filling the void with LIFE!
My experiment in going off-line is fascinating; instead of feeling like a hardship, it seems to be taking on a life of its own, bleeding out into the rest of my life, unwilling to stay corralled on Saturdays. For the second or third Saturday in a row — can’t remember now — I did not go on the internet yesterday except for pointed and specific reasons. I opened an email from Marnie, who sent me images of her most recent page spreads, and I responded. That’s just fine, I’m not against using it for specific reasons like that. The difference is that I go on, get/do the thing, and get off. I don’t just check facebook first. I get off.
I spent yesterday, snowy cold yesterday, sitting in my sunny window writing. Writing requires research, so I used the internet for that specific purpose: what was the population of Sinton, TX in 1946? How many banks were there downtown, and how were they arranged? What do sorghum fields look like, exactly? Also, I made deviled eggs for my husband, I watched a movie with him, I knitted. The day was leisurely, long, and satisfying. My mind feels more focused, even though my sleep is currently so screwed up I’m exhausted. (Last night was typical: asleep at midnight, up at 1, trying to go back to sleep until 2, up in the living room until 3:30, back to bed trying to get to sleep until 5:30, up at 6:30.) Exhausted scatterbrainyness aside, my mind is less cluttered.
And so I extend this experiment another day — an internet-free weekend. It didn’t really take that long to break the craving, the checking-Google-reader craving, the running-through-facebook craving. Meh. Everyone’s still there, doing what they do. The makers are making and blogging about it. The foodies are cooking or eating and blogging about it. The critics are critiquing, the writers are writing, the funny are being funny. They’ll still be doing it tomorrow, I’m sure. For today, I have things of my own to do. I think I’ll make a big French press pot of coffee and get back to my desk in the sunny window. There’s little snow left on the ground, but it’s a bright sunny day, reflecting off the snow remnants. Happy Sunday y’all, whatever you plan to do today.
there’s very little that’s more enjoyable than finding the right words to say something very clearly.
I just read this and feel such delight at the prospect of thinking about it:
Henri Michaux wrote, in The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones: ”Just as the stomach does not digest itself, just as it is essential that the stomach do no such thing, the mind is constructed in such a way that it cannot grasp itself, cannot directly, continuously grasp its own mechanism and action, having other matter to grasp.”
I’m not at all sure that the reason the mind cannot grasp itself is that it’s too busy grasping other matters, nor am I entirely sure that the mind cannot grasp itself (or am I…), but I love this idea and look forward to thinking about it.
I’m trying to figure out how to write an experiential scene of dissociation, where the character makes the shift into dissociation. We all dissociate, even just to a mild degree; we zone out, we do a little zombie thing, we step out of the immediate environment, even if just for a second. Of course there’s a more profound kind of dissociation, in which a person psychologically flees the scene and leaves the body behind to take the heat. People sometimes talk about watching themselves as if they’re floating overhead; that form seems pretty easy to write. Other people talk about kind of being in an all-white (or some colored) space, as if nothing else exists. And other people dissociate and only know it when they’re “back,” and realize that some time has passed. The jargon for that is “lost time,” as in I’ve been losing time.
So this question of the mind grasping itself seems somehow relevant and interesting in terms of dissociation. I think there’s something in it for my current dilemma, I just need time to think about it. But that probably won’t come today, unfortunately, so I record it all here, for my safekeeping. If something strikes you, I’d love to hear it!
Let go of the past and go for the future. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you imagined. ~[good old] Thoreau
It’s early — only two days into my big life project — so it’s really premature to make any pronouncements. But I do have these comments, in case they’re helpful to any of you trying to pursue a similar dream:
Coming up with a routine has been a great help. Since my dream is writing, my routine is organized to make that as easy to begin as possible, since it’s the beginning that’s usually so hard. Initially, I have these things in my calendar, and I’m being a little bit rigid about them: Up at 6, do my morning page writing (~15 minutes it takes). Have breakfast. Write for a minimum of one hour, but no more than 1.5 hours. Get to work (dang it).
But here’s the genius thing. Morning pages are meant to be crap. Just brain dump, freewriting, keeping the fingers moving until you hit 750 words (or whatever marker you set). It’s meant to be junk. It’s meant to be waste. What I’ve been doing these past two mornings is using the morning pages to work out what I’m going to write. Just rambly exploration, getting me going. This morning when I was writing my morning pages, it felt like something just clicked and I completely understood what it is to be a writer of fiction. I was writing about what I was going to write about, and I started talking about the characters like this: “then the kids should do this. What would happen if the father did this? What would the kids do? The options for the father are this, this, and this. If he does this, what would the kids do? Blah blah blah.” It was also neat because it shifted me more toward fiction and away from just telling my own little story, which is my tendency. It was very neat. So then I was outlining how the action would unfold, after I’d figured out what the father and everyone else would do. Then I went back and made notes – so this is a place to really showcase the mother’s cruelty in dialogue. This section is a good place to get a description of the kitchen. IT WAS FUCKING AMAZING. Like some kind of real shift from navel-gazing diarist to novelist.
The accidental brilliance of this routine is that my morning pages writing has no pressure, but helps me get going. Then I stop and have breakfast, and while I’m making and eating it, despite myself I’m thinking about what I came up with, refining it, and getting more and more excited to get going. I have to force myself not to bolt my food — my other bad tendency, so this is helping me have to stay mindful and “be” eating breakfast — because I’m eager to get to the writing.
I had no idea this would work in this way. I’m great at coming up with schemes, usually overly-scheduled and rigid, and usually ineffective. That’s ok, you try something, it doesn’t work, you try something else. But this time it really opened the door.
finally, taking up this one big dream.
OK — here is my big leap, taking my vague handwavey post from several days ago and making it concrete. Once you put something into words, and even more, once you say it out loud, it’s real in a different way, and you’re accountable in a different way. It’s easy to have all kinds of half-seen dreams floating around, those “some day” thoughts that tickle, and as long as they stay there, they’re no threat.
It has always been so scary to think about this, and of course the reasons are obvious. As long as I don’t try, I don’t have to face failure, if I’m not actually very good. As long as I don’t try, I don’t have to be uncomfortable in that way. As long as I don’t try, I can keep doing all the wonderful avoidance things I do. Like “well, I’ll just run through facebook/google reader and then I’ll do it.” Ha, of course.
It occurs to me quite often that the only difference between me and creative people I admire is that they do it, they don’t just think and talk about it. They might be better or worse than me, but the important difference is that they’re doing it, and I’m just thinking about doing it. Or talking about doing it. Or talking about thinking about it. Oh I’m so clever at this avoiding business.
So here it is, my big dream. At the highest level, my big dream is to finally live a creative life. Me being me, I’ve made an Excel spreadsheet, breaking this down into a number of areas, but they all fall under this umbrella. I can so easily get lost in the pleasure of spreadsheets and multi-level outlines, with footnotes and cross references, but for this post I focus on just one very big piece.
I want to write a book. A novel. This is my desperate big dream. Working as an editor has really helped me get closer to this goal; I am so much better at understanding what makes a story work, what makes a story move or stall, what makes a character come alive or remain flat. I have a lot to say, and I believe that if I can just get out of my own way and unclench my jaw a little bit, I can do it. But I’ll never do it if I don’t begin.
I’ve thought a lot about what stops me, and one thing that almost always pushes the pause button is my elevation of authors and novels to such a vaulted place. Books saved my life as a child, and that’s not an exaggeration. To think that I might write something that a reader would keep in his or her heart, something that would give someone an idea of other ways of living and being, that’s about as noble a thing as I personally know. Art can do that for us, it saves us and creates us and helps us understand the world and our own experience. But thinking of it that way is intimidating.
One thing I want to do to help myself is to develop a creative routine. For a few weeks I wrote a minimum of 750 words every morning — morning pages — and boy did it cut something loose in me. I felt like a different kind of observer in the world. I’m also organizing my week so I do at least one expanding thing a week: go to an art exhibit or one of the fantastic museums here in town; go to a performance of some kind, theater, talk, reading; if ever there were a place that makes this goal easy and do-able, it’s Manhattan for heaven’s sake.
This is part of a bigger project, so it’s a kind of interlocking puzzle. It’ll be hard to make it work, since I also need to resume my strength training and I have other physical goals that require time, other social goals that require time. I’m scared and excited, and more than a little bit intimidated.
Thanks for the support you give me by visiting and reading my blog, and by leaving comments when you do. You’ve helped me on my way more than you know.
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~Thomas Mann
the dreaded blank page
No one professes to love words more than I do, I’m pretty convinced about that. Not only am I paid to read and write all day long, my graduate research focused on the words we use and what that means about us psychologically, I’ve been a voracious reader since I was 3 years old and had my own library card, and I write a lot. Here, now and then, very long emails to friends, a bit of poetry, and some personal writing. Also: I say I am writing a memoir.
I believe in daily writing, and read The Artist’s Way back in the 80s and imagine that doing morning pages is a brilliant idea. And since I know the research about the striking power of doing regular stream-of-consciousness writing, I think it’s not just brilliant but great for you in every way, physically, emotionally, psychologically, creatively. I adore Anne Lamott’s exhortation to write shitty drafts, and think that’s so liberating. That’s right, this one is expected to be shitty! I can do that!
I want to be a writer, I think it’s the most exalted thing to do. Books saved my life as a young girl, giving me a way to imagine other possibilities than the life I was living. The Hunchback of Notre Dame gave me the idea of searching for sanctuary, even if you’re a hideous outcast. Life saving. No exaggeration. If I could write words that could give someone that kind of thing, well, I can’t even imagine that.
And now, reality:
“Tomorrow morning I’m going to do morning pages.”
I’ll just go through my Google Reader this morning and do that tomorrow.
“Just write a shitty draft of a few paragraphs and see where they go.”
I think I’ll make some tea and look at the NYTimes, I’m just not in the mood to do that right now.
And so on. And so forth. Etc, etc, etc. One of my clients has written a really incredible book, so exciting and vivid and creative, and I feel lucky to be working on it with him. I’m kind of in awe of how he came up with it. He tells me it’s a kind of job, it’s work, he doesn’t wait for ‘inspiration,’ he just works at it, keeps working on it. Another of my brilliant clients (interview with her here) says writing is misery, she does it every day. I read an interview with a writer this morning, who said the way you get better is by putting your butt in that writing chair every day and just writing. Of course I know that. And she made a little video of a song she wrote which includes the point that you just have to “push that c^*ksucking boulder up the motherf^*#king hill”. Go Nike and Just Do It.
I found a website called 750words (http://750words.com/) that presents you with a totally blank screen and your words are counted while you type, at the bottom of the screen. So of course I signed up and wrote today’s 750 words (which translates to about 3 pages). What did I write about today? This. My inability to write, and why I do this, by which I mean I don’t do this. We’ll see.
Do you stop yourself before you start, like I do? How do you make yourself do it anyway? I’m looking for ideas.
it comes and goes, it comes and go-oh-oh-oes…
First, isn’t that the weirdest word, rhythm? The spelling always slows me down. Rhythm. Rhythmic. Weird.
Anyway. I get so distracted. I’ve been thinking about this general pattern that happens in life, where everything ebbs and then flows. My work is certainly like that; I’ll go through periods of being inundated with new clients/patients, and then periods of absolute silence, no work. It’s gone on long enough that I know it’s somehow just the rhythm of things. I don’t know why all at once lots of people want editing, and then for a long time no one wants it, but it does seem to go in clumps.
When I was a kid, I’d have periods of absolute addiction to reading (that was the bulk of my time, for sure) with periodic brief lulls where I just felt so burned-out by reading I didn’t think I could bear to pick up a book. It also happened with the what of my reading: obsession with literary fiction to the exclusion of everything else, and then a profound disinterest in it, and all that felt interesting was nonfiction.
And handwork follows the same kind of pattern — the frequently-mentioned “loss of mojo.” I think it’s just the same kind of deal, this ebb and flow rhythm of things. When you enjoy doing a lot of different things, that helps; a period of boredom with knitting just means more time to spin! When my kids were young, there was always so much to do and so little time, I don’t remember this experience happening too often, because there wasn’t time to immerse myself in any one thing for too long. I made most of their clothes, smocked the girls’ dresses, was president of the spinner’s and weaver’s guild (and obviously I loved to spin and weave), I did some quilting – piecing and quilting entirely by hand, and aside from that, I played guitar and picked a little banjo, and made big meals every night and had to make everything from scratch because of my son’s severe allergy to corn syrup. Even our bagels. Everything.
And I find this ebb and flow happens in blogging, too — for me and for others. I’m in an ebb right now, and was in one for most of March, due to that flare-up of depression. (Does depression flare up? That sounds too active for such a down experience.) Now, though, I’m not depressed but I just talk myself out of writing whatever I think to write about. “Nah, that’s too boring.” “Trite.” “Who cares.” “Really? Really?” The closely-examined life can sometimes just be too closely examined, I think during these ebb periods. I love my life as it is, and don’t want to change anything fundamental about it, but it’s not a lively exciting life, filled with daily adventures and drama to share. I wake up between 5 and 6, usually, grind my beans and make some coffee, drink it while poking around online, then I sit and edit manuscripts all day long, until it’s time for dinner. I eat, we clean up, then I knit and we watch something together. Then I hit the sack.
Even this post is dull and uninteresting, but instead of talking myself out of it I’ll just click publish. I’m pretty sure I’ll move from ebb back to flow one of these days!
Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.
This morning I met a blog friend for breakfast – our first real-life meeting, but certainly not our last, if I have anything to say about it (hi Nancy!!). I was not at all surprised to find that we have a lot in common, some similar experiences (similar in essence if not in detail), similar sensibilities, and similar tendencies to smile. It was a wonderful experience, getting to meet her. She knew more about me than I know about her, of course, but I was struck by how close my developed sense of her was to my real experience of her. I think this would be true with most of you who read my blog and leave comments. Also: I think I would like you so much, as much in real life as in blog comments.
What did surprise, me, though was Nancy’s first question of me, which was why. Why do I do this, why do I write in this public forum, why do I share so much of myself here. It’s a good question, and it’s certainly one we all think about if we keep a blog — why, how much, what voice, where’s the line. We also grapple with our own definition of the personal, if we reveal personal experiences. Even though it’s a question I’ve thought about, my response was awkward and kind of graceless, and not really much of an answer. It’s such a good question, so I thought I’d say more here.
Why do I do this, why do I keep this blog, why do I reveal the things I reveal? First, I kept a blog a few years ago that was really personal; in fact, compared to that one, this blog does not feel personal at all. For a number of reasons, some of which had to do with one of the blog’s followers, I shut down the blog. And I missed it, terribly. This blog represents a kind of compromise, because the fact is that I don’t talk about deeply personal material.
So what does that mean to me, “personal material?” I talk about knitting, obviously (not very personal there); I share my thoughts about things, my feelings about things, some of my experiences; I tiptoe around the edges of sharing some bits about my past, but typically in oblique fashion. I don’t, though, talk about my deeply personal struggles, of which there are many. Those are the private issues I share with friends and my family, and sometimes not even with them. I don’t talk about issues that carry embarrassment or shame, typically. I don’t talk about experiences from my past that are shocking.
So here’s the big why, for me. When I was growing up, our life was secret. Our family life was extremely different behind the doors of our house than anyone knew. This is true for a lot of people, and there are lots of different reasons this happens. Mine may be unique in degree, and in reason, but this is not a rare thing. We children were explicitly told that everyone was like us, which left me with a profound uncertainty about the world, and an abiding desire to peek into others’ lives. I love driving around at night, and seeing how people live (if their curtains are open!) — ah, so that’s what people do. They watch tv. They talk, they play games, they knit, they do housework, the kids do homework. That’s what people really do at home. Ah. All these years later, I still need verification.
I got a PhD in psychology because I don’t understand people; human life is mysterious to me, why people do what they do, and anyway, what do people do?
So I write in the personal way I write because my life is not a secret. Parts are private, but I’m the one who gets to decide what that means, and where the line is. I write to feel less alone, because I think we all feel the same things, we all struggle in the dark, we all have moments of thinking we’re the only ones who, we all face the essential questions of meaning and responsibility, and we all sit alone in the silence now and then and long for connection.
I write to be known (even though I fully realize that what I present is crafted, and you’re knowing some version of me that may bear only a slight resemblance to the full me). I write to connect with you. I write so I don’t feel so alone, and I write so you don’t feel so alone, too.
why can’t i just say “i’m a photographer”?!
When do you shift from saying “I do X” to “I am a X“ From, for example, I knit, to I am a knitter. I design, I am a designer. I like to write, I am a writer. There is an important psychological shift that has pretty fascinating implications for health-related concerns – I have diabetes –> I am a diabetic.
This morning I was reading through a ravelry forum about photography. One woman said something like “I am a photographer blah blah” and she gave a link to her work. I really love photography; I have favorite photographers, books about the philosophy of photography and how-to books; I have a folder of photos of favorite photographs. And I enjoy taking photographs. So I clicked the link to see her work and it was really not good at all. Very poor lighting, trite, poor quality of the images themselves, etc. And she is a
me and my camera
photographer. My photographs aren’t anything special, but they are considerably better than hers.
So my point is not to boast about my photographs, because I’m not doing that, but rather to think about the identity issue. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to make those kinds of claims – it’s not as if it matters! I could walk around saying “I’m a writer,” “I’m a photographer,” “I’m a baker,” etc., and it would not make one bit of difference to the world or to anyone. But I can’t do it. I like to write, I like to take pictures, I like to make bread. I see other people making the claim, and I’m always in a bit of awe at their self-confidence.
I can imagine possible reasons for my hesitation: it feels like bragging; it feels like I’m saying “I am a professional X” when I’m not, and if anyone looked at 
my ‘work’ that’s exactly what they’d think, that I’m full of myself, or lying in some way. I think another aspect relates to my thoughts about writing and photography; books have always been extremely important to me, and I hold writers in very high esteem. They have a kind of exalted place in the world, to my mind. Photographers less so, but good photographers can transform people, understandings, even policy. To say “I am a writer” just feels impossible. Salman Rushdie is a writer. Cormac McCarthy is a writer. Victor Hugo is a writer. Jose Saramago is a writer. I am not Rushdie, or any of those.
I also think that saying “I am a” invites people to ask if they’ve seen/read your work. It implies public or professional acceptance and reward. At a party: “I’m a writer.” “Really, have I read anything of yours?” “No, I just like to write.” Clunk.
But that’s not what people mean when they casually claim these identities (I think). The ravelry woman is a photographer because she takes pictures. Maybe I just need to get over myself and quit over-thinking everything. I do have a tendency to do that. In psychology, there is a construct called “need for cognition,” the meaning of which is pretty obvious. People vary along a continuum in their need for cognition, and I’m way way way at the top of the scale. 99th percentile, I’d guess. 
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