National Day on Writing Self Pep Talk (I Need This More Than You but Bear with Me)

Here are some thoughts I had while writing with my composition students the other day. As today is the National Day on Writing, I thought I would share them on the off chance that it helps someone else, too.

Ten more minutes to write. What would I do with more? A lot.

I’m starting to believe that my reluctance to throw myself into another writing project (and Writing Project) stems from a deep yet faulty belief that I don’t have enough time to do a good job, and like so many of my students continue in the false philosophy that it’s better to not even try than to try and fail. I often voice aloud that I am not afraid to fail (at writing…because that is what revision is for), but I think I really am.

 I claim that my most toxic enemy is time, or the apparent lack thereof. I don’t have enough. At least I don’t have the time I want/need to start and finish projects as I used to. Sure, time adds up, yes, but my inner self struggles to produce writing when I perceive that I don’t have wide-open slots on my schedule. Lately my available “free” time minutes have been relegated to numbers I can count on my fingers and toes.

And I’ll admit that it is true that ten or twenty minutes here and there could make a difference if I made use of said minutes. However, those small chunks don’t permit my mindset to allow flow to happen. (Thank you very much, Mr. Csikszentmihalyi.) It takes me that long to warm up. To be honest, when I have to quilt the piece scraps of time together, the patchwork writing isn’t as pleasurable for me. What’s the fun in turning it off before the engine is heated?

Here’s my thought—probably not new to any who might still be reading—but hang with me. What if I use those small snatches of seconds and the odd handful of minutes I do actually have to become more organized or methodical or strategic about what I write and what I do as a writer. It might seem to be more work—starting and stopping like a new driver on a clutch—but I might actually produce something. As a wise mentor once (or twice or a thousand times) told me, only writing produces text. Using my time this way might allow me to navigate the shallow waters my creative vessel has been treading lately. Yes, I am mixing my metaphors. Judge harshly! It doesn’t matter right now. What does is that I am writing.

It has been too long. I’ve lost my groove, and there is no one to blame and chuck out a window except me. I gotta get back on the bike, as I once told a crowd of English teachers at UCTE. Seriously! In the past three years, I have only presented at a conference once. Pathetic. 

I need to get over the ugly despair that falls when I can’t find a perfect description or if my alliteration is over the top; the writing on the wall (which is not mine, by the way) clearly dictates that I have to get back to work. I just have to write. I might need a stricter taskmaster, though.

 

Just to Get Back into the Swing of Things...

I'm going to post a few older rambles that I never got back to. I need to release some of these raw thoughts so I can see the more clearly (see "Article" posted 29 October 2009. The link to the article is under "article" (duh!) on the sidebar. I just need to get back into a writing habit of some sort--something besides research proposals and crap like that. So, enjoy...or not.

Flow: 15 January 10

I suppose I must write. Dum de dum de dum. Well, I’m not really getting anywhere quickly. I wanted to write about the inspiration I was remind of as I was doing my walking—laps around the school burns more calories than walking around the neighborhood due to all my head steaming. Parent conversation—story later…maybe. As I rounded the last corner for my last lap of the day, what should come up on the shuffle but my good friends the Beastie Boys.

“Let it flow. Let yourself go. Slow and low that is the tempo.”

Yeah, I was getting into a flow with my walking, which has now been interrupted. I had a flow going with my Old Testament reading (starting to get into the incestuous eewy stuff). But the real question was whether or not I was establishing a flow for my writing.

Several years ago as I was mowing the lawn and listening to said Beasties, I noticed that as I got into a groove, the task became less arduous, less monotonous. My attitude changed if I cut a cross pattern in the front lawn and ran diagonal down the side and went in circles in the back. The idea struck me that the same thing needed to happen to my reluctant readers and writers. At the time I was struggling with some moronic, lethargic, apathetic, just-ick 8th and 9th graders who vehemently protested the application of the written language, either producing or absorbing it. Come to think of it, they mostly communicated through a series of simple grunts and gestures.

I thought, “Hey, I should write an article about this. And so I put it on the back shelf. The inspiration came again, when I was on the campus of Utah State University in Logan. I was reading Tom Newkirk’s Misreading Masculinity, and made the same connections. That summer, as I was living bachelor life while the fam hung out at Amy’s parents’ place in North Carolina, I read more into flow and discovered Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his flow theory—it was exactly what I had been pondering while carving circles in the grass around my bushes, only he ad lots of cool, confusing data and research to back up his theory. I just had Ad Rock, Mike D, and MC A.

Maybe I still will write that article some day, but for now, I just need it to apply to me. Whenever I produce writing it’s because I establish a flow. I set aside time. When I had my first professional article published this past fall, it was because I had the time set aside in the Central Utah Writing Project. When I produced all those pages of manuscript for the BYU Writing Conference with Chris and Carol, it was because I made myself write. I had a set-up, a routine, something bordering on a ritual when I would write. But now that I have nothing, well, I have…nothing to show for it. Sure, I’ve been able to eke out a few poems, but those were gifts. When I really work for the writing, it will come—maybe not immediately, but it will come. Geez, now I’m starting to sound like I’m from Field of Dreams. What’s with me and baseball movies lately. Hmm…idea…I’ve got that quote about poets being like pitchers…I’ll have to find it and use it. Ken Burns will provide the rest of the inspiration.

I need to make time. Scribbling a couple times a week is not going to cut it if I want to truly achieve something. But for now, I’m trying slow and low as I let myself go. And my mom said the Beastie Boys were a waste of time….Ha!