On the Writing Life and Seedlings (Re)Born

So I've posted about it briefly on Facebook, but I truly haven't mentioned here why I've restarted this blog. Here it is: I've finally entered a season of my academic life, for the next few months at least, when it will be possible to actually balance my writing life, both of the academic and the creative varieties, with my teaching life.

It could have been possible over the summer, but I had to move and was pretty burnt out (still recovering from a very full load of teaching so soon after finishing the diss, so regeneration was needed before this semester, which involved a new school and new classes and all the adjustments that come with that.

Despite all that, though, over this summer and into this past semester I was able to crack slowly back into my writing side, like one of those seeds from childhood school projects beginning to germinate and push back up through the dirt surrounded by the inevitable styrofoam cup.

It started small, as it should: a couple of more articles written for the ever-delightful catapult magazine; finally cleaning up a chunk out of my MA thesis from years ago and sharing it at a conference this fall for some great feedback; and then finally revising a couple of chunks of my dissertation intro and extending out the ideas in semi-new directions. I'm grateful to note that both conference papers have been accepted for spring academic conferences. And in the midst of the semester I jotted down some ideas for a diss-related journal article and for turning my diss theory into a book down the road.

Without even talking about my projects for this break, next semester, and the spring (I'll save those for later posts), now that I look at the list of "small" starts, that it's pretty miraculous that I think of this list as small, because my pre-PhD self would have thought of it as a huge list. I won't lie--the PhD process and the dissertation were painful, and I protested much in the midst of them and afterwards. But as I've mentioned here before, my writing muscles have become strong, and my writing stamina grew tremendously from those challenges. I'm delighted by this, and am delighted to be back, firmly planted and with my writing life's metaphorical seedling head again above the soil to the point where it seemed obvious that I would restart this blog.

Sometimes that whole instant gratification thing is overrated, and as my students and I discussed the other way, the work itself--regardless of what happens with it--is valuable. I'm so thankful I was given the strength to stick it out, or I wouldn't be ready for new challenges!

As She Heaves a Sigh of Relief...

So the last week has been busier than a first week of "vacation" (i.e., a few month period of slightly less academic work per week) ought to be, perhaps. The day after my semester was completed, I went north for a short 2-day visit. After that, I worked my 11 hours at my assistantship and finished my revise and resubmit for the book chapter due May 15 (that's 1600 new words for 16 pages of revisions).

And then I abstracted (150 new words) one of the papers I'd written for the end of the semester and sent it off as a conference proposal for a fall academic conference. Finishing this up as my parents (who had arrived that evening) slept.

The next day, I went with them to Chicago for a short 2-day visit. We spent one day at a professional sporting event, where I enjoyed being outside and cheering instead of staring at a computer screen, and then seeing relatives, where I was overwhelmed by seeing a large clump of people after my hermit-like grad school existence.

The next day, I got to go to the Newberry Library and do archival research toward my dissertation. I'll just say I could live there. I love that place.

Anyway, I got home and tried to wrap my brain around the paper that I was sure was due this Wednesday while trying to logistically prepare for the conference I have to go to on Wednesday through Friday. After two days, I had a place to stay and a way to get there, but I'd only gotten as far on the paper as a written outline. And so, this morning, I was immeasurably glad when I got an email changing the deadline for the paper to June 15.

Collective sigh of relief, please.


Thanks. Now there's time to actually get academically ready for this week's conference. (I've written the long versions of the conference papers, but must figure out what of that I can say in only a few minutes and read other people's papers on my panel.)

Upon Emerging from One's Cave (1)

Okay, sorry about the title, but I just finished re-reading Plato's cave story for my Rhetoric, Poetics, and Narrative class. I have many issues with the analogy, but I'll spare you the details and move straight on to my main point.

Which is that I'm noticing in retrospect that it was a much rougher semester last semester than I thought it was. I won't get into why that was, but it seems to me that, indeed, the Old Me is back.

I can tell this how? Well, for one, my energy levels are back. I think my many beach walks over the break helped this, as did a spate of eating better. Plus a few weeks of doing very little (other than the daily walk) has made me excited to turn off the TV and get to work. And I'm excited to keep up the exercise routine and the better eating as well, now that I've got a significant start on it. I even want to get up in the morning, most mornings, which is odd for me.

And along with the energy levels, my reader's block is gone gone gone. Sure, Barthes is a little slow reading, but my time management and motivational parts of myself, who seem to have been on vacation in some distant planet for awhile now, found me on the beach and seem to have come back with me. I'm even motivated to do non-school-related errands and housework and such.

This is good, because this is laying the groundwork for some good writin' time. I can feel it. (That's good as there are some conference deadlines speeding my way in less than a month.)

Woohoo! The semester is fresh and the energy is, too.

Day 13: The Leaves Might Be Dead, But I'm not Quite Yet

Depressing time of year, November. Here in Indiana, the leaves are mostly off the trees now, and any that aren't are being stripped off by the seemingly incessant cold rains. The sky is that lovely oppressive iron grey color, and once again, predictably, I've fallen into a funk, wishing with the king in Dr. Seuss's Bartholomew and the Oobleck that I could invent a new kind of precipitation.

Or at least have some snow, since it's prettier than rain. Or perhaps hibernate, like the bears.

Of course, there are several other factors adding to this mood. There are several people I'm waiting to hear back from regarding whether I can get a hold of items for my end-of-semester research papers this term, as well as for possibilities for exactly what I'll be doing next semester. And then there are questions with who I'll get to see and when during the Christmas break.

So basically, if I were given the task of marketing The Month of November, I might not be able to come up today with a better slogan than:

NOVEMBER. NOT MUCH FUN.

Then again, unlike the leaves, and despite this miserable waiting (how come Advent, the liturgical season of waiting, always seems to come early to me, I ask?) on several fronts, I'm not dead yet. The glass is half-full as well--granted, at the moment it's half-filled with rain, perhaps, but it's definitely not all bad.

• I'm halfway through my writing experiment, and I'm on track.
• I'm quite a bit more than halfway through my semester, and the next couple of weeks are lighter ones for school assignments, which means I can get ahead on my school assignments and still have space to work on some creative projects too.
• I live a pretty privileged life, really--food, clothes, shelter, grad student life that's intellectually stimulating, etc.

Okay, self-pep talk over. The glass still feels a bit half-empty, but at least I have the oomph to go to school and work on some transcripts before attending my last class for the week. Ooh, there's another one: it's Friday, and I made it this far.

THOSE Kind of Days...

So I've been a bit tired. I think it has to do with having written 23 pages of academic essay in four days (with only one day of break in-between) and then handed it in on Tuesday afternoon, officially completing my independent study for the summer.

So on Tuesday night, I hit the usual bottom. I was tired, and crabby. Feeling like it was impossible to jump right into other kinds of writing. And like all of this was too much for my writing practices to deal with.

And that I'd been working so hard to be the perfect writer, with the perfect practices and techniques that surely should allow me to jump right from producing what I only hoped turned out to be semi-insightful academic prose (that will later form the base for part of my dissertation) into revising my novel manuscript and working on the new one with no transition time.

Well, I eventually made it to sleep but despite exhaustion, didn't sleep well. When I woke up, things didn't feel much better, but after some cuddling with the cats, I picked up Leif Enger's new fiction book, which I'd had out of the library but hadn't gotten a chance to read yet. After a few pages, I realized three things:

1. My friend Cindy was right--it was amazing, in that the prose was beautiful and the story was engaging, all at the same time. That, in fact, I shouldn't get too far into it because I had to go to work.
2. I was not alone. The narrator was a writer dealing with feelings of inadequacy and having difficulty finding the inspiration to write some decent stuff. 'Nuff said.
3. That what I should really be doing with all these depressing feelings was to start thinking out my new chapter in my new novel--after all, the characters in that novel are dealing with various angst-filled situations right now, so I should be striking while the iron was hot, as it were, and tapping into the present emotional types to remember other emotions, then smelting down, transmuting, and pouring the material into my characters in a new form.

Ah, the power of the self-evident to occasionally jolt one into action. See, I told myself, the practices really do work, stupid. One should not doubt like that.

But I'm sure it will happen again--'tis the nature of the beast. At such times I feel grateful, though, that I'm a creative writer--maybe not everyone gets to experience my wild mood swings, but most of them don't get to alchemically translate them into imaginary experiences for imaginary people, either, which is a pretty amazing thing to get to be able to do.

There's a beauty in knowing that no horrible, awful, no good, rotten experience I have is for naught--with time, a bit of distance, and a proper application of imagination in order to see how it might apply to someone in a different situation with a different experience and personality, it can become material.