Madison finally went to sleep
We rocked and cuddled and coddled her through her cold and now she’s having trouble staying asleep without someone nearby. I’m hoping to get thirty minutes out of her nap today (her usual nap is an hour) and hopefully if we can muscle through some tearful sessions, she’ll settle down to let herself sleep on her own again. She was up for a couple of hours last night sometime after midnight begging Brett to rock her or make her toast — new habits die hard.
Last night while I waited for Madison to go back to sleep (she tossed and turned between us, whining and fiddling with my pajama buttons to try to wheedle her way to more attention) I was thinking about writing and about my goal this fall, which was to figure out how I write.
The most important thing I learned is that I’m slow. I’m a slow writer. I’m slow in part because of the kids and my job and the house, sure, but mostly I’m slow because I like to mindf*ck everything — it’s what I do, it’s part of writing for me.
I really appreciated what Tamar said in my last entry, “I write best when I have my heart in something. And I can’t muster up that passion for something that not only comes from someone else’s head (because, after all, assignments for pay come from the editor), but goes nowhere and is meant to go nowhere. If I’m going to write without a tangible goal, let it be on a project that gets me fired up.” It was a relief to read that because it summed it up for me.
What I love about writing is making all of the connections between this thing and the other thing and the thoughts I had while driving and a fragment of a conversation the day before. When I’m writing on something it’s in my head all of the time and so I’m living it even when I’m not at my computer.
There’s another Sondheim song (click to download it): Finishing the Hat. I listen to this song a lot because it’s such a beautiful description of the losses and gains of living a creative life. For me, I’ve made a conscious decision not to give into my work as much as I’d like right now but I fantasize about having that time — four hours a day, six hours a day — to just write and not have to come up out of it to make anyone lunch or even to exchange pleasantries. I’d like to spend hours with my attention turned to my projects but not while my family’s needs are so immediate. Someday though and I look forward to it.
“…however you live,
There’s a part of you always standing by,
Mapping out the sky,
Finishing a hat…
Starting on a hat…
Finishing a hat…”
Not now though. The hats must wait.
In any case, even with all the time in the world I would be slow. I like to ruminate on things for hours, I like to let my thoughts scrabble around to dead-ends before making their way back. I don’t mind doing research just to find out there wasn’t a story there after all — I love research.
The other thing I realized is that I write to discover things — about myself, about an idea, about an event — and that once I’ve learned what I set out to learn, it’s hard for me to stick with a project. I always thought I was ambitious and it turns out I am but not in the way that I thought.
I love love love to get published. I love seeing my work in print. But as much as I love it, I’ve discovered I don’t love it enough to stay focused on it. I’m not too thrilled about this. I would like to work harder at getting published but see, then I found out I like to work harder at other things. The problem here is that it doesn’t serve me well not to pursue publication. I need to do both. I need to follow through on some of my ideas and see them to the end. This will make me slower because I’m not accustomed to it. I drop projects like crazy.
Finally the last thing I learned is that I am very protective of my goals. I don’t like to share them because I don’t like people to ask about them. It feels invasive when people want progress reports. Why is this? I guess I’ve been defensive about being so slow. I make excuses instead of just admitting that I take a long time to write. But it’s the process that gives me pleasure so I ought to own up and quit worrying about measuring up to some imaginary standard.
I didn’t much like writing this entry but I did it in the interest of moving on from all of this.
Dawn, I think it’s great that you are figuring out what makes you and your writing tick in such a detailed way. And I am ruefully laughing at myself to realize all the times I must have driven you crazy by checking in to see how you were doing on this project or the other. Ah well, be assured that I never do it to check up on your progress but only because your thoughts interest me
And I am loving your Sondheim entries and hope that they shall never cease.
Are the hats really waiting? Aren’t you starting on a hat? Or at least keeping up your hat-making skills?
Annnnnnnyway, I too love research. I think that’s why I went to library school because it turns out I have little interest in being an actual librarian. This was a lovely and interesting post about the creative process. It’s so great when others share because it is such a personal thing and probably most people don’t understand much what they are doing. I wonder why you didn’t much like writing the entry?