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.

How Teaching Has Helped My Writing, Part Deux

So I'll admit it--when I went on Spring Break a little more than a week ago, I was very ready to bid Teaching goodbye, to thumb my nose and bid adieu (or at least au revoir for 10 days). Other than a few necessary academic tasks, I wanted to absorb myself fully in my novel process, which was tugging me toward it with the force of a very insistent small child.

I assuaged my guilt about this treatment of Teaching by writing my most recent post. But while I meant it, I was thrilled that the DNiP* had won the Writing vs. Teaching cage match for a short while.

And I'll tell you, I thoroughly enjoyed my week with the DNiP. I dove in full force. I vised. I revised. I read source materials and writings from my era. While I never seem to be able to achieve the 20 pages per week I long for, I won through to 74 pages of draft and felt confident about the first 50 of them. It was great. I realized that if I stay on this pace I'll be at a very respectable 150 pages by the end of the semester, which would leave me on track to finish the manuscript this summer.

And then it was Sunday, and I emerged from my cave. Someone asked me a simple question. I'm pretty sure I gave an answer that might have made sense. I wasn't sure. But at that point the pit in my stomach clenched up a bit, knowing that the upcoming summer of time alone with my DNiP might become a problem. See, it's possible that too much time alone with one's fictional creations and absorbed in that world could potentially be a bad thing for my social skills.

After the summer, will I be able to pull out of this daze I develop in these hermit-like spates of writing? Will I remember how to interpret and create appropriate non-verbal stimuli? Will I be able to converse on normal subject matter?

These questions are real (if slightly hyperbolic). At any rate, they drove me to very much enjoy the sociability of my teaching interactions yesterday. It's good to practice stringing sentences together orally so that an immediate audience can understand them. To focus on subjects that aren't associated with this all-consuming project that has such strong pull. To have a break from some of the heavy subjects and emotions that come with the research and writing.

Yup, this might have been the biggest reason for Marilynne Robinson's aversion to the writing life sans teaching I mentioned in the last post. I'm going to have to schedule some good regular social time this summer to balance out the solitude and absorption inherent in my writing time. Yes indeed.

*Dear Novel-in-Progress.

How Teaching Has Helped My Writing

I'll never forget what Pulitzer-prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson said once during an interview at Calvin College's Festival of Faith & Writing. It boiled down to the fact that she doesn't do well when she can't teach along with her writing.

At the time, not having had much experience with teaching, I thought it was sort of a funny thing to say. But now, having had several more years of teaching experience under my belt, I'm beginning to get it. I'm not sure that teaching is quite as indispensable to me as it is to Marilynne. But then, right now I'm deep into a particular project, and quite enjoy the times when I can be fully absorbed in its world.

But I can also see that my experience with teaching--and I do love teaching--has definitely helped improve my writing, both that for academic audiences and creative projects. This semester I'm really seeing the fruits of teaching in these seemingly non-teaching-related tasks.

Take my academic writing task for this morning. Since I'm going to present at the Popular Culture Association conference in a few weeks, I had to take an aspect of my nearly-300 page dissertation and turn it into an 8 page paper to present in 15-20 minutes. The fact that the last few years of teaching has given me experience in just how much complex information I can translate for students in a short amount of time helped me to complete this task in a short amount of time. (And of course the fact that I regularly teach public speaking didn't hurt either: I've planned several spots where I hope to draw the audience into the presentation through asking them questions, for instance.)

But academic writing isn't the only way that my teaching experience has been useful. In my NaNoWriSpr novel manuscripting project, I've noticed that my practice in persuading students to be interested in learning subjects they see to be boring or difficult has helped me in writing my novel as well.

After all, one can't assume one's readership comes into a novel automatically liking it, and so you have to make a strong case for their attention both at the beginning but also throughout the story while dispensing the right kind of background information at the right times. Watching where my students' attention flags--and knowing the same material strikes different classes in different ways--has helped me to be aware that my reader is likely doing the same with my writing at times.

Unlike with my teaching, I don't have immediate non-verbal feedback with my writing. My teaching experience has taught me, therefore, to get feedback during my development process from as many readers as possible to see how different types of people respond to my story. This, like my students' faces, helps me to see how well I'm doing to engage a range of people without relying too much on a single reader experience. And when a theme pops up over time in my reader feedback--as it tends to both in students' faces and in student evaluations--I know I need to consider how to adjust to better engage my audience.

Yup, I'm beginning to get a sense of why Marilynne Robinson said what she said about the teaching. Without the feedback, the practice in translating things for others, the face-to-face interaction with others in a setting like teaching, the process in writing can become a little disconnected from these crucial concepts. Like Marilynne, I'm thankful for the teaching experience I've been granted so far.

On Contentment; Or, When Things Go Well

It's amazing how easy it is to be content when things are going well. I taught my first classes yesterday, and am once again delighted to rediscover that I do indeed enjoy life more in second semesters, especially ones in which I get to teach in 75-minute class period. (Oh, how I love a longer class period in which to teach.)

And then I went to my first creative writing class.

I like creative people. I enjoy talking about creative writing things. It was fun.

It was a long day, but I went to bed with thoughts of the beginning of my novel--and woke up with them still there after a nice long sleep. This morning, to keep to my discipline of teaching first, I finished my slides for tomorrow's teaching (and they're good lessons, I think--I'm going to enjoy carrying them out).

But this afternoon I'm going to sit down and get some of the first scene down on the page. My goal that feels manageable: 20 novel pages per week average, spending at least 3 days per week pounding out 6-7 page chunks, which would lead, if all goes well, to a completed first draft by the end of the semester. I have the arc of at least the first few scenes in my head and at least some sense of how they tie into the overall story, so the first (and probably second week) should be fairly low on the "I don't know what the heck's happening next" scale. And hopefully by that time I'll have the next chunk roughed out in my head.

It feels like a gift, how the seeds of planning have taken root--how seamlessly my prep tasks for teaching and writing have flowed into the semester. My life, at the moment, is both balanced and fulfilling, and I know that doesn't happen every day.

I'm keenly aware of how privileged my life is right now, to be able to spend time doing things I love.

I know I'm blessed during the tough times, too, but today I'm feeling my blessedness more keenly than ever. And I wanted to get that down so I could look back later when things might not be going as perfectly and remember that this is a privilege, to be doing these things.

On Celebrating New Phases

I like to start things slow. I like to work my way into things. Dwell on them for as much time as it takes. Take my time.

While some delight in the early stages of dating, for instance, I wasn't a big fan at most points in my single life. No, for me the delightful deeper understanding of a long-term relationship.

Same with most things, for the most part. I don't mind going to new places, per se, or experiencing new things, but in the novelty vs. stability dialectic, I will usually vote for stability, at least when it comes to from scratch starts.

The fact that I'm loving the beginning of this DNiP* at this point is a misdirection, in a way. After all, it's been 5-6 years since I first conceived the idea for this project, and I just recently made a judgment call that I'd done enough research, let it simmer enough, and had enough slackening in my schedule of other responsibilities to commit it to paper with fear and trembling balanced with a measure of confidence for reasons I've already discussed in recent posts.

Which is to say that the type of novelty I absolutely adore involves entering new phases of larger projects once I'm into them. That's the kind of beginning I can get behind completely.

And that's the type of beginnings I'm entering on in this, my second semester of teaching at this particular university. In my teaching, I'm feeling profoundly blessed to be revising and extending courses and course concepts I've taught before, and in some classes teaching the same students I've already gotten to know and who have already gotten to know me. It's marvelous. While there are great parts to teaching a class the first time, I always feel like it's a first draft that had way too many things that ought not have been released yet, especially when I'm teaching it to a new set of students with an inevitably different student culture from the places I'd previously taught. First drafts, as Anne Lamott points out, are inevitably flawed. And so, in my opinion, are first semesters. On the other hand, second teaching semesters=fabulous opportunities to fix many of the most glaring flaws (and hopefully some of the smaller ones as well).

In creative writing territory, as mentioned above, while I'm not revising, I'm entering a new phase for which I largely feel ready. The fiction-writing seminar starts on Tuesday, and the way has been cleared. Five large recipes have been cooked in recent days, with the leftovers in the freezer to pull out as needed. My syllabi and lesson plans for the early parts of my teaching semester have been written. The online course environment has been set up with the most crucial documentation, and reasonable self-deadlines set up for other teaching-related tasks in the near future. The novel's background research has largely been completed, except for that which will be manageable to do during the writing of the first draft (and for that, the books and articles have been gathered for easy access). The plot and characters have been slowly forming in my thoughts and through notes. It's time--finally--to start writing the thing.

Three cheers for beginnings of new phases of projects already begun! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

*Dear Novel-in-Progress

Potential Cage Match!: Teaching-Prep Time Vs. Novel-Prep Time

After celebrating the holidays with family, I've been able to settle back in to some spring teaching prep during the last couple of days. Yesterday, specifically, enabled by a quiet household and lovely family members that made food readily accessible, I was able to achieve one spate of work in which I was able to work from around 9:30 a.m. (which was when I woke up) until roughly 5:30 p.m., and then again from 10:45 p.m. to 1:45 a.m.

During these 11 hours I revised a single syllabus, prepped PowerPoints for the first two weeks of that class, and then close-read 65 pages of the somewhat-dense textbook for my other (new) class in the spring in hopes of selecting the best chapters to add to that syllabus. Thanks to staying up late doing the reading, I only have 40 pages left to go in that textbook, which means I'm close to determining a reading schedule for the other class as well.

This all reminds me that teaching (well) is a lot of work. Which, to be honest, scares me a bit, as creative writing also involves a lot of work. I'm not worried, really, that I won't get both sets of work done this spring. What I suspect/hope will happen, rather, is that the change of rhythms between the two types of creative work will become routine, each giving me a break from the other while the promise of a break from each will encourage me to work harder as to give the other some room in my headspace.

That's what I hope, at least. But there could potentially be a Cage Match a-brewing.

Here's the difference between the two, as I currently see it: early-stage Teaching-Prep Time is the one who would systematically make sandwiches, leaning back out of the reach of Novel-Prep Time's airily-waved dagger in a potentially successful attempt to avoid any blows. While it can threaten to take over and always takes more time than you expect, early-stage Teaching-Prep Time is delightfully discrete in many ways. One can easily list things one must do:

Structure the syllabus. Re-read the policy wording to remove redundancies and include any changes one wanted to make based on the particular class or recent semester experiences. Read or re-read the textbook and lay out the schedule of readings and assignments appropriately, working across syllabi to double-check one's grading load along with student workloads. (Re-)Envision how to frame the class and the material for the students and plan any supplementary readings. Begin to create or revise lesson plans and PowerPoints for each day accordingly.

One begins to sense the enormity of the task of filling approximately sixty 75-minute segments of class with meaningful discussions and activities along with planning useful out-of-class work, but--especially when one of the classes has already been taught once--it seems like a possible enormity. And when one finishes 11 hours of work in a day, one feels accomplished.

Early-stage Novel-Prep Time, perhaps because it's still a less-familiar activity for me (having only completed one Novel in a Drawer previously), but also because of its nature, seems more amorphous and even more time-intensive:

Read background works on the era and space and writing in the genre. Try to figure out how much poetic license one wants to take with one's era, location, and genre. Attempt to deal with the emotions raised by realizing one will have to deal with difficult emotions during the novel-writing activity. Re-read portions of helpful writing books that help one deal with such emotions. Re-start one's blog as a form of public accountability along with a way to process one's thoughts about process. Read through more background works looking for potential inspirations for characters and plot twists along with period and location-specific language and details to insert. Try to imagine one's way into one's characters' heads and envision some of their backstory and potential actions. Jot down ideas as they pop up, referring back to previous notes to try to come up with some sort of useful brainstorming treasure trove, if not an actual outline. Read more novels in your genre, typing in whole passages to get muscle memory for the style and to enforce close reading of the text....

Take break to try to get emotional space and claim more space for future Novel-Prep Time by completing delightfully discrete Teaching-Prep tasks. Back to sandwich-making for awhile.

I'm beginning to understand why Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Gilead, once said she gave back the money a year and a half into a paid 5-year period of full-time creative writing. I may feel differently once I get into it, but right now, I'm glad to have some more structured work to fall back on during breaks.

Yes, this could work nicely, at least during this holiday break when both activities will be occasionally broken by the other delightful activities known by labels such as Sleeping, Exercise, and Talking to Non-Work-Related People. The balance is bound to change once the semester starts and Students, Colleagues, and Creative Writing Classmates enter the picture. Hopefully I'll have gotten enough done during the break that I'll be able to handle it somewhat gracefully, but only time will tell...

I have a feeling that once the semester starts, it will be Sleep that may suffer the most injuries as a bystander to this battle between these two would-be time conquerors that are already threatening to rumble.... Stay tuned to find out.