I’ve come to learn that the difference between people who want to be writers and people who are writers is pretty simple: writing time. In other words– discipline. I’ve heard it called ass-in-chair time, too. Graduate school has helped me master the art of binge writing but I’m on break now and without the pressure of deadlines, it’s hard for me to get drafts out.
I like to hear what other writers say helps them to stay in the chair. Anne Lamott uses little assignments (finish a scene, describe a room, get to this point in the story today). This seems wise.
Another writer who visited us, Bret Anthony Johnston, says to finish each day’s writing session with a good idea about where to go next. That way, you’ll be able to start somewhere on the next day. Sounds good too, and sort of difficult.
Another aspect of writing discipline that I’m struggling with lately is finding the right place to work. Background noise? Comfortable chairs? Music or no music? Right now, a place with no internet connection sounds nice. As soon as I click my browser, I’m done.
I’m interested in knowing other writers’ formulas for their writing time (where and when and how often). What keeps you in the chair?
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
(Rumi, Translated by Coleman Banks)
I especially like the line about sorrows cleaning us out for a new delight.
Similarly, Flannery O’Connor has an interesting thought about grace:
Human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.
(From Richard Gionnone’s Introduction to Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writings, edited by Robert Ellsberg)
In other words…
Pain is inevitable, like change is inevitable. Why resist it?
Probably because we’re living our lives like we’re on some survival show. What if someone told us we don’t have to worry about survival any more? That every ounce of pain and disappointment we get is for our benefit, if we allow it to be so?
I just finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and then I stepped outside to the 80 degree April day and stood on the cement slab of my apartment building’s porch. Those who’ve read it know that book is black and white and gray, so the effect of green Spring was overwhelming. It’s strange to have spent so much time with a survival story, reading about people beating odds stacked high against them. It’s a good story for people who feel that way and I guess I do sometimes. Wanting to be a writer makes life feel like that, maybe wanting to be anything during this economic plunge makes life feel like a survival story. I suppose the odds are stacked against us all. But read that book and then go stand outside.
Everything is alive today and loud–the birds call, the bees are fat and they make noise among the flowers. Neighbors are rustling upstairs, dogs running back and forth across the floorboards. The refrigerators are humming. Cars rushing past. Someone’s playing bass.
Read that book about everything dead or dying and then realize everything is alive and will be.
I just listened to Rob Bell’s sermon from 3.29.09, “Stunned and Spent.” You can find it on Marshill.org, in the teaching archives.
http://marshill.org/teaching/index.php
I would say I’m supposed to be in church. I have a list, a task schedule with time slots–2 hours on this, 2 hours on that. It’s the only way I can come to terms with how much is expected of me at any given time but I never really follow it. I try, but something always comes up (like my lack of discipline). So I’d slotted reading in my schedule last night, to be in bed by 12am, to be in the neighborhood church this morning, etc.
At about 8:30pm last night, my friend asked if I wanted to join a group of our friends in Indiana for some karaoke. I’ve heard some of the writers in our program are stellar karaokiers, so I jumped at the opportunity. And it was fantastic. My friend’s parents were in town, they covered our drinks, they nailed their karaoke selections.
For the first time I felt I could understand my surroundings; this small town, run down like my hometown, this dive bar, brown and faded with loops of tacky neon; this music, smoky country voices singing about promised lands and cheatin’ hearts. And these friends, who I’d heard about, they were awesome. Incredible. They’re performing (the karaoke classics: You Outta Know, Bohemian Rhapsody, Sympathy for the Devil) and I’m thinking “Now we have to go back to grad school?” Do you realize how much talent is in the world? This is a world where people spend week days discussing literature, theories about how to read, how to define literary phenomenons and bend genders, etc, and then the next thing you know, it’s the weekend and they are in dive bars tearin’ it up. I used to say I only liked Asian-style karaoke (closed off living rooms) but this was something else. This was small-town American escape. It was heart breaking and beautiful. And it lasted until 3am.
Okay, so no one told me Indiana bars are open till three a.m. I woke up at 10:15 on this Sunday morning, rain pattering on my windowsil, and church was not going to happen. Still, I felt hungry for God, as I do most mornings (not just Sunday) and remembered Rob Bell sermons online.
While I lived in Thailand, I didn’t have any kind of teaching in our small church fellowship (we functioned more like a weekly discussion that usually was about the Bible, but oh, not always) so I started listening to the weekly Bell/Marshill as a way to sort of stretch my God-mind, if you know what I mean.
The sermon was about lamentations. It was about the need for lament, about how change brings some sort of loss, even if the change is good, it’s about knowing when to protest and turning those protests into poetry.
Turning protests into poetry, he said.
And here’s the point, the thing about God that I want to share. He’s alive, and that means he’s with you when you’ve been out karaokeing, He’s with you while you’re karaokeing. So, sure, I sat down feeling guilty, like I was in the wrong place (the place not indicated on my schedule), and so I and told God (prayer) that I was sorry, I should be fellowshipping with the marvelous folks he’s put in my life here in this church, and that I knew I had better weeks when I check in with him more often and by that I mean get my ass up for church on Sunday so that at least I have something to think God-related to about all week, at least have some nice conversations with people who love Him. I asked him, please, please don’t let me make this a habit, don’t let me start down that ugly road psalmists mention from time to time, you know, the one where we stop praying and then start believing we have everything figured out in our lives, or that we need to have everything figured out, and when we don’t we start to grumble.
I put on the sermon, found out it was about Lamentations, thought: Okay, God. I guess I deserve some fire and brimstone.
Fire and Brimstone? Rob Bell? The sermon is about Lamentations, sure, but it was so full of little things that I thought were said just for me, important to me, like little love letters from the risin Christ. Bell made points about Detroit, about poetry. I wonder if anyone else can relate to the sermon as much as I can–I mean, I really can’t imagine that those people in Grand Rapids felt it as much as I did–but they probably did. This is often how God works.
This is often how God works in my life. I find myself in a position that I feel like I shouldn’t be in, due to some choice I made, and then He hits me over the head and says: Do you think you’ve stepped outside of my love for you? Where do you think you can go where I can’t reach you? I’ll make you grateful for every decision you ever make.
All of this is to say God doesn’t like us to waste our time. So he doesn’t let us.
rice and beans
super video friday with my students
fiji exists
good impulses
turning bad impulses into good things
huge bass rhythms shaking asphalt
no more 19c british novels to read this year
chocolate mousse
that little clay loaf of bread with bible scriptures inside, on cards
wine with friends
sunnier days
rainier days inside
songkran
just three more weeks
just four more weeks
just breathing
baptisms at the au sable river
leaves on trees
not being a romanticist
the road, by cormac mccarthy
doing while waiting
bubblemint
other addictions from roadtrips
mudgie’s in corktown
sheol is a garbage dump
thai dramas
the new dan kahn
the new u2
the new us
(Blogs are so self-indulgent. Please know I know this, as now I’m going to tell you about how I eat. This is the shit I’ll want to read in like, 10 years, when I’m trying to remember grad school.)
So, every week I make about one meal and then spread it out for the rest of the week. I know this sounds nuts, but this is grad school. I also warm up pizzas on other nights, eat cereal for breakfast, usually, with blueberries. I come home and eat crackers and peanut butter or crackers with brie, or carrots with hummus. But cooking I only do about once a week because I have no tiempo para nada.
(I’m also writing to you after I’ve returned home from my Spanish lesson. That last sentence may or may not be correct. I have no idea.)
So, this week I made rice and beans. That’s right! You thought I was going to say I made something elaborate for my 1 meal per week. Get real, I’m in grad school. All my time goes into school and Facebook.
So, this week I made rice and beans. This is such good food for people in grad school, because you can make a whole tub of it (like I did), and then eat microwaved portions of it whenever. Really, I just started this post to tell you that, in heating up my last portion, I had this wild idea to stick pineapples in it.
Now, those of you who have been to the tropics know that in non-tropical climates, we don’t really have pineapple. We have something like pineapple, something the same color, texture and with a hint of pineapple flavor, but it’s not quite pineapple. This is the stuff I’m talking about that I put in my rice and beans.
And it was so good! I cut it into bits, threw them on top of my beans and rice, and the (hint of) pineapple flavor soaked over the rice, making a really nice sweet and sour rice dish. And spicy for me, because I dump dried chilis on my food and then squirt it over with Sriracha sauce. But you get the picture.
When I left for America, my Thai friend P’G asked what I’d eat when I got here. He said, “Will you eat steak?” like that’s all Americans eat.
This is such a self-indulgent post, but I’m putting down these thoughts so that I can return to this blog one day when I’m down on myself about my writing. I hope that if anyone reads it, they will find it inspirational, maybe, rather than annoying. Deepest apologies for the latter reaction.
I have been writing more, trying to check in every day. (Thank you Bret Anthony Johnston for inspiring me to write every day.)
This is to record: when I write, I am happier. I’m happy because I’m more aware of people, of details, of conflicts, of dialogue and fascinating things people say. I’m not sure if I am more sensitive, but I do feel like I can understand people’s perspectives more when I am writing. I’m productive, and that makes me happy, but I’m happy the way Buddhists are supposed to be happy–I’m happy because I take time out each day to spend with language. To spend clarifying ideas. Writing is a gift–it’s the opportunity to meditate and produce something from the thoughts. This is enough. The rest is just icing on the cake. (The rest, being that machinery we call the business side of writing).
This is also to record: Today I am a happy writer, even though I’ve only received rejection letters (okay, not totally true, but I still don’t see myself as successfully published). I met an author, Angie Cruz, last week, who told me that if I don’t give up, I’ll make it. It’s simple, but writers need to hear this. There are so many reasons to just give up. The odds are against us.
This is to record: I am content with where my writing is, even though I hope it goes much further. I have a story that is now waiting to be read by 20 lit mags. What’s crazy is that I expect 20 rejections. What’s crazier is that I don’t mind, because right now, what I went through in writing and revising that story enhanced my life.
This is to record: I have a job, which is teaching, and I love it. I love it because teaching makes my writing better, and because being a writer makes my teaching better.
This is to record:
God’s word is my fuel (God’s word: love your neighbor, I am with you, do not be afraid, trees with nests from mustard seeds).
