Sunday

Welcome

I met my roommate, who’s in the same writing group as me, and set up my room. We went for dinner at five—burgers, corn on the cob, pesto pasta, and fruit salad. It was delicious. We sat with the people in our group. So far, we have an audiologist, an EMT, a lawyer, a homeschooling mom, and a teacher, and I haven’t even met them all yet. Jerry explained that each author would be giving a lecture, which is just talking about a given subject, and a craft talk, which is hands-on, as well as a reading of their own work.

Patricia’s lecture

         Patricia’s lecture was on establishing a writing practice. She talked about finding your own voice, finding a moral point of view, and handling rejection in such a way as to become a better writer. Sheand then she gave us fifteen imperatives. #1: Be honest about your practice, including if you don’t have one. #2: Have a place to work. Suit it to your needs. Some people write in cars. Some in busy cafes. #3: Let writing be your default activity, as opposed to Facebook, email, watching television. #4: “Abandon hope, avoid despair.” Either is unrealistic. #5: Approach writing like an exercise regime. Don’t try to run the marathon on the first day. #6: Celebrate the freedom of writing. You’re the boss. You make the judgment calls. Enjoy it. #7: Remember that you’re not alone. You’re part of a web of writers. #8: Repeat to yourself what you need to hear. “Tell yourself every day, I’m in a good position to be a beginner at writing.” #9: “Always remember how important writing is to your sanity.” #10: “Accept that writing makes you happy.” #11: Find a role model. #12: “Figure out what you can sacrifice.” Be it sleep, television, email, alcohol. #13: “Give yourself small rewards.” #14: “Visualize the big reward.” A finished manuscript. A book cover. Talking to fans. #15: “Allow different activities into your writing time.” Research. Taking notes. Writing exercises. Revising.

Other people spoke up in response. Talk of listening to music with and without lyrics sparked a discussion of wordless activities to spur creativity. Matt: “When you deprive yourself of words, your interiority has a tendency to start chatting.” One participant described writing as consisting of the inspired phase and the uninspired phase. The inspired phase doesn’t require habit—when you know you need to write something down, you do it. It’s the rest that requires the habit. Writing when you’re inspired can get you a lot of starts, but not usually a lot of finishes. One person described her practice by saying that she goes somewhere where people can see what she’s doing, so she’ll feel judged if she goes on the Internet.

        As soon as I realized what the talk was about, I thought, oh, another person telling me I need to write regularly to be any good. I’ve heard it before. From everyone. Zadie Smith is the only writer I’ve ever heard describe her writing process as being interior, as working it out in her head, and then writing it down on paper nearly perfect instead of spending hours revising. It’s my greatest failing as a writer that I don’t write—and that’s kind of important. For most of my life, I’ve written when the mood strikes me, a very specific mood that I’ve heard called deep play, in which it becomes simple. My mind seems to expand. The words come without effort. The sentences develop interesting structure. My vocabulary expands. And it requires almost no revision. And…it works the way that one participant said: I write a lot of beginnings. Not a lot of ends. That’s an oversimplification, of course. Sometimes deep play has me writing climaxes instead of beginnings, and sometimes it lasts long enough to write the whole thing. This is why I’ve never written a novel. My best original fiction short stories have been small enough to write in a single sitting, while the mood still had hold. My longest work that I’m actually considering publishing, the novelette, was written by a deep play mood that allowed me to write sections throughout the book, and then I strung them together later out of curiosity. I don’t sit down every day, even every week, to write something. But then, when I heard the last imperative, I realized—if all of my research counts as writing time, then, yes, I’ve been setting aside time relatively frequently—every day, one could argue, when I could—for this book. And why? Because this blog holds me accountable. This blog *is* the writing practice structure for this story. I’m not sure it would work if I became well-known—I post way too many spoilers for that. But for now, this is what’s keeping me going. This, and the conference. By having a deadline to have read most of these books by, I have accountability. I will be wasting money if I blow off my homework. I will be taking away from my experience. We’ll see how much focusing I can do next week! As for the other points, I readily admit I don’t have a good writing space at home, or a good way to fix it. I like my setup ergonomic. That means I have my keyboard at wrist level and my eyes pointed straight ahead—ideal for a desktop computer, not a laptop. In fact, when I’m not traveling, I use a wireless keyboard and mouse and prop the laptop up so it’s at eye level. Now, the only place I have room for this setup is in the middle of the dining room, where people can walk past me and see what I’m writing. Even though they won’t read over my shoulder, they could, and that makes all the difference. I relax far more when I move to somewhere no one can read over my shoulder, but I lose my ergonomic setup. Thankfully, at college next semester, I’ll have both a single and a desk, and I might actually be able to pull it off. Imperatives 4-10 and 13-15 I mostly already do to some extent. I know what writing can do for me. I don’t have unrealistic expectations (though maybe unrealistic dreams) and I know I’m decent at it. I approach it like an exercise regime only in that I can’t get into an exercise habit either, though. Number 11 is harder. Find a role model. JK Rowling comes to mind. The number of sub-structures in her work is astonishing, and once I read how they work, I began to try and apply some of them. Austen-like misdirection, postmodernism, the Hero’s Journey, and literary alchemy come to mind, all brilliant forms that shine under her pen. Zadie Smith also comes to mind, in that she is, as I’ve said, the only author I’ve heard of that writes remotely like I do. In a way, Kirstin Cronn-Mills and Cris Beam, because theirs are the works I’m using as touchstones. #12 is difficult—what don’t I already give up during much of the school year? Sleep. Laundry. Washing my hair. A large portion of the things I do to relax my brain—still necessary during finals week! The newsletter (“Writer’s Block”) tells me to take this week to try and establish a writing practice. On the one hand, now, while I’m focused, is good. On the other, now, while I’ve got a totally different routine from my usual, is not likely to stick.