Feeling very seen. Every “hole in my calendar” is a potential writing residency. Somehow I always forget that writing (especially editing long work) is truly exhausting work.
Since I began writing this new series, I have become obsessed with writing every day. Not 6-plus hours. Often no more than 90 minutes. But every day, regardless of what that day brings. I began writing book 2 on May 21 and since that time have not missed a single day, often surpassing 2,000 words. One day, I only hit 450. It made me feel like a failure. I know I shouldn't be like this, but I can't seem to stop.
This made me think of a passage from Carl Phillips' excellent book My Trade Is Mystery, from the essay "Silence":
I once asked Ellen Bryant Voigt, a poet for whom there are typically many years between books of poems, how she handled the silence, what I still thought of at the time as writer’s block. “That’s not how I think of it,” she responded, and went on to explain to me how a snake, in order to attack, must first recoil to establish a position from which to attack. As I understand the analogy, the attack is the act of writing, and the period of recoil, of retraction, is many things: reflection, thinking, revision of thought, remembering. “You’re not blocked,” Ellen told me. “You’re waiting. You’re paying attention.” Which is also research. Also, a version of silence, the only sound the sound of a snake breathing, which must be, as sounds go, a soft, small one.
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Granted, you're not talking about writer's block here, but I still think the qualities that Phillips posits as being inherent in "the attack" are too often overlooked when we allow ourselves to be seduced by the false god of "productivity" and feel we need to somehow constantly extrude new work as though we're some kind of hydraulic press being fed petroleum distillates.
Writing is not like manufacturing, and especially not on the industrial model. No, at the risk of sounding too much like Wendell Berry, writing is like gardening. You can kill your plants with too much attention just as you can kill them with too little attention, and you cannot rush them to the harvest.
Exactly. It's sort of like when I'm really on a roll on an exercise and healthy-eating binge. Even if my knee starts to hurt, I want to keep going. Or it's my birthday. I want to skip the cake. Because these things come in cycles, and when I'm on the good part of a cycle, I'm afraid to let go.
Feeling very seen. Every “hole in my calendar” is a potential writing residency. Somehow I always forget that writing (especially editing long work) is truly exhausting work.
So relieved that I'm not the only one who does this.
Since I began writing this new series, I have become obsessed with writing every day. Not 6-plus hours. Often no more than 90 minutes. But every day, regardless of what that day brings. I began writing book 2 on May 21 and since that time have not missed a single day, often surpassing 2,000 words. One day, I only hit 450. It made me feel like a failure. I know I shouldn't be like this, but I can't seem to stop.
A writing streak can be so sustaining for me, too. It makes it really hard to pump the breaks.
Now that's a staycay! Enjoy every well-earned minute of it.
Thank you, sweet Carolyn!
This made me think of a passage from Carl Phillips' excellent book My Trade Is Mystery, from the essay "Silence":
I once asked Ellen Bryant Voigt, a poet for whom there are typically many years between books of poems, how she handled the silence, what I still thought of at the time as writer’s block. “That’s not how I think of it,” she responded, and went on to explain to me how a snake, in order to attack, must first recoil to establish a position from which to attack. As I understand the analogy, the attack is the act of writing, and the period of recoil, of retraction, is many things: reflection, thinking, revision of thought, remembering. “You’re not blocked,” Ellen told me. “You’re waiting. You’re paying attention.” Which is also research. Also, a version of silence, the only sound the sound of a snake breathing, which must be, as sounds go, a soft, small one.
_________________
Granted, you're not talking about writer's block here, but I still think the qualities that Phillips posits as being inherent in "the attack" are too often overlooked when we allow ourselves to be seduced by the false god of "productivity" and feel we need to somehow constantly extrude new work as though we're some kind of hydraulic press being fed petroleum distillates.
Writing is not like manufacturing, and especially not on the industrial model. No, at the risk of sounding too much like Wendell Berry, writing is like gardening. You can kill your plants with too much attention just as you can kill them with too little attention, and you cannot rush them to the harvest.
Exactly. It's sort of like when I'm really on a roll on an exercise and healthy-eating binge. Even if my knee starts to hurt, I want to keep going. Or it's my birthday. I want to skip the cake. Because these things come in cycles, and when I'm on the good part of a cycle, I'm afraid to let go.