is done. It would be a daring expedition, involving much planning and diligence for me to not feel ridden with guilt.

See, the problem is that if I'm not careful, I'll be forming bonds with my captors (something to which my pattern of empathizing with my characters leaves me vulnerable). It's likely to happen any minute now...

What I Wasn't Expecting, Part 1: The Censor

I was expecting lots of things from my morning pages, but not this. I was hoping they'd help me to be more productive in all areas, not just creative writing, but I was also hoping to have them instantly clear the way for my creative writing to flow out of me. The last thing I expected from them was the message that it's okay to not feel guilty about not doing creative writing, particularly fiction.

As a background for those of you not familiar with The Artist's Way, the book talks about morning pages, those first 3 pages of free-writing after you roll out of bed in the morning, as highlighting the critics inside your head. What I didn't expect was that one of the voices I had to combat is one of the voices implicit in the book itself: the message that one must allow oneself tons of time for creative writing, or one would be a deficient artist.

Readers of many creative writing books (including The Artist's Way, ironically--check out the section called "Shadow Artists") will recognize this guilt I mention. All these books and courses and conferences carry with them an implicit--and often explicit--message that all those people out there who say that they have a novel in them but never finish it are idiots. On the contrary, a good disciplined writer, they say, must be committed to writing. That person is doing creative writing--preferably fiction--every day. That person is the one who gets to be a J. K. Rowling or John Grisham. To get there, you've got to get the thing done, they say.

It's all very true, if the goal is to become a fiction author like J. K. Rowling or John Grisham. One must actually write to get the book done, and one must then actually send that tome out into the world (often many, many times--with Rowling the first book took 27 submits, John Grisham 38, so legend has it) and follow through to give the thing a chance to be published. This is a truth, and this voice of guilt has been helpful to me at times to keep me moving.

The problem is that the voice of this writing self-help culture, ironically present in the books that are there to help you get through the issues to get to the writing, can at times be the very voice that stalls you from getting it--or anything else--done. This seems to be case for me lately. What I've been learning from my morning pages is that this guilt has created this voice in my head, which is fine most of the time. Recently, however, it's been very whiny and immature, drowning out all others with its demands that I put all my time into writing novels, now and forever. It has as its core a legitimate core, sure, this echo of my desire to write fiction, but it also needs to grow up and take its turn a bit more often, like a good voice in a mature person's head. In fact, if this was SuperNanny, I would say it would need a time out.

Yes, I've written a novel. Yes, I have it out at an agent right now, but no, I haven't revised the last 60 pages for the 6th time, which I've been saying I'll do for the last year now. Yes, I have several more novels I want to write. But what I've been noticing is that this voice in my head not only keeps me from working on those novels, it makes me feel guilty about everything else that's also a legitimate part of my writing life as well as part of my broader life. It keeps me in a bad place in my head, gives me a bad attitude about non-fiction-writing tasks, and stalls my productivity altogether at times.

It doesn't recognize all the other things I have been doing in the last year, writing-wise. And there's been a lot. To list just a couple of examples, I've written approximately 225 pages of graduate-level term papers this year. As a creative outlet, I've also written around half-a-dozen articles for catapult magazine. These things were important to do--in the first case, they're my primary occupation right now, as a graduate student. In the second case, they've garnered me a couple of print publications and given me the oomph to keep writing creatively during a time when working on long fiction just isn't feasible.

The list could go on, but the point is, it must be put in its place, this whiny fiction-demanding voice. The scary part is that it's one of my favorite voices--I really want to get my new novels written, and soon. But in order to make sure this voice is given the opportunity to grow up, and to make sure I'm not getting in the way of my other responsibilities, I may need to ground it until my priorities get more balanced. Unfortunately, grounding the voice may mean putting my novel projects on somewhat of a simmer at least until next summer. I want for sure to get those last 60 pages of revision and some more queries for the pretty-much-done novel done, O whiny voice. And I'll do occasional research into the world of the new novels, and maybe write a few new pages occasionally, but for the most part, the other novel-writing projects may have to lie fallow for awhile while I write another couple hundred pages of academic essays, more creative non-fiction, and, of course, blog entries.

For more on this idea of fallow projects, check back tomorrow--it deserves its own post.