WordFlix

Writing serendipitously

There's something to be said for serendipity.

Here's Dictionary.com (really, the American Heritage Dictionary, if you read the website's fine print) on the word and its origins:

ser·en·dip·i·ty

n.   pl. ser·en·dip·i·ties

1. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
2. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.
3. An instance of making such a discovery.

[From the characters in the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, who made such discoveries, from Persian Sarandīp, Sri Lanka, from Arabic sarandīb.]

ser'en·dip'i·tous adj., ser'en·dip'i·tous·ly adv.

Word History: We are indebted to the English author Horace Walpole for the word serendipity, which he coined in one of the 3,000 or more letters on which his literary reputation primarily rests. In a letter of January 28, 1754, Walpole says that "this discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word." Walpole formed the word on an old name for Sri Lanka, Serendip. He explained that this name was part of the title of "a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of."

Now, as readers of this blog know, I'm not a fan of waiting to write until your muse communes with you.  Or until you start channeling genius.  No, indeed. I'm about embracing routine, habit, and doing the work.  Do it, and the words will come. Eventually. They won't all be good ones, but once they're down on the page you can start tweaking and revising.  Through the practice of your craft, it can become art, if that's what you want.  If it's not, and if you're satisfied with a damn fine piece of well-crafted prose or poetry, well, then, that's fine, too.  Absolutely nothing wrong with that;  in fact, that's what this summer's writing is all about for me.

But I don't want to overlook the phenomenon of serendipity. First, it's a fabulous-sounding word (it's right on up there with "zephyr" and "halcyon," about which I've blogged before). Second, it's a kind of magical notion: the idea that through a happy coincidence of time, place, and circumstance -- through "accidents and sagacity" -- unanticipated moments of clarity and discovery can and do occur.

For me, serendipity is a by-product of undertaking and engaging with the routine, practice and the hard work of writing.  It feels magical but there's no magic about how it happens.  No, the magic lies simply in the  when of it. When I'm doing that work and when I'm lucky, I will have moments in which previously unanticipated moments of insight not only come to the fore but find expression on the page, almost ... almost like magic.  In such moments, as I type words on the screen, they shape and form themselves in a way that they give form and voice to ideas I hadn't realized I'd had and that are, in fact, smarter and truer than conscious, vetted thought.  Usually such moments burn themselves out in the space of a few sentences or -- more rarely -- in the space of a paragraph(for me, at least -- clearly truly great writers have periods of sustained composition of this kind), but that they exist at all feels like a precious gift to me.

When writing academic prose, I have to go back over writing produced in such moments and make sure that I truly believe what I've said.  I have to make sure that the words themselves have not seduced me into claiming something that's beautiful but untrue or critically or theoretically unsound.  I have to connect it to what went before and what comes after, to the more pedestrian moments that precede and follow.

But when I can do that -- through the hard work of self-assessment and revision?  Those moments of serendipitous prose shimmer like jewels.  And I am grateful.

Three-minute fiction: writing competition

A cool idea and an excellent opportunity (not to mention a really wonderful exercise, regardless of whether one wants to compete formally):

Three-Minute Fiction: Send Us Your Stories : NPR.

"James Wood, literary critic for The New Yorker and author of the book How Fiction Works, will serve as NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction" guide. Wood will appear on-air throughout the summer to read his favorite submissions, and we'll also post them here on NPR.org."

Katie Fforde

Oh dear.  I've discovered another few books I need to get my hands on.  The good news is, at least they're for pleasure, not work.

Thanks to Elaine over at Random Jottings who's mentioned Katie Fforde's work several times on her blog and even had the good fortune to meet up with her, I've been turned on to a source of thoroughly enjoyable light fiction -- perfect for summer reading. 

It helps to like romance and it helps to like reading novels with an English twist.  Think Bridget Jones's Diary ... only, well, more pleasant, less sarcastic, more relaxing.  (Hey, I liked the latter, too.  I'm just saying ...) Funny female protagonists, great best female friends characters, amusing situations, and happy endings. Chick lit, in other words (a.k.a. "hen lit" in the U.K.).

I'd not heard of Fforde much before, but I can be a real ignoramus when it comes to contemporary fiction.  Also, I gather that she's somewhat better known in the U.K. than here in the U.S.

Pity. That should change.

I prowled about online and it looks as if Fforde has written at least 15 novels, perhaps more.  Er, rather than blow my finances entirely, I'll check the local library and second-hand bookstores first.  However, it's nice to know that I can get my hands on more, and it's satisfying to know that I can now plan for some major recreational reading in the evenings once my work is done.

As I've said before, I like to know where my next read is coming from.

The three P's of writing

Excellent post by author Barbara Samuelson over at Writer Unboxed on three writing fundamentals:

THE THREE P’S OF WRITING: Persistence, Passion, and Practice.

Yet another productive writer weighs in with the idea that it is not genius that makes for success.  There are plenty of plenty of wonderful writers out there who will flame out -- or never flame at all -- and become Something Else Besides a Writer because they will lack one of the three P's. 

The same is true for any practitioner of any art.

For me the challenge is persistence.  That's where I get hung up. 

Talent? Yeah, I have talent.  So do lots of folks.  Passion?  I've got that, too, though sometimes those drunken monkeys that Anne Lamott writes about chatter so loudly that they drown it out.  It can be hard for me to connect with it, but through reading, blogging, and the good days spent on my professional writing, I rediscover that passion. Practice?  Again, not a big stumbling block for me.  See above. 

But persistence?  That's a tough one for me.  Not when it comes to informal essayistic writing -- but that's not (currently) what I'm paid to produce. It's persistence in generating academic prose that sometimes stymies me.  Deadlines and sticks and carrots are pretty much the only way in which I can be gotten to produce formal academic writing -- not because I'm not good at it (I hasten to add, somewhat immodestly) but because there's such a psychological burden that goes along with it.

Publish or perish. Life or death. You're either with us or against us.  If you don't write, the terrorists win.

Okay, maybe that part about the terrorists isn't part of the burden.  But the rest of it?  If you're like me and you've spent your entire life in an academic family, and most of your professional life being an academic, those drunken monkeys can squawk awfully loudly, to the point that your own voice is almost drowned out.

Because you see, traditionally there is an Academic Voice in which one is supposed to write, and assuming it often feels to me like a masquerade.  Suppose I don't want to write with that gravitas, even in an academic context? Suppose I want to experiment with voice?  Can I do that?

What I'm beginning to discover for myself, rather late in life, is yes, perhaps I can.  I'm hardly the James Joyce of my particular academic discipline, but who's to say I can't write in my own voice? Who's to say that academic writing can't be creative?  Who's to say I can't?

Certainly not me.  Because you know what?  Yes, I can.

How Nora Roberts became America’s most popular novelist

How Nora Roberts became America’s most popular novelist:The New Yorker.

Bottom line (dreadful pun intended): "Ass in the chair."

1970s icons

Two key pop icons from my youth died today.

 

Non-writing writing tasks

You just never know. 

Yesterday I thought I would have trouble writing one short assignment I'd set myself -- and then, unexpectedly, I turned into a mini-powerhouse. I cranked through the finite task I'd vowed to get done, had (and articulated!) an insight I hadn't anticipated, and ran all manner of errands besides.

In other words, in contrast to the day before, it was a Productive Day.

Today? I thought I'd be on a roll.  Mmm -- not so much. 

However, not content to leave it at that, I poked around online for some external motivation or encouragement, and I bumped into some excellent writing resources at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Like many similar university sites, its materials are aimed at students of all levels about writing and the process of writing.  However, you don't have to be a university student to get a lot out of its online handouts. I particularly like what UNC has to say about procrastination and about writing a Ph.D. dissertation (or any kind of longer project). 

The following passage happens to be about writing a dissertation, but I've substituted "Project X" for "dissertation," just on general principle:

"Make a list of all the little things you need to do for a given section of the Project X, no matter how small. Write down everything that you need to do to get it out the door. Then when you don't feel like tackling something big, like relating a key point in your argument to the relevant literature, you can insist that you do something else, like photocopying an article you've been meaning to consult or checking your citations. You don't have to do everything on the list during the time you've allotted for Project X work, but tell yourself that you DO have to do SOMETHING.You'll be surprised that the habit of getting something (no matter how small) done on Project X every day can be addicting."

As is so often the case with me now, this doesn't tell me anything I don't already know and don't already put into practice.  However, it serves as a useful reminder that there are all manner of productive things one can do when, in the moment, writing itself just isn't happening, for whatever reason.  That is, the choice does not come down to Composing Deathless Prose or Going Shopping. There are a range of options between those two poles.

In fact, as I write this, I'm realizing that writing itself is not actually what I need to be doing today to move through the penultimate phase of the article I'm working on.  Nope, today I need to do some final CYA reading -- that is, some skimming of related literature to make sure that, as I argue my own particular case in Project X, the due diligence that I've done to this point has been adequate.  I've been putting off doing this because my lit review is already written, I've set up my case, the bulk of the article is pretty firmly drafted, and I don't want to upset the balance with any eleventh-hour discoveries as I dive into my analysis.  However, better now than later. 

I'm not really expecting any nasty surprises that will pull the rug out from under my work,  but the possibility makes me apprehensive. I guess it's that fear that I'm working around today.  But what's that saying?  "The only way out is through"?  I'll deal with whatever  I find and make it work for me.

So?  Today's non-writing writing-related tasks?  To skim two of the four CYA books and check them off my list once and for all.  Tomorrow? Well, I'll wait and see, but my guess is that tomorrow I can polish off the final two books.  Friday?  Review the film I'm analyzing in detail.  Weekend?  Draft the remainder of the article.

One day at a time, however.  Hell, one task at a time.

One short assignment

 "Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we're going to do for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we are going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish this one short assignment."

- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (again)

Today's short assignment is simple.  It's discrete.  It is not rocket science -- or, more to the point, it is not to write the Most Brilliant Academic Article since Christ was a corporal (to appropriate a turn of phrase of which my mother was fond).

It is merely to write a single paragraph -- one in which I address the work of Critic X and move on.  I'm going to plug that baby in and call it a day on Parts I through III of a 6-part article (Part IV is already written, Part V! is the conclusion and not difficult). I could tinker forever with those first three parts, but you know what?  I'm not writing a book the topics I cover in those sections. Other people have done that. I'm really just justifying why I'm doing what I'm doing in Part V, which is the most interesting portion of the article to me. So justify it and get there already.  This train is going to leave the station in five minutes.

Because, come hell or high water, this first draft is going to be done come June 29.  It'll go to my colleague for her input, I'll tweak it, and then by the end of the first week in July, whatever shape it's in, it's going out the door for submission.

Because nothing's perfect, and good is good enough.

Drunken monkeys

 Today's writing session was, in a word, painful.

On days like today I need to remember that other  kinds of writing days are possible as well and that I've had them.  Recently, even. But today was definitely not one of those days.

In fact, it was very similar to the session that Anne Lamott describes in Bird by Bird:

"You put a piece of paper in the typewriter or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, your squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt.  Also, severe hypochondria. There may be a Nurse Ratched -- like listings of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed.  But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at your desk. There is a vague pain at the base of your skull.  It crosses your mind that you have meningitis.  Then the phone rings and you look up at the ceiling with fury, summon every ounce of noblesse oblige, and answer the call politely, with maybe just the merest hint of irritation. The caller asks if you're working, and you say yeah, because you are."

That is the kind of day I had today. The prose did not exactly flow.

On the other hand, Lamott's description, above, is not about the Difficult Writing Day. In fact, the encouraging thing about it is, it's pretty much standard operating procedure.  Because sooner or later, she says, if you can get yourself to sit down to writing more or less at the same time every day, you train your brain to start moving, start producing:  "You cannot will this to happen."  (I'll say.) "It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work."  (Amen, sister.)

Note what Lamott does not say, however:  she does not say it's a matter of inspiration or waiting for that elusive muse to visit you.  It's just not that easy. You're not going to be saved by the writing angel.

So.

Persistence? Yeah, I can do that, even if I kick and drag my heels a bit.  Faith?  Well, I can act as if  I have faith.  Hard work?  Yes, ma'am. That I can do.

Bird by bird.

Caffeine is my drug of choice

It didn't always used to be. 

Food in general filled that category.  But since losing a lot of weight (with the help of duodenal switch surgery -- best decision I ever made), it's definitely coffee.  Fully caffeinated coffee.  I like it strong, with half and half, and a packet of Splenda.

Even better?  A latte -- first, because of the taste and second, because I can count the milk in it toward my daily protein requirement (which is high, given the aforementioned surgery).

Coffee wakes me up in the morning and soothes me as I settle into my writing day.  It's stimulating and comforting at the same time, though folks rarely write about the latter attribute of coffee. 

As I write this I've had my first cup of the morning, and shortly I'll pour myself a second cup and turn to create some java-inspired prose.  In fact, coffee is most definitely part of my writing routine.

It's a good way to start the day.

Fathers Day

Typepad's Question of the Day:

Your father: great dad...or greatest dad? And why?
Submitted by Michael Sippey.

I learned from my mother how to be afraid,
how to fear my father’s footsteps
in the yard beyond my bedroom window,
first muffled by the fallen leaves through which he shambled,
then stilled as he paused
to piss, suddenly, in the ivy.
I learned from my mother how to listen for the sound of a zipper,
and for my father’s blurry, one-sided chats with the family dog,
out there in the night;
for the wisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssht of his urine stream
as it hit the ivy leaves.
I learned to wait for the drip … drip … drop as that wine-and-beer geyser
(would he ever finish?)
spent itself on a summer evening,
and for the pause after,
and for the soft rustling of his pants,
and for the sound of my own breath harsh in my ears
(Tooloudtooloudtooloudhellhearitouthereinthedark).
I learned from my mother how to stay very still and do nothing
as she did.
(“Everything will be all right,” she’d promise.
If it will be all right, Mama, why are you crying?)
She did nothing
as the front door to the house opened
and closed,
as those footsteps from the yard came down the hall,
(my father stumbling a bit from wall to wall)
to my room,
for another one-sided exchange, in which I would once again
not speak,
not tell,
not utter a sound
not even a whimper
(It was the dog at the door, Daddy, scratching to get in).

Admissions

The Literary Critic's Shelf of Shame - By Jodi Kantor - Slate Magazine.

This is a fun post from way back -- and refers to a game that probably every graduate student plays in his or her own discipline, sooner or later.

What famous work are you supposed to have read ...  or seen ... or heard ... or performed ... or watched but have not?

At this point in my life, as far as Great Works of Literature are concerned, I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never read any Dostoevsky.  Like, none.  Nary a word.  Mind you, there are literally tens of authors that could go on that list and hundreds of titles as well -- but right now?  The Dostoevsky thing bugs me.

Why haven't I read anything by FD? Um, Russian surnames are so long I thought I wouldn't be able to remember the characters?  Nah, I've read Tolstoy.  I've never had time?  Don't even go there, HD.

I need to buy a copy of The Brothers Karamazov.  And then, quite possibly, to read it.

What items belong on your shelf of shame?

Grief

"Dark of the invisible moon.  The nights now only slightly less black.  By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp."

- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

For me these are perhaps the loveliest lines in McCarthy's understated, jarring novel. 

The book chronicles the death of one world and traces the road through a blasted, post-apocalyptic existence which has struggled into a drear kind of half-life after an unspecified nuclear event, the specifics of which are already so beside the point as the novel begins that we as readers don't even care about them. 

Its horror lies in the untidy incompleteness of human extinction:  isolated bands of people, stripped of civilization, commit atrocities to survive a life no longer worth surviving, like Things that Wouldn't Die.

Its single note of ... hope? redemption? (no, those words miss the mark ...) provisional possibility? (better ...) lies in the relationship between the man and the boy (for that's how they're called in the book) and the chance, however unlikely, of that becoming an inheritance that might be handed from man to boy, from boy to others. Perhaps.  Or not. Because the odds are slim and there are no assurances of anything.  No promises. None.

Mostly, however, I read the book as an elegy for a world (ours) presented as irretrievably disappeared and for the ways of thinking and being in that world that are vanishing (have already vanished, in the novel) and for which the nameless, stripped-down, barely-there narrator mourns. It is he who is the grieving mother with the lamp, witness to incalculable loss.

Mourning. Grief. I have loss on my mind and in my heart today.  Last night I learned that an uncle in his 90s had died peacefully in his sleep earlier that evening at the family house, not of illness or anything other than a long life well and usefully lived.  (Really, it's the antithesis of McCarthy's novel.)  Three of my uncle's six adult children happened to have been visiting, and the other three are on their way to the house now (probably already arrived), along with their own children, to gather and be together there. The place has been in my father's family since the early 20th century;  it's been a gathering place to hundreds and hundreds of family and guests over the span of its existence and my uncle's life, and it's seen its share of joy and grief.

My uncle's death is a fortunate one:  we should all be so lucky to live so fully as he, so long, and to die at home with family, in our sleep, without illness or trauma.  And so yes, I am happy for the manner of his death, but I still I grieve the fact of it.  My parents' generation is passing.  My own parents were both dead by 1987.  With each death of their siblings and their sibling's spouses, my parents die over again. With each of the deaths in that generation, the proximity to my own mortality increases incrementally.

My cousins range in age from late 40s to their early 60s and I heard the pain of loss in their voices when I spoke to two of them this morning.  Pain and, yes, disbelief -- because no matter how old one's parent is, nothing prepares you for their death.  Not for the fact of it, even if you know it's coming.  My aunt died 13 years ago, and so my uncle's death leaves my six cousins -- all with half- or fully grown children of their own -- strangely orphaned, even as they themselves are aging.

I'm lighting a lamp for Tom and for all the family because today it feels as if a sun has, indeed, been banished.

Bookaholic

Hi. My name's HD, and I'm a bookaholic.

I know you know what it's like. The stray thoughts of cracking open a new volume and losing yourself in an alternate world that intrude when you should be thinking only about work.That edgy feeling you get when you're halfway through a book and don't have its successor ready to go on the table next to you. 

Or maybe you feel safe only when you have a stack of books lined up (just a small one, mind you), because chances are you're a rapid reader, at least of those books that you read for pleasure (are there any other kind? Well, yes, if you're an academic -- but I digress), and having only standing by may not be enough.

Last night, with a new writing week ahead of me, I opened Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road and read it in one sitting (powerful, dark -- although ultimately not as dark as I had anticipated).  That meant that when I went to bed around midnight, I faced the next day without a carrot in place for tonight, as my reward for a day spent writing. 

It's not that I don't have books I haven't read or don't want to read.  It's just that I don't think I can take Joan Didion right now (I'm afraid The Year of Magical Thinking will break my heart and cause me to go into freakout mode about all the terrible, life-altering things that could go wrong in an instant), and I'm not quite in the mood yet for Dickens again (though I'm looking forward to The Old Curiosity Shop).

So once I'd finished my quota of writing for the day, I went out and about to run errands. While picking up both high-end and low-end cat food (the former for our four strictly inside kitties, the latter for the three to four cats who tend to hang out in our back yard), I detoured to a nearby Target, specifically to find a couple of future reads at discount prices. (I felt rather like the alcoholic who buys a loaf of bread to camouflage the purchase of cheap wine or hooch).

Score!

Which is how I come to be looking forward this evening to Tana French's In the Woods (2007).  I know nothing about it, had never heard of it, but I see by its cover that it was a New York Times bestseller, and USA Today claimed that "readers who like their hard-boiled police procedurals with an international flair will love Irish author Tana French's debut novel."

In the mood I'm in, that's good enough for me!

Students

Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers - Chronicle.com.

Interesting, evaluative piece on current studies of student writing in an age of media convergence. An excerpt follows:

"The rise of online media has helped raise a new generation of college students who write far more, and in more-diverse forms, than their predecessors did. But the implications of the shift are hotly debated, both for the future of students' writing and for the college curriculum.

Some scholars say that this new writing is more engaged and more connected to an audience, and that colleges should encourage students to bring lessons from that writing into the classroom. Others argue that tweets and blog posts enforce bad writing habits and have little relevance to the kind of sustained, focused argument that academic work demands.

A new generation of longitudinal studies, which track large numbers of students over several years, is attempting to settle this argument. The "Stanford Study of Writing," a five-year study of the writing lives of Stanford students — including Mr. Otuteye — is probably the most extensive to date. (See box at end of article.)"

Me? I think students need to learn how to write formally as well as informally, in a range of different voices and for a variety of different audiences -- now more than ever.

Strategy

Uh, I don't have one.  For Punctum, I mean. Not yet, and maybe never.  So if you're looking for that here, now, this blog is not for you. At the moment, anyway. 

(Blogging experts would shudder in horror.  You must have A Strategy.  You must Know Your Audience.  And I suppose that's true -- for those who write to promote a product or want to be professional bloggers of one kind or another. Those concepts then make sense.)

But I'm not one of those folks.  I'm not writing first and foremost for an audience, per se -- not here (or maybe I simply mean "not yet").  I'm merely an amateur blogger and have been for about five years: three different platforms, three different blogs.  The focus and direction of the three blogs shared one thing in common. They were about me and my life, and and the entries were loosely structured around some pretty profound personal and professional transformations over that five-year period.  Er, profound to me, that is.

But then about six months ago, a couple of things happened:

• I wanted to focus more on my professional writing (both as an academic and as a writer of creative non-fiction --  now, there I do think of audience more), and the parameters of the blog I'd been keep didn't seem to allow for that kind of narrowing.  Not in my own head, anyway.

• I joined Facebook under my real name (alert the media: no, HD Silversmith is not my real name), friended and was friended by people who knew me personally, professionally, and as a blogger, and I wasn't necessarily comfortable with potential crossovers that might occur between my Facebook world and my blogging world.

So I took a hiatus. 

Not from writing but from blogging.  I kept an online presence As Myself on Facebook and that was fun and fine, and I tried to carve out professional writing time As an Academic, and that was okay, too.

But I missed blogging. 

Not in the way that I had been blogging, really.  I no longer wanted to keep a kind of quotidien record of my life, per se, however much satisfaction that had given me in the past.

No, I wanted to see if I could create a writing space for myself in which my voice as a writer could coalesce across my different selves in the absence of labels.  I didn't want to use my given name, or my past blogging identity.  I wanted to start fresh, to be whatever writer I am now, at this moment in my life, and move forward to wherever that would take me and whatever I would become.

With summer break ahead of me and two academic pieces that have concrete deadlines, it seemed like this was the right time to inaugurate Punctum -- which I did a few short weeks ago.  At the moment, this where I come to do the writing I do in and around the deadline pieces. I write here to stay verbally limber and to sustain and refresh the well of words I need.  I don't know how or if Punctum will evolve beyond this place, and I'm not going to worry about that right now.

Because in the near term? This is my safety zone, my home base. It's from here that I troll for other blogs and sites about writing (there's an endless endeavor!), subscribe to RSS feeds for a while to try them out, and then link to those that speak most eloquently to me about my own experience of writing and of developing as a writer.  Currently I'm most drawn to content that addresses process from a practical perspective, and I'll link to anything I find useful in a heartbeat if I think it will help me or others who write.

Thank god for the Internet.  Writing no longer has to be a solitary occupation in quite the same way that it used to be.

Guidance

Excellent, commonsense advice by Nanci Panuccio at Emerging Writers Studio:

"Focus on the work, not your ego. It’s not productive to obsess about whether or not you’re talented, what people in your writers’ group might think of you, or whether or not you’ll ever publish. If you focus on what the work needs rather than on what you need from the work, you might find it becomes a whole lot easier.

Give up perfection. It doesn’t exist. Do set high standards for yourself, but don’t let unrelenting standards of perfection strangle your voice. You have to give yourself permission to write badly because it’s only through writing bad stuff that you get to the gold.

Don’t wait for the muse to arrive. You are your own muse. The trick is to show up and be receptive to the ideas, images, memories and so forth that are there swimming around you so that you can allow some of it to swim in. That’s not to say that every time you sit down to write the words will flow. Undoubtedly, there will be days when the words barely eke out. But most often, the act of writing alone awakens the muse to come out and play.

Don’t fixate on structure prematurely. Structure is the shape we give our experience and our imagination so that a reader can receive it. And while structure is important, I really believe that too much fixation on it in the early stages can impede creativity. Why? Because our best ideas come while we are writing. We don’t know what we’re going to say when we sit down to write. We need to access the voice inside us that tells us what we don’t already know.

Play. Whenever you get stuck, limber up. Play with language. Write down every word you can think of that starts with the letter K. Word cluster around an object, image or memory. Freewrite. Dive in. See where your subconscious leads you. Let go of results.

Tap into your obsessions. This is where the world of your stories resides. Who or what most perplexes you? What continues to have you in its grip? What memories refuse to let go? What are you most ashamed of? Write about the thing you’re most afraid of — the thing you wouldn’t dare tell anyone. Go ahead — write it now.

Remember, nobody has to read it."

I know all these things. I've taught all these things.  But I have to be reminded of them again and again.

Break

 Sometimes you just have to take a break.  To preserve the (remnants of) sanity, to find balance, or simply to relax, breaks are necessary things.

It's not that I've been slaving away during the past couple of weeks of my summer writing schedule.  On the contrary, I've been following a sane routine which has been, for the most part, reassuring and productive. 

But two nights ago I allowed myself to be thrown off balance by some state budget-related news (are there any states in the union that are not under financial water these days? Hmm, I thought not!) and by some informal communications around it in my social corner of the universe.  The result is that I entered a rather mopey, self-obsessed, OCD frame of mind yesterday that persisted from the time I got up until the time my husband and I went to bed.  I didn't realize how pronounced I'd allowed my mood to become until my husband said late at night, rather tentatively and with some concern, "Dearie, could I please have at least one smile today?"

That brought me up short.  It didn't cause an instant mood change, but it did make me realize that: 1) dominating our household with a cloud of largely self-perpetuating doom and gloom isn't fair to me or to my husband, and 2) I could choose to make the next day different.  I do have a choice in how I feel about all manner of things, not just the matters that were on my mind yesterday. I have a choice in how I respond.

So today I took a break -- from myself, more than anything else, though it included a break from work -- and my own tendency to catastrophize.  I slept in, I went to a meeting I find valuable, I spent the afternoon with a friend, and I'm looking forward to an evening of books, husband, and cats.

Funny thing (note the use of irony):  I feel better today ;).

Lamott

The only problem with Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life is that I can never seem hang on to my own copy of it.  I don't know when I first read it (many years ago now), but I've bought and given away the book quite literally more times than I can count. 

I hardly I'm not alone in my love for this volume.  It's the single best insight into the writing process I've ever encountered. 

Below is the well-known passage and anecdote from which Lamott derives her title.

"So after I’ve completely exhausted myself thinking about the people I most resent in the world, and my more arresting financial problems, and, or course, the orthodontia, I remember to pick up the one-inch picture frame and to figure out a one-inch piece of my story to tell, one small scene, one memory, one exchange. I also remember a story that I know I’ve told elsewhere but that over and over helps me to get a grip: thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on bird written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”'"

Right now?  I'm off to explore my own single inch of terrain today ... bird by bird.

Reframing

What a mash-up of contradictory feelings I seem to be experiencing as I move into this writing day.  Anticipation, pleasure (such a victory for me, those first two!), anxiety, and stress (same-old same-old as far as the last two are concerned). 

I'll take the progress for what it is and move forward through the rest.

Pleasure and anticipation
I took off the last couple of days from academic writing to take care of some business on Tuesday and spend some time with my husband on Wednesday.  Good decisions -- and it's with a slight sense of disbelief that I found myself contemplating the prospect of returning to work on my current article with pleasure.  What???  Not unalloyed dread and fear that I would be paralyzed (okay, that's a bit exaggerated but you get the drift)? On the contrary ... 

Last night I realized that I was genuinely looking forward to working on the article today, to the process of constructing it, to that zone I enter when I'm fully engrossed in that kind of writing endeavor.  It dawned on me that I'd actually missed that work over the past 48 hours.

Good lord.  Change occurs. Miracles do happen. 

Anxiety and stress
Now, these are my more familiar companions when I'm writing professionally.  But as I type those words, I'm realizing that even these emotions are less about the writing process for me now and more about general (and generic) angst in relation to the publish-or-perish imperative in academic life and the slog toward tenure (I go up for the latter a year from September).  In fact, on some level, however cautiously I know it,  I do realize that I can get (and have gotten) what I write published. It's essentially simply junior faculty angst that I'm experiencing.  No more and no less than that.

It doesn't matter that I've seen endless people go through the same stress cycle (sounds like a setting on a washing machine) and that it's all part of academia's tired, well-known, self-justifying rites of passage. Knowing that doesn't eliminate the stress.  It simply makes it boring and generic, even to me, the one experiencing it.

If I have one more dream (and they are simply dreams, not nightmares) of being back in school (at the age that I am now), or having ridiculous conversations with an unpleasant colleague, all of which are pointless and plotless but which speak to the anxiety do feel, I'm going to roll my eyes at myself to such an extent that they'll roll back in head once and for all.

I mean, I get it.  I've read any god's quantity of Freud, not that it's necessary for this interpretation: I feel infantilized. Disempowered. Under the circumstances I'm surprised I'm not currently dreaming of my teeth falling out (now, those dreams are nightmares -- classic, Freudian nightmares).

Except -- truth be told, I don't, really.  Feel that disempowered, that is. The fact of that matter is,  I'm too old and have done too much work on myself to feel genuinely terrorized.  Nervous, yes. Constrained, yes, to be going through this process now at a later point in life than the average junior professor (my choice as well as the results of my choices, of course) -- but not truly disempowered. Because the reality is, if I do what needs to be done, chances are things will work out.  No guarantees, of course, but that's the probability.

Well, hell.  Reframing stress and anxiety sure as hell strips issues of their (melo)drama, doesn't it?

Markets

The Future of Scholarly Publishing - ChronicleReview.com.

A succinct (if somewhat terrifying) overview of present-day academic markets with editors representing different disciplines. 

Oh, and I like the passing reference (below) by one editor to the need to nurture good writing in budding (hell, and seasoned!) scholars:

"One trend I don't see, but would like to, is greater attention to writing skills in graduate school. When I speak to groups of grad students, I always urge them to cultivate an ability to write in several registers (through book reviews, blogs, journalism, and so on), even as they write their dissertations."

Versatility? Craftsmanship? An art form, even?  What novel ideas!

Anniversary

For anyone interested in series romance, check out today's blog entry at Teach Me Tonight, where there's a really interesting commentary on Harlequin cover art over the years, described in the press release below:

"As part of the 60th anniversary celebrations Harlequin is sponsoring an exhibition of original cover art that will focus not only on the changing shape of desire and fantasy but also on the social meaning and context of these images. THE HEART OF A WOMAN: Harlequin Cover Art 1949—2009 debuts at the Openhouse Gallery in New York City on May 29, 2009, and will be on view until June 12, 2009. By presenting 60 years of cover artwork, the exhibition offers a unique insight into the profound transformations that have occurred in women's lives over the past six decades. These changes have been captured and reflected on the front of Harlequin novels—from shifts in private desires to shifts in the politics of gender. [emnphasis mine] Although it is the stories of romance that charm the hearts of so many women, it is the artwork on the book covers that offers the first tantalizing hint of the pleasures that await between the covers." (Harlequin Press Release)

My guess is that academics interested in the romance novel are already crawling all over this one!

Seriously?

"Falcon Leopardi" as the hero's name in a Harlequin Romance (er, or anywhere)?  Wow. 

On the other hand, I did buy the book and I am reading it, so I can do  only so much smirking before I have to smirk at myself.

And anyway, I like Penny Jordan's HR stories, and there's a way in which I admire the sheer, unabashed, in-your-face, fantasy aspect of some of the current lines of HR.

They are what they are, and they make no apologies.

And on that level, you just kind of have to admire them.  Kinda.

You go, Penny!

(P.S. I did try to find an image of a falcon and leopard together -- um, good luck with that.)

Drafts

"A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it." - Samuel Johnson.

Amen, Sam.

I wrote five pages of academic prose yesterday, and for me that's damn good.  I don't believe I've ever written more (in that genre) in any one day, and it's absolutely all about the dogged effort, the determination, the resolve to throw the prose up there on the screen and keep. on. going.

Which isn't to say that I don't refine my prose as I go, even in first drafts. I do --  because style and content are fundamentally intertwined for me (it's those two degrees in literature), and my arguments always  develop in and through turns of phrase as well as through logic and structure.

But it's the fine details of the latter that I'm beginning to worry about less and less during the initial drafting phase of an article.  I write on a computer, forgodssake, and if paragraphs or sections need to be reordered later and transitions need to be written or rewritten, well, those are not really tasks to worry about the first time through.

Just get the damn thing down.  Tinker later.

There's a real relief in developing -- and applying! -- this sense of pragmatism.  For one thing, it means that I'm relying less on inspiration (a mercurial, unreliable presence at best) at the outset and more a series of plotted points that I want to make in the course of an argument.  One's muse does not need to whisper in one's ear in order for one to jot down some key ideas, put them in a very basic order, and start writing toward them.  Making a basic list of key ideas is pretty straightforward, and I don't even have to call it an outline if I don't want to.  (In fact, rather like Bartleby, I prefer not to because doing so might cause me to break out in hives.)

For another, this approach sort of deconstructs or disassembles or subverts what are, after all, essentially Romantic concepts of the writer as artist who suffers from mysterious "blocks."  Writing is hard work and at its best it's sublime, but do we imagine that even the greatest writers (fill in your example here) sat down to work each and every morning thinking, "Yippee-skippy, I can't wait to see the fabulous prose or poetry that spills from my pen today?"

I think not.

Pretty much the only practice that most writers have in common, whatever their era or genre, is that they make themselves sit down and do it on a regular basis, according to a regular schedule.

And that much, at least, I can do.

Construction

Monday morning with another week of writing ahead of me.  Breathing into the anxiety that the prospect raises for me, but also trying to tap into the sense of pleasure I feel as well.  It's neither purely one nor the other.

For this brief span of morning blogging time today, I'm streaming some very New-Age-y music from my iTunes library.  I'll switch to classical once the serious writing begins.  Bach, I think. Goldberg Variations. We'll see.  Music soothes me and also helps me concentrate and focus (as long as it's lyrics-free).

Routine calms me as well, and the schedule that I worked out last week is proving to be both functional and productive so far.  I need to be open to tweaking it if the need arises, and I need to be flexible to accommodate other needs that may arise in the course of a given week or day (for example, tomorrow I need to go to campus to take care of some obligations and meet with a colleague about our collaboration on a couple of articles) -- but so far, so good.

My tone is so diffident, I know, and I think that comes from my fear of believing that I can actually establish a productive writing routine that isn't decimated by angst. This summer I'm deliberately trying to adopt a very utilitarian approach to writing (get it done, get it out), and the way in which I'm writing the article I'm working on now reflects that:  I'm not waiting for inspiration, I'm building it as if it were a Habitat for Humanity house.  It's not about the muse; it's about getting the ideas down on paper (metaphorically speaking ...), marshaling them into a structure that works (it doesn't have to be perfect, it simply has to be reasonable), and then firing off the end product to presses. 

In my mind's eye I see myself wearing a workman's apron with a hammer and nails, pounding up a board there, securing a corner there.  Getting the job done.

If the image works, use it.

Advice

How to Write Fast.

A quick, sound (though not particularly recent) post by writer and editor Alisa Bowman. I find that those with journalism experience are able to crank out prose without waiting around for high-faluting things like muses to kick them into gear.

It's all about getting it done, getting it out there. No fuss, no apologies, very utilitarian.  Anyone can follow her 6-step process.

While it's clearly aimed at wanna-be professional bloggers, it's applicable to writers of all kinds, particularly perfectionists, procrastinators, and those who fear writer's block.

I wouldn't have anything in common with those kinds of people myself, however. Not at all.

Dickens

An excerpt from Hard Times, which I am about to finish tonight, and which distills the essence of why I'm so partial to Dickens:

"From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly.  As he now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was compelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap.  With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there." (p. 99, New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004 [1854])

Now, this isn't one of Dickens' most famous passages, nor is it Dickens writing at his best, but it is quintessential Dickens nonetheless.  In all his melodrama and pathos (to which I'm extremely partial, having written a Ph.D. on classical American film melodrama), in his evocation of pivotal moments, miscommunication, and opportunities found and lost, in the assemblage and construction of affect through prose (shall I compare it to putting up a building? composing a symphony?), Dickens simply cannot be bested. 

Some like his humor, others admire that humor when put in service of character development and social satire, still others -- most Dickens lovers? -- the unique blend of the whole package. I, of course, number myself among them.  But it's melodrama done well that gets me every time.

This passage, unexceptional for Dickens but remarkable in relation to other less talented writers, is all the more affecting to me because it concerns an imperfect father (Mr. Gradgrind) and daughter (Louisa) -- I've got my own father issues (enough said).  As I remember now years later, I first read Dombey and Son (1848) in a perfect fever to get to the moment that I knew  -- that every reader must know -- is coming, which is when (spoiler alert!) Dombey casts his loving and devoted daughter out of his house.  It had been coming for 700 pages, forgodssake, and one waits for  it with dread and apprehension and -- yes -- narrative pleasure.  However, when I finally reached that point in the book, I burst into a flood of tears (I was in my dormitory's study hall, I remember) that lasted some 10 or 15 minutes.  It was all the more powerful for having been anticipated because that's the way that melodrama works.

It must have been amazing to watch Dickens on one of his reading tours. Simply amazing.

Mail-order

At least the order is tax-deductible -- though one of the books I need most urgently for an article is apparently arriving last, despite my annual "free" two-day shipping membership at Amazon (presumably because it's coming from Powell's):

Total for this Order: $71.04

The Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) Cormac McCarthy; Mass Market Paperback; $7.99
Delivery estimate: June 8, 2009

Beyond the Writers' Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction Carol Bly; Paperback; $10.10
Delivery estimate: June 8, 2009

The Old Curiosity Shop (Dover Thrift Editions) Charles Dickens; Paperback; $5.00
Delivery estimate: June 10, 2009

Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium (Suny Series, Horizons of Cinema) Kirsten Moana Thompson; Paperback; $25.95
Delivery estimate: June 8, 2009

Disaster Movies: The Cinema of Catastrophe (Short Cuts) Stephen Keane; Paperback; $22.00
Delivery estimate: June 11, 2009 - June 26, 2009

Apocalypse Movies: End of the World Cinema Kim Newman; Paperback; $4.20

Bookstores

What is the deal with bookstores these days?!

I walked into Borders this morning, hoping to find a copy of Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop.  I'm reading Hard Times right now (somehow I missed both books when I was an English major and then again when I was doing an M.A. in literature), and I'm enjoying it so much that I thought I'd line up the next Dickens read (I'm like an alcoholic: I like to know where my next novel is coming from).

Well, good luck with that, is all I have to say (well, not so much -- the truth is, I'm about to go off on a rant).  Because not only did Borders not have a copy of the former (it seemed to stock only the three titles read most frequently in secondary schools in the U.S. -- i.e., Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities),when I shifted gears and decided to look for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, the store featured exactly one edition and it was $15 (since I expect to dislike it -- I'm not a Fitzgerald fan -- that struck me as exorbitant).

Few titles by any single author (particularly if he or she is not currently on The New York Times' best seller list or featured by Oprah) and pricier editions of the titles they do stock? I flung my hands up in disgust and walked out, thinking, "I'll just order what I want from Amazon!  At least they'll have a selection!"

Therein lies the irony, of course.  I do realize that it's those choices to go to Amazon (or Starbucks ... or Target ... pick your retail outlet of choice) that has perpetuated the homogenization of bookstores, cafes, and all manner of outlets that have put independent businesses ... well, out of business. It seems as if the only two easily accessed bookstores anymore are Borders and Barnes & Noble, and although I like spending time in them (I prefer the former to the latter, but that's simply about ambience, to the degree that there is any), it's only because I'm a lover of books, not a lover of either brand. 

I let it happen, though.  Not single-handedly, no, but by participating in mall culture and in opting for the concept of convenience, I enable the reduction of choice of all manner of things.  Yes, I go to second-hand bookstores (there are two good ones within 10 miles of me), and I enjoy prowling through them, and I go to independent cafes, too -- but not as frequently as I do the others. 

Not nearly.

I've really only myself to blame.

Cafe

It's not exactly Les Deux Magots and Hemingway certainly never would have chosen to write here, but it does well enough for me for today's purposes. 

After an early morning doctor's appointment that got me up and out of the house, I've planted myself at a Starbucks for a couple of hours to do a little writing, fortify myself with breakfast and a venti quad latte, and await the opening of an Apple store at a local mall.  I need to buy a screen protector for my new iPhone (I thought I could get away with not having one, but I'll be pissed off if [when?] it gets scratched). And as long as I'm out and about today in the vicinity of other stores, I'll run a few addiitonal errands as well. 

I'd hoped to get the car smogged today, but while I remembered to take the address of the service station (and a coupon!) with me, I forgot the registration paperwork at home. Naturally.  Always put off untll tonmorrow what you can do today.  Turns out they prefer you to make an appointment in advance anyway, a fact I've just discovered after making a call, so I've done that, at least. For when? Tomorrow ...

I'm not always a model of efficiency.

Epiphanies

Treasure them when they appear, however trifling or small.  They may return in memory as moments to sustain us when clarity or purpose seems singularly  lacking.

Today's fleeting realizations (which came during my working day as I was writing):

• 10:45 a.m.: I'm enjoying this process.
• 11:35 a.m.: I'm good at what I do.

Given that the act of writing professionally is, for me, nearly always preceded and followed by extended periods of self-doubt, these passing moments are precious.

After a lifetime you'd think I'd realize that the more I immerse myself in writing (rather than in worrying about writing), the greater the number of these moments I experience.

I look forward to tomorrow.

Adjustments

So ... the run-through of my new summer work-and-writing routine yesterday?  It went well.  I do believe that getting a jump-start on writing here at Punctum the day before helped limber me up a bit, and I was able to get some productive planning and real writing of an article done, which is more progress than I'd expected to make yesterday.

One problem area?

The post-work wind-down.  Instead of walking away from my computer after I'd put in my time and accomplished what I'd set out to do yesterday, I stayed on it. Not to work, mind you, but to play and de-stress.  Now, that doesn't have to be a problem (nothing wrong with recreation at the end of the day), but I have a tendency to escape into technology and to fritz with tiny details or projects that may leave me feeling wound up rather than relaxed.  Yesterday's obsession was Twitter -- setting up an ID there and linking Punctum to an RSS feed.  When such tasks are relaxing, that's fine.  When they become additional sources of stress because technology has chosen that moment to fritz out -- well, then, it's time to Step Away from the Computer and do something else.

You know, like ... read. Take a bike ride. Cuddle a kitty. Talk to my husband. A friend.  Real life.

So today's adjustment to the summer schedule is this:  when I am done with my work today, I am going to do a quick check-in with email and some social/professional networking sites and then turn off the computer for the rest of the day. 

If anything urgent comes up, there's always my iPhone. ;)

Schedule

 Because I actually began my summer writing schedule yesterday, not today (I refer to the mind-game I played with myself in my last post, hoping to hurdle the anxiety of the first day by getting an unofficial jump on it here in the safety of Punctum), I hope that this inaugurational day will go well.

My goal for the day?  Simply to establish a workable, working routine that will take me through the next couple of months. That's it.  It's not to become immersed in the routine, or have it be easy, or second-nature yet. It's simply to establish it.

I'm a creature of habit and I'm also a tad (okay, more than a tad) OCD, so last night I drew up a simple list of my usual start-of-the-day tasks at the computer.  Technology can be a real time-sink for me because I love it and I often allow it to seduce me away from tasks at hand (writer's block?  Spend a little time on Facebook! Wait, nooooo ...!), so I bullet-pointed even the smallest items. They looked something like this:

• Coffee
• Home page headlines
• Bloglines
• Facebook homepage: scan/"like" but don’t post
• Click on charities
• Read morning meditation
• Post to discussion board
• Check/flag/send necessary email
• CLOSE Outlook and Facebook and turn off notifications

This morning these tasks took me a little more than an hour (as I pretty much expected from previous experience). Knowing what to expect, I'd gotten up this morning with an eye toward leaving myself a couple of hours before sitting down to work, which now leaves me about 45 minutes to come here to my virtual writing desk and ... write. As myself rather than as a Professional Grown-Up (there are those damn capital letters again).

How does it feel? 

Good.  Safe.  Like doing slow, easy laps in a pool before a swim meet.  Or playing an easy, relaxing piece before tackling the performance.  If I can do this, I can do that.  If I love this, I can like that.

So simple.  I can.