For a couple of weeks, I was spending all day on the computer doing my copywriting work, then my evenings weekends making a website for a friend — which took about twenty times longer than I first anticipated. I don’t do this work anymore and I forgot just how much “scope creep” happens with these projects.
It was exhausting me, and I was growing increasingly upset about the fact I wasn’t getting to write fiction, like I said I would do in the new year. That upset goes hand in hand with a kind of panic and that awful voice that says things like, “You haven’t written a book in almost three years. You can hardly call yourself an author anymore!”
So, on top of the burning sensation in my eyes and that egg-scrambler-to-the-brain feeling in my head from the computer, I had this creative guilt to contend with and the gasping feeling that my life was slipping away and I had nothing to show for it. (Whether a person has to justify his existence by producing art is a whole other discussion.)
To turn the tide on this, I booked last week off work, since I had several days of paid vacation still in the bank with my client. I had a whole week just to play and create!
The theme of the week was “Digital Sabbatical”: I was turning off the distracting, attention-grabbing, time-devouring machine, and devoting the time to reconnecting with my creative purpose and, hopefully, getting some work done on my new novel.
Of course, I ended up spending the whole first day working on my friend’s website and cleaning up various other details. “Okay,” I thought, “this is just what gets sucked in first to a vacuum of free time.”
The next day, I went to the pub in town where I often work — a giant upended stone rectangle with WiFi and cheap lunches. Except I didn’t bring my computer.
Instead, I brought along my various handmade notebooks and pads, and a copy of Creativity Rules “” an old favourite guide to story structure and writing in general. Flipping through its pages, then sinking in for a deeper read, I was reminded of the endless possibilities of creating something straight from my imagination. And the author said something about recording reality.
I’d drifted away from this, but it’s why I first got started writing: I did a theatre workshop back in Charlottetown and my director recommended a book to me called Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg. I picked it up and was instantly mesmerised by Goldberg’s exhortation to “say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist”.
Viewing the world through the filter of “How would I describe this?” was like gaining a second sight: I noticed things more. I savoured them. I felt more alive.
I filled books with ideas, moments, noticings. I’d leave a party in the middle of it to record some impression that came to me. Eventually, this led me to writing a play with a friend, which led me to writing books. The danger with this, though, is becoming ever more focused on product, because having that to show and getting public reinforcement is pretty compelling. But that’s all far down the river from that first moment of finding and making.
Then came the computer-space, which, for me, is the opposite of that loving attention to what-is. It hooks me into searching, searching, never quite settling. Skimming. Grabbing. It’s frenetic, and, while informative, it’s the antithesis of the creative state, which starts with resting, noticing, listening, and bringing forth.
So in my pub-session I made lots of notes and outlines and thought about the structure of a short story I wanted to write. I had to get it finished before the end of the week because I wanted to submit it to a competition.
“Wait. Submit? I thought we didn’t do that anymore.”
Yeah, that’s what I first thought when someone sent me the details of this Scottish story contest: “Art is not a competition. And I’m my own publisher; I don’t hitch my expectations or sense of validity to anyone else’s agenda.” As designer Bruce Mau says in his Incomplete Manifesto for Growth: “Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.” I don’t find them healthy or helpful, either. Pursuing this stuff leads to second-guessing, thinking about outcome and being pleasing. Those are the foundations of writer’s block (in fact, every atom of that wall is made up of “What will they think?”).
I have this exercise I do. I call it “Weekly Review at the Imaginary Diner.” In it, I go to this diner in my mind situated in the middle of a desert. I sit down, say hi to the waitress, maybe order something, and then I wait as three people come through the door (the bell rings) and join me. They’re three people I respect and admire who represent the areas of my life I want to have some breakthrough in or make progress in that week. I talk to them and get their advice.
Oh, it’s all made up. I know that. Yet things often come out that I wouldn’t have thought of. It’s akin to the work I do with my subconscious when writing a book (my subconscious is a lot cleverer than I am).
So, about this contest, one of the figures said: “You are afraid of doing writing that isn’t ‘right‘. You like to do things right. But there’s no agreement here about what is ‘right writing’, so you’re confused. There’s a competition in front of you, which normally you shouldn’t take part in, but on this occasion I’m saying you should because it’s a chance to practice finding what you want to write, writing it, and sharing it without caring about outcomes. You’ve become used to sharing only when you can control the outcome. Just shine in your own personal heaven.”
So Wednesday I brought my typewriter downstairs and… accidentally wrote the first paragraph of this story I had in mind. Then I did some other stuff and accidentally wrote the rest of it. Just like old times: it was already there; I simply had to uncover it and write it down.
I edited it the next day and sent it in. Then I went to the pub and did some research for my next novel. This book has been stumping me, because I’m not sure what the story is, or if there even is one here for me. Normally there’s this point after a certain amount of thinking and research where a definite story breaks off like an ice-shelf and floats free, but my mind isn’t committing to anything here so far.
After writing this short story and enjoying that process so much, I entertained the thought of just doing that for a while. Giving myself permission to not have to write the book, weirdly, made me want to keep working on the book.
~
Thursday night, the fella and I went to a talk by a local historian. It took place in an upstairs room of my beloved Wick Heritage Centre — several joined-up houses stuffed from floor to ceiling with artefacts from the town’s past. They haven’t been able to get the right to call themselves a “museum” because their installations can’t be removed to be articled or put on show elsewhere. Of course they can’t: they have ten thousand trinkets, two skerry fishing-boats, and the huge, mounted plano-convex lenses of a Stevenson lighthouse in there!
We got the last two seats — at the back, behind a cloud of silver-haired audience members. They dimmed the lights, and the speaker, Harry Gray, gave a slideshow of rough old black-and-white photos as he told us about the “gutters” — the women who used to work along Wick’s piers, processing the red herring the fishermen brought ashore.
As Mr Gray spoke, the audience-members cooed like eiders and muttered the names of the people in the photos in unison with him as they appeared on the screen.
When the talk finished, the Centre’s volunteers came around with biscuits and our choice of orange squash or ginger wine. I took the latter, and it was delicious — fiery sweetness in a tiny plastic cup. A woman in Staxigoe Harbour makes it (she was sitting next to Craig), but I didn’t get a chance to buy any.
I still feel completely alien here, and I wish I could at least get rid of my accent, but it’s great to have the chance to do these things and experience flashes of this place from a time when it seemed more… whole. That said, hearing the stories of these women’s long, painful, severe workdays made me appreciate how very, very easy life is now by comparison.
~
This week I’m back to work, back here with the computer on. I made the mistake Monday of reverting back to a usual work-day; I flipped the machine on first thing in the morning and found my attention scattered and my time sucked away. (I do this, I know; it’s not the machine’s fault, but it sure does seem perfectly designed to facilitate this inattention.) As a self-employed person, this always goes along with a frightened feeling, because I need to produce work consistently.
So my task now is to find a balance that preserves this nourishing feeling of being in touch with my inner and surrounding worlds, yet still make use of the digital tools available, which open up so many possibilities (like being able to produce my own books and teach others how to do this).
As always, I come back to structure. Drifting in front of the computer is a recipe for losing my day and feeling stressed by it. So, in that spirit, it’s time to send this, shut off my connection to the Internet, and plan my day.
<
p>
It’s a pre-Millenial film contemplating the end of the world, and there’s a great line at one point that I bark-laughed at:
~
On t’other hand, though, it’s a relief: Travelling to London then staying there is time-consuming and expensive. And what if, in some far-fetched scenario, I sold everything and had to make all new stuff in just a month? I’d be worn ragged.
I’ve tried assigning tasks to days of the week, but the problem with that is not feeling like doing that thing when the day comes. So instead I’m creating a menu of things I want to work on during the week, and each day I pick a few things off it. And I’m not assigning myself more than three! Even though I can cram in more, I start feeling harried and losing the sense of fun about my projects. So just three.
The thing is, though, people really like the little books. They draw attention — which I figure will be even more important than usual if I’m down in London, where the crowd will presumably be a lot bigger and there’ll be a lot more vendors.
