The renaissance is over
People sometimes ask me how I have time to work and write and homeschool. I tell them it’s because I don’t clean my house. It’s true; I don’t. My house is pretty messy. Not health department messy but disorganized and usually in need of a run through with the vacuum. This is why I periodically invite people over: it forces me to do all of the chores I’ve been avoiding.
See, there simply isn’t time to do everything and so some things have to suffer. I’m not going to get hung up on the parts that are suffering because if I do, it infringes on my enjoyment of the things I do well. I could keep my house clean but then I would have trouble fitting in something else and so I practice guerilla cleaning (attacking some area when I have the sudden urge to do it) and do minor picking up as I go. This keeps my house manageable but it’s certainly not a showplace.
On the insecure-writers list (a link to join is in the sidebar), we occasionally talk about guilt over not writing. Pretty much every writing book will tell you that you have to write X amount per day or you’re not a real writer. This is only partially true. Those books don’t take into account that life happens and when it’s really happening in your face, it’s hard to make time to pick up a pen.
During the five years I was uhappily living behind a sizeable chunk of writer’s block, I wasn’t doing any creative writing. I was writing papers for school and grants for work and scrawling in my journal during particularly boring classes but I didn’t think any of it counted as actual writing. It caused me a lot of angst. Looking back, I can see that I was expending my quota of creative energy in other parts of my life.
There are quite a few women on the insecure-writers list who are feeling guilty because pregnancy has sucked their creative well-springs dry. I don’t think they need to feel guilty because I think that creativity waxes and wanes throughout our lives. Most women I know who have an artistic core will be driven to write or paint or create when the time is right. One day they’ll look around at their lives and realize that if they don’t write or paint or create, they will go stark, raving mad. Then when they find their paintbrush or boot up their computer, they will say, “I should have done this years ago!” and get very annoyed with themselves. But maybe they couldn’t do it years ago because they were too busy doing other very important things.
I personally think that the model of the driven artist is one based on a male way of creating. Women have historically had other things to do. Things like raise the kids and cook the dinners and make the money so their husbands can go on being creative geniuses. I think that we need to look at other women artists for our inspiration or as cautionary tales. The women who have found a balance that appeals to us (and it may mean more work for some and more living for others), are the ones we can make our own personal imaginary mentors.
I’ll tell you, when I came back after not writing for five years and discovered I could write again, it was absolutely wonderful. I was very scared before I figured out how to write again. When I considered a writing-free life, I realized that there were many losses I could bear but the loss of my writerly-self was not one of them. I began to find ways to give myself room to write and I also learned to respect my own creative rhythm; it is my very own. I realized that all of those writing books were based on someone else’s idea of appropriate creativity and I gave myself permission to use them as interesting examples but to work at finding my own model. Breaking free of writer’s block gave me the confidence to know that I was a writer even if life wasn’t giving me room to write.
Priorities
I was reading THIS and it made me think about how I pick my own priorities. I make a list in my head each day of things that need to be done. NEVER EVER does that list include things like…
Dailinks: 11-03-03
The renaissance is over…
I love you, you know. Seriously, I so totally agree with this. I wish Matt did.
I read an interview with JK Rowling once where she mentioned not cleaning her house for four years while she wrote Harry Potter. That was the day she became my hero, lol.
I’m in a huge lull right now when it comes to writing anything of substance. Fanfiction seems to be the only thing I can churn out lately and I’m feeling guilty about that even though I LOVE the fact that people are entertained by what I write. I want to write “real” stuff, kwim? At the same time, I know deep down that this is a creative period I need to go through to get back into my groove.
So basically, my comment boils down to “Amen!”
a feminine mode of creating
How do you create? By virtue of the fact that you blog, you are a writer of sorts. So, how do you experience creativity? Does it come in fits and…
Yeah. I find it especially hard as G goes on writing and creating and I don’t. He’s quite honest about the fact that if something happened to me he thinks he’d still go on doing that. Fact is that if he had to do what I do on a weekly basis, he’s not be creating much or the kids would really suffer.
My mother tells me that shortly after I began speaking in sentences, one day I saw her cleaning and asked “who’s coming to visit?” (because that was the only time I ever saw her cleaning.
I am very much my mother’s daughter
In her defense (if one is needed, and I think it isn’t) she once said she’d rather have a messy house and a happy family - with my art projects drying all over the place, my brother’s LEGO creations snaking around the living room floor, my dad’s reports and papers on the dining room table - than a clean house and an intellectually and creatively dead family.
I will remember my mother not for the house she kept, but for the fact that she always had time to sit down and talk to me, or read books to my brother and me, or that she taught us stuff, or that she went out and did environmental impact statements for companies so she could do things like prevent pipelines being built through important habitat. I think that interaction and creativity is far, far more important that a “showplace” house.
I was just referred here by an online friend who thought this might be a good resource for me as a writer. I found this entry and LOVE it. It resonates for me. I went to a writing workshop several months back and the main message there was the standard “if you don’t write X hours each day you will never write.” It was so discouraging…
We as women and mothers don’t have the luxury of putting our children’s lives on hold for a set time each day. I wish I had found this blog sooner.