On Being a Nomal Writer

Monday, June 29, 2009

I've written about balance before. As in, balance is a myth. It doesn't exist. Balance is one of those pop-psych terms invented to make us feel that there's some better way of doing things, some easier, calmer way of living that is elusive--but possible if only we try hard enough. I'm here to suggest that we throw the whole idea of balance out the window because everything changes, all the time. Every day is different. Curve balls are not the exception, but the rule. If a writer waits for things to calm down, for the dust to settle, for a sense of normalcy to descend like a soft, comforting cloud--well,that writer may be waiting for a long time.

We had a funny moment in my private writing workshop yesterday, when a student wondered if she would ever be "a normal writer". What's a normal writer? Isn't that an oxymoron? There's nothing normal about spending days in solitude, alone in a room, sifting through an endless stream of words until a few of them, strung together, make some sort of sense.

Today--my first morning to myself so far this summer: my son was out the door before nine, with lunch packed, water bottle filled, a basketball jersey hanging endearingly on his little-boy frame. I settled down at my desk, the house quiet. I have what I need now--don't I?

A room of my own.
Solitude.
A quiet house.
A silent phone.
A stretch of hours.
Oh--and a cappuccino.

What's missing then? Why are some days better than others? Why does it seem possible, some days, to get good work done on the subway, while other days, with everything I think I NEED -- time, space, quiet, caffeine -- my brain feels water-logged? Perhaps the answer is less in the quest for the perfect writing environment, and more in simply the showing up for the work, and trying to leave the self-castigating notions of balance and normalcy at the door. Every day is different. And there is no such thing as a normal writer.

On Routine

Friday, June 26, 2009

First of all, to my loyal blog readers I know I have been slacking off. I can explain this--and promise to try to do better. When I finished Devotion last month, my delicate little routine went out the window. The fact that finishing my book dovetailed with the end of Jacob's school year, with its attendant field day/concert/awards ceremony/class party/commencement compounded matters. By the time I came out of every mom's haze of end-of-year school events, I had lost the thread. My manuscript was at my publisher, already beginning to head down the conveyor belt toward publication. My kid was out of school and camp didn't start for another few weeks. My precious routine--getting him off to school first thing, sitting quietly at my desk, practicing yoga, working, thinking, reading, writing--all suddenly felt so far away. And blogging fell down that rabbit hole too. Because blogging was part of the routine.

How could it happen so fast?
In the same way as a few weeks without yoga and my body feels like it's falling apart, so too does the creative process--that daily beast--need to be fed. I tell this to my students all the time. Habit, I tell them. Even if it's an hour in the morning. Even if it's twenty minutes. Sit down with your work every day. Stay connected to it.

I need to practice what I preach, of course. Ideas float through my head like bits of ash off a bonfire. Should I write that short story that has been tapping me on the shoulder for a few years? Should I adapt Picturing the Wreck as a screenplay -- also something I've been thinking of doing for years? Should I start a new book (I actually have an idea)? Meanwhile, these bits of ash go nowhere right now. The windows of time are too small, between dropping Jacob off at tennis camp (I have three hours by the time I get home and before he gets picked up) and the UPS heading up the driveway with busy work, delivering the copy-edited manuscript. More small changes to be made on Devotion. Changes that feel, in the words of Grace Paley, enormous, at the last minute.

Does it sound like I'm complaining? I'm not--I swear I'm not. I'm more like an archaeologist of my own life. Digging. Trying to sort out what matters and what doesn't. How to prioritize. How to once again create a routine. And most of all, what next.

On Being Between Things

Sunday, June 14, 2009

There is so much I forget about the process of starting a book, writing a book, finishing a book. I tell myself that, if I could remember, I'd save myself a lot of mental trouble. If I could remember, for instance, that beginning is always hard, that middles are soupy and amorphous, that finishing is vaguely depressing, that profound self-doubt is so endemic to the process that to NOT experience it is a warning sign of some sort--if I could remember all that, my writing life would be...easier. Except that it doesn't work that way. The latest feeling I'm reckoning with--one that is familiar, but which I have also managed to conveniently forget until now--is how I feel when I'm between things.

Having finished DEVOTION -- now waiting for the copy-edited manuscript to be sent to me by my publisher, and doing all sorts of busy work like filling out author questionnaires and trying to come up with a one sentence description of my book -- I find that my mind enters the unhappy state of being unoccupied. What was it Virginia Woolf once wrote about her own mind when not writing? Pecking and wretched was her term, I believe. Pecking. A perfect word for a mind like a chicken. Aimlessly, but with great energy, pecking at things.

Last week, Pico Iyer wrote a beautiful piece in The New York Times about living a simple life, and in it, he wrote that absorption is the closest he has come to understanding happiness. Absorption is what happens when an athlete trains, when surgeon operates, when a mother cares for a child, when an artist creates--absorption is a kind of loss of self-awareness, self-consciousness, and therefore--of the sense of separateness that plagues us. Absorption is what I have felt for the past two years of my daily work on DEVOTION, and I miss it.

Soon I will take my pecking and wretched mind and train it on something new, and when I do I will try to be grateful for how hard it is. Because that difficulty is the gateway to absorption, and I am always longing for it whether I know it or not.