Day 27: The Fear of Finishing

This past week, I discovered a new form of torture.

It goes like this: I have two to three days of full-blown, all-out writing. I’m talking the best writing days of my life: the I’ve-finally-revised-that-troublesome-scene kind of day, the elusive-climactic-moment-finally-made-right kind of day, the this-is-the-reason-I-do-this, maybe-I’m-decent-at-this-after-all, I-think-all-those-years-were-really-worth-it kind of a day. I’m talking about glorious, beautiful, easy, right-brain writing heaven. When writing IS that thing we tell our parents it is. The days are so good, I think, “My God, two to three more like this and I will finally be DONE!” This, of course, leads to fantasies about book deals and query letters and agents (ahem, call me). I find myself imagining book covers, famous people’s blurbs, and readings that I can give in places I would like to visit. At the end of such a day, I go to bed, stare at my darkened ceiling, and let myself whisper, “I am just about there…”

Then, the next morning– Nothing. Complete and utter agony. Horrified staring at my screen. A complete and utter stall. All joy in writing has vanished. All joy in life has vanished. It is painful, awful work, this writing thing, and while I’m at it, my book is awful, too, and don’t try to argue with me, I know what I know…and oh, does knowledge hurt. I spend a sullen, mournful day watching Law & Order SVU or reruns of The Walking Dead, then I proceed to clean my house. The following day goes much the same. And then the one after that. And then after that until I am at the ecstasy’s polar opposite: the terrible, terrible agony when I worry if I will ever find joy in writing again. I contemplate medical school. I think about a degree in Rhetoric and Writing. I look for a way to return to retail.

The fear of finishing. A quick Google search lead me to a number of forums, blog posts, articles, and even a dissertation where different people–some of them writers–ponder why humans put so much work into a task and then suddenly go into hiding, right there at a project’s most crucial moment: the terrifying end. In a post titled “Whip your fear of finishing,” blogger Chad Schomber explains the phenomenon as follows:

To use a football analogy, going 99 yards is easy. It’s that last yard, crossing over into the end zone, that’s the hardest. The same holds true for writing a novel, designing a logo or filing our taxes. Right when we can see the end, our brains whoa the horses, momentum slows and we sink into procrastination. Why?

Maybe we fear criticism. Or we’re not sure what to do next. Or worst yet, we lack the confidence to say it’s done because it’s not perfect. It’s natural to feel that way. But heed Miles’ advice to Joel in Risky Business: sometimes, you have to say what the fuck, and finish.

Katherine Jenkins, another blogger, discusses her own moment of procrastination at the end of finishing her own book. She writes:

What I’ve come to realize is that dreams are never quite like reality. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dream. You must dream. Just don’t get stuck in the dream. Put a foundation under that dream of yours, otherwise what’s the point? Dreaming and coming up with ideas are the easy part. Seeing your dreams through to the very END is the hard part. Why? Because when you dream about becoming an author or an actor or a painter or a musician or starting a business or changing careers or having a baby or getting married, the pictures of what this life looks like in your mind’s eye are, well, dream-like. You don’t imagine the baby screaming non-stop or the hours of writing with no human contact or the money issues or the lack of work or the economy crashing. Everything in your dream is rosy and cheery and maybe even….perfect!

But nothing is perfect. No one’s life is perfect. I’m not a perfect writer. But I continue because I set this dream into motion. I put the foundations down. I asked for it and I got it and now I have to FINISH IT!

I am reminded of one of the most beautiful and most profound things I ever heard a student say to me. When I asked him why he kept turning in his stories late, he said, “I do not have the heart to write them down. They are so perfect in my head, and none of it comes out like I imagine.” Is the advice for me, here at the end, any different than the advice I once gave to him?

Put the pen to the paper, turn off the excuses, and write.

 

Day 20: Focus Focus

Hold onto your hats, folks, it’s about to get metaphysical in here.

On my writing desk, I keep a handful of things: an array of notebooks, a tin of pens, random memorabilia like a sumo wrestler paperweight and a glass fish within a fish, a scattering of framed photographs, Japanese candy, tissues, hand lotion, scotch tape, and a deck of Oracle Cards by Doreen Virtue called “Healing with the Angels.”

There are a number of writers who work with tarot cards including Stephen King, John Steinbeck, and Italo Calvino, who is quoted as saying that the tarot is “a machine for writing stories.”  If you Google “writers and the tarot,” you’ll encounter a slew of websites that offer the tarot as a useful  tool for writers (including this one that helps you choose a tarot deck and this one that offers different writerly spreads and this one that connects a group of Minnesota writers in an online forum).  Each presents ideas on exploring plot, developing characters, understanding setting, and other ways of overcoming writerly obstacles.

While I’ve used tarot cards in the past, over my own systems of trial and error, I have worked through different decks of cards and wound up with the Angel ones at my desk because, unlike the above authors, I don’t usually seek plot or character insight, I seek encouragement.  Whenever I am at a loss or feeling down or unsure why I am doing this thing writing thing anyway, I pull a card.

Today, I pulled a card for Writer’s March, and here is what I got:

And so, the angels offer up the advice of “Focus.”  I had to laugh because this is one card I pull for myself nearly every day, no matter how many times I shuffle the deck (which is crazy because there are 44 to choose from).  And here is the message:

Think about what you want, not what you don’t want.  Guard your thoughts carefully, because they create your experiences.

Sometimes it seems that our thoughts choose us, but this is never the case.  We always choose our thoughts–every moment.  Our thoughts always have an effect, and there are no neutral thoughts.  One-half second before you hold a thought, you decide to hold it.  So, with practice, you can learn to monitor and alter your thoughts.  This is the equivalent of putting your hands on the steering wheel of your life.

I love this card.  I usually pull it when I find myself getting distracted or making excuses for work.  It appears when I tell myself things like, “I don’t have time,” or “I’m too tired,” or “I can’t do this right now.”  The message of the card is simple.  Our thoughts have power.  When we think in the word “can’t,” we cut ourselves down because thoughts equal actions. If we think in can’t, then we won’t.  If we believe we can write, then we will.  If we believe we don’t have enough time or can’t muster the effort, then we won’t even try.  If we believe our work has meaning, then it does.

I cannot think of a more fitting message for Day 20 of this Writer’s March.  Perhaps, if you are like me, you are feeling the weight of the month.  It’s easy at this time, to cast our goals aside, to forget, to put off, to defer, to decline.  Well, friends, as the Angel oracle says: “Think about what you want, not what you don’t want.”  If you committed to this month, it is because you wanted to put writing in your life.  Remind yourself of why.  Now, go to it.  Act.  Write.

 

Day 17: The Power of Limited Choice

By Lisa Hase-Jackson, guest blogger

Fear is a familiar feeling to all artists, and writers are certainly not immune. Some of the more common triggers of fear include anticipated failure or, as is often the case, anticipated success. For writers in particular, fear is often triggered just by considering the likely ostracism that may occur from revealing family secrets, or by the realization that what was written in a passionate moment of active imagination will appear to be worthless drivel in the light of day.

Perhaps the biggest fear faced by many writers on a daily basis it that of the blank page. Even assuming a writer can overcome the overwhelming number of possibilities represented by the blank page, there are still myriad choices to make – or choices to rule out – once the page is no longer blank and writing has begun in earnest. Let us posit, then, that the progressive limiting of possibilities which occurs during the act of writing is perhaps the most difficult fear for writers to overcome – for though the writer experiences the anxiety this progressive limiting of choices represents, the underlying reason often remains obscure.

Most writers agree that the first line of any piece determines what that piece will be, as well as what it cannot be. Setting aside academic arguments over what constitutes a poem versus what constitutes a short story, it’s reasonable to suggest that once a writer ends a first line of writing somewhere before the right margin, the work in question can be labeled a poem. Conversely, this small but significant decision to hit the return key before the punctuated end of a sentence reasonably rules out the possibility of such forms and genres as the essay, the article, the epic novel, the play, or even the short story.

And that’s only the first line.

Since each line of a poem necessarily does a great deal of work (or should), the choices made and ruled out with each subsequent line after the first will determine the poem’s rhyme scheme, its form, its overall length, and whether the poem will be narrative, lyric, or something likely to be described as experimental. In the act of writing the poem, then, the poet – whether aware or not – is evoking every craft lesson, every respected opinion, every piece of mythology, and every aesthetic preference they have ever encountered or developed in their respective writer’s journey to this very moment of selective choices. What’s not overwhelming about that? Further, because (and most writers agree) the imagined poem is nearly always better than what appears on the page, the act of writing (and selective limiting of choices) is nothing less than a courageous gesture of considerable mettle resulting in an extraordinary ability to conquer fear on a daily basis.

So while it may seem logical that artists fear a lack of choice, it is in actuality this strategic limiting of choices through the act of creation that triggers fear for most writers. And though it is most decidedly difficult to do so, writers must make consistent effort to avoid brooding over choices sacrificed and believe with conviction in the choices they have made.

Gather your mettle now and try one of the strategic choice-limiting writing exercises below:

1. From a literary magazine, of which most writers have dozens, select ten words you DO NOT usually use in your writing. Use these ten words in a poem, perhaps one per line. The more foreign they are to you, the more interesting the resulting draft will be (and the more fun you will have writing it).
2. Formal poem construction strategically limits choices for you, leaving your creative mind room to focus on other aspects of a poem. Most poets find traditional Sonnets relatively rigid while Pantoums and Villanelles are considered by some to be a little more flexible. Experiment with these and other forms regardless of your opinion of their merits.
3. The blitz is a form that makes choice elimination particularly fun. Follow this link for directions on how to construct a Blitz Poem: http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/poetry-prompts/poetic-form-the-blitz-poem.

 

Day 5: Run Toward Confidence (The First of Several “Tuesdays with Nari”)

Yesterday I went on the longest run I’ve gone on for a while. (Using patchy to describe my exercise record for this past winter is optimistic at best.) It hurt. For the last two miles, I was out of energy and out of breath. I had to pause four times to rally my muscular and respiratory systems, each time imagining that my body was a story’s punk villain staring insolently at me as she raised her middle digits. When I got home, I sank down onto the carpeted stairs, chugged water, and felt pathetic. But also accomplished.

This is not me.

After enjoying a snack–which I’d like to say consisted of exquisitely balanced portions of carbs and protein, but was really a Trader Joe’s cinnamon roll slathered with cream cheese frosting–I embarked on the next item on my agenda: three hours of writing. 

I love what my friend Sam wrote about seeing writing as play, as enchantment. But for whatever reason, yesterday’s writing session was for my attention span what the run was for my body–hard work. I’ve been revising a personal essay that’s almost finished, but it’s not there yet. Sentences need to become cleaner and sharper. Sections need to be swapped around for maximum potency. I thought this final drafting process would be easy, but it’s not. And yesterday I had to summon all remaining willpower to keep at it for those three hours. As the minutes ticked by, distractions continued to appear: The couch wasn’t comfortable. The air felt too cold, then too warm. I was thirsty. I satisfied each need as it arose, determined not to let it eclipse my productivity. Although the going was slow, I got through the three hours, at the end feeling mentally hyperventilated. But, again, accomplished.

My point here is not that I’m awesome (though my back is always available for patting–that is, unless you’re creepy). My point is that on the days when writing feels like work, that’s okay. Adjust the thermostat. Kick your roommate/partner/spouse/cat out of the comfiest chair and claim it. Just keep writing.

Recently I read Stephen Koch’s fantastic book The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction, and there’s no other book about writing that I’d recommend more. The chapters travel through the writing process, from inception to the final draft. Chapter two, “The Writing Life,” is about becoming a writer by living as a writer. Koch says that any talent a writer has “will go to waste unless it is sustained and strengthened by the nagging, jagged, elusive thing called obsession, that stone in the shoe of your being known as a . . . vocation. Call it dumb persistence. Call it passion. Call it a fire in the belly or the madness of art. It is less the ability to write than the insistence upon writing.” I freely admit that I’m not obsessed with writing. I’m not the crazy wordaholic who sees scribbling in a notebook as her bread and water. At least not now. For me, writing is a choice–in the case of this Writer’s March, a daily choice. And today, day five, I can’t say that my writing is that much more brilliant, but I do feel like more of a writer. After all, as Koch points out, “Productivity is the only path to confidence. . . . Since writing is what generates inspiration–and not the reverse–abundant writing produces abundant inspiration.” So when you don’t feel the enchantment, write your way toward confidence. If you produce writing, you’re a writer.

Or, to speak for myself, the more I write, the more I know I’m a writer.

This is not me either.

Exercises (No Actual Running Required)

In the spirit of generating writerly confidence, feel welcome to try one (or more) of the following:

• Pick a phase of your life (high school, for example) and write about how your spent the bulk of your free time. What did you love to do? What images and moments can you recall involving this activity?
• Write about something that you’ve produced (infuse that last word with whatever meaning you wish).
• Write a scene that shows you practicing something (an instrument, a sport, a concept like compassion).

 

Day 2: The Power of 15 Minutes

Whenever Randi and I go anywhere together, I find myself waiting. “I’ll be right there,” she says and then she struggles with her contact lens, searches the house for her wallet, decides it is a good time to re-organize our shoes. Meanwhile, I’ve already got my coat on; my bag is slung over one shoulder; if we are taking the dog for a walk, she is pulling the leash taut. I wait against the door frame; the dog sits at the bottom of the steps; Randi readies herself. Five. Ten. Fifteen minutes pass.

ABQ Central Bus

Here are a some other times, I find myself with fifteen minutes:

• while waiting for the bus
• while waiting for a class to start
• while waiting for the doctor
• while waiting for my food to be ready (at a restaurant)
• while waiting for my alarm to sound in the morning so I can pry myself out of bed

Here are the things I usually do to kill fifteen minutes

• check my email
• check my facebook account
• hit the snooze button
• check the weather
• stand in the doorway and ask Randi if there is something I can do to help

Here is what I could have been doing instead:

• writing

Productivity experts talk about “the Power of Fifteen Minutes” all the time. As Neen James, one expert, points out: “People go wrong because they get overwhelmed. They think things will take longer than they do, and so they procrastinate. Procrastination key? Fifteen minutes.” Her overall point: stop making excuses. In fifteen minutes, one can accomplish a lot. So:

• Get to the coffee shop fifteen minutes early
• Wake up fifteen minutes earlier
• Go to bed fifteen minutes later
• Carry your notebook with you everywhere
• Eliminate waiting
• Stop thinking there isn’t enough time.

Here on Day 2, with the rest of the month before us, I think it is important to keep in mind the 15 minute rule. May there be more people with pens at bus stops.

A Fifteen Minute Writing Exercise (that could go longer, of course)

This one comes from fellow challenger Chris Strickling, and it’s a beautifully simple writing prompt:

Write about a powerful memory.

As Chris says, “We started with that in the theater work I did for 12 years with disabled adults. Just that simple prompt started the creative flow that would take us all the way to performance.”

_______

Got an exercise to share?

Name(required)

Writing Exercise:(required)

Why do you like this exercise?

A minor note: Last night’s post took me upwards of 3 hours. Today, Randi said that in honor of the day’s post, this one should fall within the 15 minute mark. Other than uploading photographs and last minute edits, I made it right under the wire…

 

Day 31: The end is the beginning is the end is the beginning…

Of all the posts and all the pep talks and all the writing advice I’ve shared/relayed/attempted to give during this Writer’s March, this post feels the most important.  Yet, in many ways, it also seems the most unnecessary.  Dare I say it?  If you’ve made it this far, what advice do you need other than this:   Keep going.

I’ve heard it said that it takes thirty days to make a habit, but ninety days to make that habit a part of your every day life.  Instead of thinking of today as a finish line, please think of it as a milestone.  A road marker.  A pit stop.  You’ve made it here.  Be PROUD of that.  But change your tires.  Get back behind the wheel.  And keep on driving.  It’s a long road, but man, it’s a beautiful ride, isn’t it?  (okay, so a cheesy metaphor, but endings bring it out in me…)

Where Do “We” Go From Here?

Today marks the “end” of the 2012 Writer’s March.  I’d like to offer a profound thanks to Jennifer Simpson (Fridays with Jenn) and to guest bloggers, Marisa P. Clark and Lenore Gusch.  I would also like to thank everyone who dropped by to visit, who sent writing exercises or writing advice, and/or who engaged in writing conversations through comments both on this blog, on facebook, and in person.  Without your help and support, this endeavor would not be possible.  Writing daily–and blogging daily–are  daily challenges.  All of you (named and unnamed) have become a huge part of my writing life.  If you weren’t there, I wouldn’t be here.

This year, I would also like to follow up on our challenger goals, both as a way of acknowledging everyone’s hard work, but also as a way of thinking about how to shape the blog next year.  Please take a minute to submit the following form:

Your Name(required)

Your email (will not be made public)(required)

Website

(required)

Were you able to keep your goals? Why or Why not?(required)

Regardless of keeping or not keeping your goals, what did you accomplish this month?(required)

And finally, if you had to relive the month over, what (if anything) would you do differently?

Additionally, we also want to hear your success stories.  Publish a poem or three or eight?  Place your short story?  Your essay?  Get a novel or memoir picked up?  Win a contest?  We want to know, and we want to promote you.  Keep an eye out for the “Success Stories” page.  I’ll get it up as soon as possible (and there will be a place to submit a form there).  In the mean time, if you haven’t already, polish up all that hard work, and get it into the world!

And finally, please take the FINAL CHALLENGER POLL

Best of luck to everyone out there.  And whatever you do tomorrow, I hope more writing is in your future.

 

Day 27: Writing as Habit

I cannot believe we are already approaching the end of this Writer’s March.  Five more days to go.

According to several different sites, it takes roughly 30 days to transform a desire into a habit.  And we are so very close.  If there is anything to get out of that, it is this: the daily task of daily writing does not have to be the thing we dread, the thing we beat ourselves about, or the thing we guilt ourselves into.  Writing can be a part of our daily lives if we let it.

So, this in mind, here is something I found today online.  Upon reading it, I think I maybe should have posted this on Day 1.  Yet, at the end  of this month, I’m already thinking of what I plan to do next month.  I hope you are, too.  And if so, here’s something to keep in mind.

18 Tricks to Make New Habits Stick

originally posted on August 14 by Scott H Young

1. Commit to Thirty Days – Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. A month is a good block of time to commit to a change since it easily fits in your calendar.

2. Make it Daily – Consistency is critical if you want to make a habit stick. If you want to start exercising, go to the gym every day for your first thirty days. Going a couple times a week will make it harder to form the habit. Activities you do once every few days are trickier to lock in as habits.

3. Start Simple – Don’t try to completely change your life in one day. It is easy to get over-motivated and take on too much. If you wanted to study two hours a day, first make the habit to go for thirty minutes and build on that.

4. Remind Yourself – Around two weeks into your commitment it can be easy to forget. Place reminders to execute your habit each day or you might miss a few days. If you miss time it defeats the purpose of setting a habit to begin with.

5. Stay Consistent – The more consistent your habit the easier it will be to stick. If you want to start exercising, try going at the same time, to the same place for your thirty days. When cues like time of day, place and circumstances are the same in each case it is easier to stick.

6. Get a Buddy – Find someone who will go along with you and keep you motivated if you feel like quitting.

7. Form a Trigger – A trigger is a ritual you use right before executing your habit. If you wanted to wake up earlier, this could mean waking up in exactly the same way each morning. If you wanted to quit smoking you could practice snapping your fingers each time you felt the urge to pick up a cigarette.

8. Replace Lost Needs - If you are giving up something in your habit, make sure you are adequately replacing any needs you’ve lost. If watching television gave you a way to relax, you could take up meditation or reading as a way to replace that same need.

9. Be Imperfect – Don’t expect all your attempts to change habits to be successful immediately. It took me four independent tries before I started exercising regularly. Now I love it. Try your best, but expect a few bumps along the way.

10. Use “But” – A prominent habit changing therapist once told me this great technique for changing bad thought patterns. When you start to think negative thoughts, use the word “but” to interrupt it. “I’m no good at this, but, if I work at it I might get better later.”

11. Remove Temptation - Restructure your environment so it won’t tempt you in the first thirty days. Remove junk food from your house, cancel your cable subscription, throw out the cigarettes so you won’t need to struggle with willpower later.

12. Associate With Role Models - Spend more time with people who model the habits you want to mirror. A recent study found that having an obese friend indicated you were more likely to become fat. You become what you spend time around.

13. Run it as an Experiment - Withhold judgment until after a month has past and use it as an experiment in behavior. Experiments can’t fail, they just have different results so it will give you a different perspective on changing your habit.

14. Swish - A technique from NLP. Visualize yourself performing the bad habit. Next visualize yourself pushing aside the bad habit and performing an alternative. Finally, end that sequence with an image of yourself in a highly positive state. See yourself picking up the cigarette, see yourself putting it down and snapping your fingers, finally visualize yourself running and breathing free. Do it a few times until you automatically go through the pattern before executing the old habit.

15. Write it Down – A piece of paper with a resolution on it isn’t that important. Writing that resolution is. Writing makes your ideas more clear and focuses you on your end result.

16. Know the Benefits - Familiarize yourself with the benefits of making a change. Get books that show the benefits of regular exercise. Notice any changes in energy levels after you take on a new diet. Imagine getting better grades after improving your study habits.

17. Know the Pain – You should also be aware of the consequences. Exposing yourself to realistic information about the downsides of not making a change will give you added motivation.

18. Do it For Yourself - Don’t worry about all the things you “should” have as habits. Instead tool your habits towards your goals and the things that motivate you. Weak guilt and empty resolutions aren’t enough.

[I have no idea what the rules of reposting things on the internet are.  I hope that it is okay that I cut and pasted this text here.  Please someone let me know if it isn't!]

 

“What Now?”

Dear Writers Who are Addicted to the Internet, today’s thoughts are for you:

I have just returned from a weekend in Portland, oh green rainy haven of the west, and am now back in this dusty desert of ours.  A handful of gratitude to the guest bloggers who were able to take us through the weekend, Bob Sabatini, Marisa P., Randi Beck, and Elizabeth Tannen.  I decided to ditch my computer and spend my time drinking the best coffee in the world in one of my favorite cities in the world and, for four days, I left my computer at home and spent my time writing by hand.

I love this city, and I love that I got to spend my time catching up with my good friend Liz Collins

This afternoon, as my airplane rocked its turbulent way into Albuquerque, I was lucky enough to sit between two writer friends and colleagues, Katie Pelltier and Jennifer Simpson (who blogs for Writer’s March on Thursdays).  I love talking writing on an airplane.  I like imagining what it must be like to overhear us babble about desires for book deals, our writing projects, and–my personal favorite–our writing neuroses, including, but not limited to, our evasion strategies.  The top three categories of the plane ride: teaching, working, and the internet.

As Katie said, “One second, I’m writing, and the next I’m suddenly checking my email even though I checked it three minutes before.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact of computers on creativity.  Ann Patchett, in her book (once a speech), What now? writes about the day she became a dishwasher in a restaurant where she used to work.  As Patchett says,

…it was while I washed that I finally learned to stare.  Oh, maybe I’d played around with staring in school.  Maybe I looked out the window every now and then when I was stuck trying to finish a paper, but I had never stared deeply.  Catholic school and college and graduate school had prepared me both for how to be part of a group and how to be the group’s leader, but none of them had taught me the most important thing: how to be alone.  I had never stared as a way of solving a problem or really seeing the details that make up a story, which is to say I had never just stayed still, been quiet, and thought things through.  In the end, it was the staring that got me the novelist job I wanted.

In a world increasingly more tech saavy, we have also become increasingly impatient.  We have one second of downtime and we seek to fill it.  Stuck in a story? There we go surfing the web, looking for answers by forgetting we need one.  Next thing we know, three hours have passed and we’ve read every facebook status update, checked our email twenty times, and balanced our checkbooks.  I would argue that the internet may be the biggest killer of creativity in this world (yes, i understand the irony of this blog and that statement).

Today, writers, I hope you’ll think of Ann Patchett’s advice, and let your brain wander for a minute.  It’s in the stillness that we solve our creative problems, and here are a few ideas for how to rid yourself of your internet addiction.

1. Try weening yourself off of the internet.  I recently read that television is addictive (it releases endorphins that your body craves) and then more or less makes your brain flatline.  I think the same is true of computers.  Break the addiction if you have it or stop it before it starts.
2. If you have home internet, try making someone else take your internet box with them when they leave for the day.  (This tactic was used by Flannery O’Connor Prize Winner Lori Ostlund, whose collection The Bigness of the World, is a real gift to the literary world.)
3. Go to a coffee shop that does not have internet.
4. Create a space in your home that you designate as “internet-free.”  In other words, when you are at your writing desk, you allow yourself only to write there.  It’s extremely important that you NEVER let this slip.  You’ve got to condition your brain to understand that internet cannot be everywhere.
5. Cancel your internet.  Try it for a month.  Save yourself a hundred bucks.  Use it to buy yourself twenty cups of expensive coffee.

 

Why I (And You) Need to Be Writing Now. But Nothing.

[By Guest Blogger Elizabeth Tannen]

A couple of weeks ago I met with my adviser about my dissertation. It was, in a word, traumatic.

A year and half–midway through–the MFA program, I had finally decided that, rather than compile a bunch of vaguely connected essays and call it a day, I was going to set out to do the thing I came here to do: write a book. The family memoir I’ve wanted to write since long before I came here.

For a long time I convinced myself that, because of what I don’t know, I couldn’t write it at all: I tried writing it as fiction, but soon realized that’s not what I wanted to do. I wrote a twenty-page essay that I reasoned was all I could possibly produce on the subject.

And then I realized that was bullshit.

So I got permission from the necessary people and began to conduct interviews. For days I walked around campus feeling elated. I was going to write a book! You know, once I’d gotten all the information and knew what it was really going to be about.

And then I met with my adviser, Greg.

“I’m going to start doing interviews once a week!” I proudly pronounced.

“That’s great,” he replied, unimpressed. “And you’re writing, too, right?”

“What do you mean, writing? I don’t even know what I’m writing about!”

It was then that Greg turned my world upside down and transformed my excitement into sheer, unmitigated terror.

“You need to be writing every day,” he said. “Of course you don’t know what it’s about yet. You’re only going to figure it out by writing it. All the time.”

As a teacher of creative writing, I know this. All the time I tell my students that they shouldn’t know what’s going to happen in their stories before they’ve written them–things get discovered on the page. That’s the way writing works.

Which I tell you only to illustrate that one can know something, teach it, even, and still, when necessary–by which I mean when trying to evade writing, aka most days–completely, aggressively, totally unconsciously, forget it.

“I don’t understand,” I insisted to Greg, petulant and aggrieved as a hungry toddler with twenty minutes before snack. “How can I start writing when I don’t know what the structure’s going to be? Or what the scope of it is! Or the point of view!?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he shot back. “I could give you ten prompts right now.”

At which point he did, in fact, offer about ten writing prompts with which I easily could, and thankfully, have begun, to gather substantial writing material.

The other thing he did, which is often a thing he does, was to throw a book at me: this time, “The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction,” by Stephen Koch

“You can borrow this until you take one look at it and realize you need it and order your own from Amazon the next day,” he said. Dutifully, I took it. And dutifully, I did.

Mainly because of this quote, with which I will leave you, and bid you good, if uncertain, writing:

“‘But–you may say–’I don’t even know my story yet.’ My answer is: ‘Of course you don’t know your story yet.’ You are the very first person to tell this story ever, anywhere in the whold world, and you cannot know a story until it has been told. First you tell it, then you know it. It is not the other way around. That may sound illogical, but to the narrating mind, it is logic itself. Stories make themselves known, they reveal themselves–even to their tellers–only by being told.”

Happy revealing!

 

Just say Yes

Evasion Strategies.  If you try to google the phrase, you get a whole lot of information about immunizations.  And without spending too much time scrolling about, I didn’t see one reference for writers.  Truth is, we’re probably better at evasion strategies than the latest string of the flu virus.  Otherwise, wouldn’t we have written more than we have?

 

Apparently, this is what the "Immune Invasion Strategy of Cancer" looks like.

 

One of the first writing classes I took was through the UC Berkeley Extension Program with my first writing friend, Maria Howard (who’s participating in this march!).  Our first assignment is one that I am giving to you now:

Write down a list of all of your evasion strategies.  Refuse to let them be your excuses.  Feel free to post them here and, if you want to take it a step further, share your suggested ways of defeating them.

For instance:  I cannot write unless all the dishes (or the house) are clean. I cannot write because I need to walk the dog, or play with the cat, or handle my bird (that ones for you, Marisa!) I cannot write until I balance my checkbook, or until I check my email (that one is for me), or until I’ve read the paper, or planned for my class, and okay.  So maybe you do have things you have to attend to.  Like a baby.  Or a class to teach.  Or a job to go to.  Whatever it is, the word on the street is that the more excuses you make, the easier it is to excuse yourself.

And as my friend Cathy Arellano said, “If you don’t put writing first it will always come last.”  I’ll add to that by saying that the more you say that you “can’t,” the more you “won’t.”  Until eventually, when you sit down to work, you no longer believe you are capable of anything.