Avoiding Evasion Strategies

Dorothea Brande’s “Formula for Success”: The Will to Fail Revisited

Samantha Tetangco Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Setting Writing Goals, Writer's Reflection, Writing Advice, writing habits Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

At the onset of this Writer’s March Challenge, I wrote about Dorothea Brande and the “Will to Fail,” a concept based on Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” that seeks to name the human propensity towards self sabotage.   As I explained,

Each person has a dream, a goal, an internal sense of what would make their lives better (their own will to power, so to speak), but each person’s will to power [is] usurped by the stronger will to fail.

selfsabotageyoursuccessMany people have watched Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech, a video I shared and discussed many years ago.  In this speech, Gaiman talks to a group of graduating art students about how to make it as artists in today’s world.  He tells them to always keep in mind what they have at the top of their mountain (their life goal).  Then, when faced with choices on what to do next, he said, keep in mind this mountain and choose options that will take you closer to the top.  And so, put another way, the “Will to Fail” involves all the life choices we make that either take us down or away from our mountains.  It also (perhaps most importantly) asks us to examine all the reasons we stop climbing altogether.

So, what do we do to avoid this “Will to Fail”?  How do we overcome it? In other words, I keep hinting at Brande’s formula for success, but have yet to offer it up.  And so, I offer it now.  As Brande Says,

All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail.

Continue reading →

Why Not? In Pursuit of the Picture

Nari Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Words from a Guest Blogger, Writing Advice Tags: , , 2 Comments

The question of “why” interests me less and less these days. “Why’s that?” inquisitive/cheeky readers might ask, and to be honest, I don’t know and I’m not terribly interested in knowing.

In his essay “Topic of Cancer,” which would become part of his book Mortality, Christopher Hitchens observes that just before finding out he had terminal cancer, he earned “million-miler” status with United Airlines and consequently “a lifetime of free upgrades.” While many people would deem that ironic, he doesn’t “see any ironies here”:

Would it be less poignant to get cancer on the day that . . . I was bounced from a coach-class flight and left on the tarmac? To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

Irony, in the way he’s using it, would imply a grand scheme, an existential system wherein he somehow merited esophageal cancer. But he’s not going to go there. He understands that life isn’t that cruel. He didn’t earn cancer like he earned his million-miler upgrades. Lots of people get cancer–why not him?

giphy

Ross asks an age-old question.

The query of “why” is often posed in writing workshops: Why does character X do Y? Why is the narrator telling this story? The workshop conversation can begin to resemble a police procedural in which the question of motive appears again and again, which on the surface may seem to be in service to the craft, but–I suspect–has just as much to do with writers’ hopes that a story or essay with clear logic will render life more comprehensible.

(At the risk of alienating all writers, I hazard the claim that prose writers are more concerned with “why” than are poets. At the risk of alienating primarily prose writers, I hazard that this is because poets are smarter. And, yes, this latter declaration risks alienating integrity-obsessed readers who recall my earlier assertion about being little interested in “why.”)

Among the one-liners rattling about my brain is this: “What I have been after all along is not an explanation but a picture.” From Annie Dillard’s classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, this sentence shook me when I first read it and has multiple times since. It embodies her wisdom: The writer’s task is to see–not to rationalize or elucidate, but to see. In another chapter of Pilgrim, she says, “What I call innocence is the spirit’s unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration.” While seeing is often equated to maturity and cynicism, to Dillard it is innocence. It is beauty. It is devotion, attention, prayer.

I have a habit of turning to Dillard–as is evidenced by a previous post–because she can see like few writers I’ve read. And seeing is itself so demanding I don’t think I can do much more, as a reader or writer. I can’t answer the “whys” or even muster the energy to ask them. As fascinating as psychology and philosophy are, they can get in the way of living–and in the way of a good writing session.

My watery writing directive is this: Don’t allow the “why” to stall you. Don’t let it delay the shaping of a scene, the description of a character, the momentum of exposition. Focus on the scene, the character, the idea, without stumbling over sense. If some well-meaning reader of your draft asks “Why Z?” reply “Why not Z?” If the reader then muses, “But everything happens for a reason,” pick up your laptop and move to another room. Or, if using a desktop, pick up the reader and move them to another room.

To look past the thing to the question of motive or impetus is to reject the writer’s most essential function and to take upon oneself a burden that, especially in early drafting stages, the literary writer has no need to bear. Focus first. Focus with such ferocity you become innocent. The universe is neither kind nor cruel. It doesn’t coddle or condemn. To face what we are and where we are is itself the struggle.

What I Learned From Thinking About Teams: A Midpoint Check in!

Samantha Tetangco Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Challenger Updates, Writing Advice Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
35th Birthday Rental 033

A glimpse of UC Merced

You may not know this about me, but I teach professional writing at the University level, and I love it!  There is a practicality to this writing style that aligns with daily aesthetic, a sense of order and audience awareness that, in the vast openness that is the creative path, offers my brain relief.  Not sure where to start?  Consider your audience.  Identify your purpose.  Find a way to deliver information that is quick and easy to digest (and use headings and lists because that often helps!).  In this way, professional writing realm really can resemble that plug and chug formula that (yes, I admit) I sometimes  crave.   (So, before you get all huffy, dude, I know…the prof writing forms can still have style and personality, but you and I both know that we can churn out, oh, say a blog post, in a matter of hours (or days if we are being a bit picky) while a story or essay or poem can take us years upon years  to complete…and then more years to have someone decide to publish it…)

Anyway, this is all to say that my two worlds – the professional writing world and the creative writing world – rarely intersect.  And yet, the practical professional writing approach CAN help us creative types approach our own work better.

And so, today, I want to offer advice I learned from my course readings about working in teams. Continue reading →

On Daily Habits: Thoughts From Our Challengers

Samantha Tetangco Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Setting Writing Goals, Take the Writer's March Challenge, Writing Advice, writing habits, Writing Prompts Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Whenever someone joins this Writer’s March, I ask for an exercise that they’d like to
share.  This year, several responses had less to do about one-time things and more about the daily writing people do to help form good habits.  Reading these changed the way I think about exercises. I always thought they something you did when you were stuck or wanting to get started, something that changed every time.  I hadn’t considered the way we could turn the exercise into something that “unsticks” us on a daily basis.

This morning, as we ate breakfast, Randi told me about how habits are formed.  I’ve written about this before, but I hadn’t thought of how those habits are related to the processes of our brains.  As Randi explained, rather than thinking about the left and right sides of the brain, think instead of the front and back.  The front of the brain processes information that is new.  That new information, if repeated often enough (30 days, ahem!), moves to the back of the brain to form habits.  Once things are habits, they become easier to do because we no longer have to think about doing them.  On Sunday, she’ll offer more insight on this (specifically on how to break the bad habits), so I don’t want to give it all away, but here on Day 3, I thought it would be cool to see the habits that are already in place.  These are things the rest of us might steal either for the entirety of March or just for the day: Continue reading →

The Will to Fail

Samantha Tetangco Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Setting Writing Goals, Take the Writer's March Challenge, Writer's Reflection, Writerly Quotes, Writing Advice, writing habits Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

quote-there-are-seeds-of-self-destruction-in-all-of-us-that-will-bear-only-unhappiness-if-dorothea-brande-3-47-13

This winter, Randi and I took a road trip from California to Norman, Oklahoma for the holidays.  It’s a long drive, over twenty-four hours, and we spend most of the time reading to each other.  Randi had picked up  Dorothea Brandt’s How to Wake Up and Live: A Formula for Success that Works.  Brandt’s other book, Becoming a Writer, was one of the most influential in Randi’s early writerly development.

Brandt’s book, as it’s subtitle suggests, is a “formula for success.”  In the introduction, she tells us this formula has changed her life then teases the reader with several chapters before she gives said formula away.  At first, I’d been annoyed – why dangle the “secret” over our heads (for it is, indeed, similar to the “secret” in The Secret), but as Randi read onwards, I began to understand.  A formula can only be useful if you have taken the time to understand its parts.  And this formula had one part in particular that needed explaining: it was, as Brandt called it, the “will to fail.”

friedrich-nietzsche-power-quotes-the-world-itself-is-the-will-toThis will to fail concept is a variation on Nietzsche’s “Will to Power,” which my old friend SparkNotes explains as a fundamental part of living, the quest to have and be powerful, a need that is “stronger than the will to survive.”  While this will to power can result in conflict, “Nietzsche is more interested in the sublimated will to power, where people turn their will to power inward and pursue self-mastery rather than mastery over others.”  In other words, it is our desire to be powerful individuals that drives us towarsd self-betterment (or at least this is how I understood it).

Brandt, however, points out that there is something stronger than this “Will to Power” that Nietzsche doesn’t address, and that is the “Will to Fail.”  For pages upon pages, she offers examples of what this will to fail looks like – the person who says they want to travel but blames a lack of money.  The person who wants more from life but is focused on raising a family.  The person who wants to be a writer, but after receiving rejections claims that they’d tried that and the world had dubbed them not good enough.  Each person has a dream, a goal, an internal sense of what would make their lives better (their own will to power, so to speak), but each person’s will to power was usurped by the stronger will to fail.  And so, despite what might seem like success–person A died a beloved member of his community, person B raised three healthy children, person C lived a long, mostly happy life, Brandt argues they fail in their ultimate purpose.

Now, I admit, there is a harshness in Brandt’s observations.  There is, too, a certain privelege that she brings with her as well, and yet, as she described each scenario, I couldn’t help but think of people I knew, each one doing similar things to those in her examples, each wanting but doing little to make changes, each with another reason or rationale for why the changes were impossible.  Each mostly happy and simultaneously dissatisfied with their current state.  Since reading this book, I have come to notice more and more the way my own excuses have become transparent as just that: excuses.

At this point, you may be wondering…This is Day 2 of Writer’s March!?  Why are you talking about failure?   Isn’t this when you would usually inspire us to craft our goals?  To be excited?  But as I think about my own goals for the month, which are still in the formation stage, I can’t help but feel like it is vital that we examine how the will to fail is playing out not just in our daily lives, but in the goals we are setting before us.

So, here on day two, I offer some ideas of self-reflection.  

First, consider the excuses you make for why you don’t write.  Do you recognize them as excuses?  Do you see them as the obstacles they are?  Second, consider your goals so far.  Are we asking enough of ourselves?  Are we asking too much and setting ourselves up for failure?  Are we aware of how capable we truly are in terms of what we can accomplish?

Find some way to offer yourself a reminder and/or clear the obstacles away.  Maybe it is an object or a quote.  Maybe it is a drawing of what these fears look like.  Maybe you hold a ritual and write the excuses on strips of paper, then burn them away.  Whatever you do, I think it is crucial that we face our own will to fail when we set forth on the journey of this month of writing.

…and if you are interested, it might be fun to share them in the comments below.

Then, when you are done, don’t let your meditation on the will to fail become another excuse for why you are not writing.  Get to it.  Tell us how it goes.

Five Weird Ways to Get Writing Done

Lisa Hase-Jackson Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Fiction, Poetry, Writing Advice Tags: , 3 Comments

IMG_0059Towards the end of any month-long writing challenge, the average writer finds herself grabbing at straws for inspiration to keep writing. All the great ideas that had been incubating up until the beginning of the journey are exhausted and she’s left with either a lengthy, cumbersome tome or yet another blank page of reticence representing the next poem or short story. All of the conventional approaches to consistent writing   adamantly advocated by leading writer’s magazines, websites, and blogs are likewise worn thin and their effectiveness called into question under the scrutinizing gaze of the inner wild-child — who simply wishes to create with abandon.

If your wild child has grown bored with the carefully arranged, safety-approved environment of adequately structured playground equipment designed to stimulate just the right amount of brain activity and instead is testing the parameters of the playground itself, here are a few ideas to consider:

Honor the Block: Like all other demons of the psyche, writers and artists fear the dreaded Block; but fear only gives it more power. If you feel a block on your path, acknowledge it and invite it to your table. You may discover that it has something of crucial importance to impart, and it is your job to make way for its message. What questions would you like answered? Entertain a discussion and welcome the inevitable discovery of self that opens access into the deepest reservoir of your creativity. There are answers there. Some grave, some simple. Your Block’s presence may indicate major changes are in order, or it may simply mean that it is time to rest, or time to move.

Clean Something: Ever notice how cleaning off the kitchen table somehow leads to doing your taxes, a chore you’d been putting off for months? Just as our intentions are triggered and honed by unrelated activities, so can writing arise from non-writerly pursuits. And just as intent to write brings household chores to mind, so do household chores bring writing projects to mind.  And obviously, writing, for most of us, is much more appealing.

Work Backwards: In a culture that advocates putting difficult chores first, days and weeks can fly past before we get around to doing what we really want. In writing, the difficult parts include, well, writing. Take time today to imagine the day you read from your published and wildly popular work. Imagine what you are wearing, where you are reading, and even the occupied seats of the venue. Design the cover of your book or get an author photo taken. Practice your signature and what you will write when fans ask you to sign their copy of your book.

Catalog Your Work: On days when I feel overwhelmed with things to do, I make a list of things I have accomplished. It immediately puts things in perspective and takes the pressure off. Instead of worrying about all the work that stands before the present moment and the moment when you can say you’re finished with your project, take a look through the work you’ve accomplished so far. I don’t just mean in the month of March, either, but through all the days of your writing life. This includes the comic strip you wrote in Jr. High, the love letters you penned in college, and the Journals you wrote as an undergrad. It should be obvious that everything you wrote for your college classes belongs in this survey as well. Impressed? You should be. Now to really bring to light just how much you’ve written over the years, index your journals, create a spread sheet of your papers, or stack everything you have in hard copy smack dab the middle of the floor and walk around it for a week. As a penultimate exercise in self-appreciation, check your Submittable account and wallow in the success of having actually sent your work out into the world. Some people never make it that far!

Go Where You’re Unknown: At the extreme end of this spectrum is moving to a differentIMG_0075 state or leaving the country. Culture shock will send you running to your Journal, your only true friend in the world, to normalize your experience, as a plethora of raw material pours forth. But even if you are a lifelong member of your community with no plans for ever uprooting, just going to an unfamiliar coffee shop or opting for a different branch of the library — ones your friends do not frequent, whose “regulars” are new to you, and whose location is in an outlying area — can trigger the kind compulsory focus needed for productive writing.

Remember, challenges like the Writers’ March are meant to work for you, not the other way around. If you find that any approach leads you down an ill-fitting path, simply turn around. You can always return to your comfort zone any time you like.

Good luck, good work, and happy writing.

Lisa Hase-Jackson

Day 27: The Fear of Finishing

Samantha Tetangco Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Writing Advice Tags: , , 6 Comments

DSCN0953This past week, I discovered a new form of torture.

It goes like this: I have two to three days of full-blown, all-out writing. I’m talking the best writing days of my life: the I’ve-finally-revised-that-troublesome-scene kind of day, the elusive-climactic-moment-finally-made-right kind of day, the this-is-the-reason-I-do-this, maybe-I’m-decent-at-this-after-all, I-think-all-those-years-were-really-worth-it kind of a day. I’m talking about glorious, beautiful, easy, right-brain writing heaven. When writing IS that thing we tell our parents it is. The days are so good, I think, “My God, two to three more like this and I will finally be DONE!” This, of course, leads to fantasies about book deals and query letters and agents (ahem, call me). I find myself imagining book covers, famous people’s blurbs, and readings that I can give in places I would like to visit. At the end of such a day, I go to bed, stare at my darkened ceiling, and let myself whisper, “I am just about there…”

Then, the next morning– Nothing. Complete and utter agony. Horrified staring at my screen. A complete and utter stall. All joy in writing has vanished. All joy in life has vanished. It is painful, awful work, this writing thing, and while I’m at it, my book is awful, too, and don’t try to argue with me, I know what I know…and oh, does knowledge hurt. I spend a sullen, mournful day watching Law & Order SVU or reruns of The Walking Dead, then I proceed to clean my house. The following day goes much the same. And then the one after that. And then after that until I am at the ecstasy’s polar opposite: the terrible, terrible agony when I worry if I will ever find joy in writing again. I contemplate medical school. I think about a degree in Rhetoric and Writing. I look for a way to return to retail.

The fear of finishing. A quick Google search lead me to a number of forums, blog posts, articles, and even a dissertation where different people–some of them writers–ponder why humans put so much work into a task and then suddenly go into hiding, right there at a project’s most crucial moment: the terrifying end. In a post titled “Whip your fear of finishing,” blogger Chad Schomber explains the phenomenon as follows:

To use a football analogy, going 99 yards is easy. It’s that last yard, crossing over into the end zone, that’s the hardest. The same holds true for writing a novel, designing a logo or filing our taxes. Right when we can see the end, our brains whoa the horses, momentum slows and we sink into procrastination. Why?

Maybe we fear criticism. Or we’re not sure what to do next. Or worst yet, we lack the confidence to say it’s done because it’s not perfect. It’s natural to feel that way. But heed Miles’ advice to Joel in Risky Business: sometimes, you have to say what the fuck, and finish.

Katherine Jenkins, another blogger, discusses her own moment of procrastination at the end of finishing her own book. She writes:

What I’ve come to realize is that dreams are never quite like reality. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dream. You must dream. Just don’t get stuck in the dream. Put a foundation under that dream of yours, otherwise what’s the point? Dreaming and coming up with ideas are the easy part. Seeing your dreams through to the very END is the hard part. Why? Because when you dream about becoming an author or an actor or a painter or a musician or starting a business or changing careers or having a baby or getting married, the pictures of what this life looks like in your mind’s eye are, well, dream-like. You don’t imagine the baby screaming non-stop or the hours of writing with no human contact or the money issues or the lack of work or the economy crashing. Everything in your dream is rosy and cheery and maybe even….perfect!

But nothing is perfect. No one’s life is perfect. I’m not a perfect writer. But I continue because I set this dream into motion. I put the foundations down. I asked for it and I got it and now I have to FINISH IT!

I am reminded of one of the most beautiful and most profound things I ever heard a student say to me. When I asked him why he kept turning in his stories late, he said, “I do not have the heart to write them down. They are so perfect in my head, and none of it comes out like I imagine.” Is the advice for me, here at the end, any different than the advice I once gave to him?

Put the pen to the paper, turn off the excuses, and write.

Day 20: Focus Focus

Samantha Tetangco Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Why write?, Writing Advice Tags: , , , 4 Comments

Hold onto your hats, folks, it’s about to get metaphysical in here.

On my writing desk, I keep a handful of things: an array of notebooks, a tin of pens, random memorabilia like a sumo wrestler paperweight and a glass fish within a fish, a scattering of framed photographs, Japanese candy, tissues, hand lotion, scotch tape, and a deck of Oracle Cards by Doreen Virtue called “Healing with the Angels.”

There are a number of writers who work with tarot cards including Stephen King, John Steinbeck, and Italo Calvino, who is quoted as saying that the tarot is “a machine for writing stories.”  If you Google “writers and the tarot,” you’ll encounter a slew of websites that offer the tarot as a useful  tool for writers (including this one that helps you choose a tarot deck and this one that offers different writerly spreads and this one that connects a group of Minnesota writers in an online forum).  Each presents ideas on exploring plot, developing characters, understanding setting, and other ways of overcoming writerly obstacles.

While I’ve used tarot cards in the past, over my own systems of trial and error, I have worked through different decks of cards and wound up with the Angel ones at my desk because, unlike the above authors, I don’t usually seek plot or character insight, I seek encouragement.  Whenever I am at a loss or feeling down or unsure why I am doing this thing writing thing anyway, I pull a card.

Today, I pulled a card for Writer’s March, and here is what I got:

Photo 66

And so, the angels offer up the advice of “Focus.”  I had to laugh because this is one card I pull for myself nearly every day, no matter how many times I shuffle the deck (which is crazy because there are 44 to choose from).  And here is the message:

Think about what you want, not what you don’t want.  Guard your thoughts carefully, because they create your experiences.

Sometimes it seems that our thoughts choose us, but this is never the case.  We always choose our thoughts–every moment.  Our thoughts always have an effect, and there are no neutral thoughts.  One-half second before you hold a thought, you decide to hold it.  So, with practice, you can learn to monitor and alter your thoughts.  This is the equivalent of putting your hands on the steering wheel of your life.

I love this card.  I usually pull it when I find myself getting distracted or making excuses for work.  It appears when I tell myself things like, “I don’t have time,” or “I’m too tired,” or “I can’t do this right now.”  The message of the card is simple.  Our thoughts have power.  When we think in the word “can’t,” we cut ourselves down because thoughts equal actions. If we think in can’t, then we won’t.  If we believe we can write, then we will.  If we believe we don’t have enough time or can’t muster the effort, then we won’t even try.  If we believe our work has meaning, then it does.

I cannot think of a more fitting message for Day 20 of this Writer’s March.  Perhaps, if you are like me, you are feeling the weight of the month.  It’s easy at this time, to cast our goals aside, to forget, to put off, to defer, to decline.  Well, friends, as the Angel oracle says: “Think about what you want, not what you don’t want.”  If you committed to this month, it is because you wanted to put writing in your life.  Remind yourself of why.  Now, go to it.  Act.  Write.

Day 17: The Power of Limited Choice

Lisa Hase-Jackson Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Words from a Guest Blogger, Writing Advice, Writing Prompts Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

By Lisa Hase-Jackson, guest blogger

Fear is a familiar feeling to all artists, and writers are certainly not immune. Some of the more common triggers of fear include anticipated failure or, as is often the case, anticipated success. For writers in particular, fear is often triggered just by considering the likely ostracism that may occur from revealing family secrets, or by the realization that what was written in a passionate moment of active imagination will appear to be worthless drivel in the light of day.

Perhaps the biggest fear faced by many writers on a daily basis it that of the blank page. Even assuming a writer can overcome the overwhelming number of possibilities represented by the blank page, there are still myriad choices to make – or choices to rule out – once the page is no longer blank and writing has begun in earnest. Let us posit, then, that the progressive limiting of possibilities which occurs during the act of writing is perhaps the most difficult fear for writers to overcome – for though the writer experiences the anxiety this progressive limiting of choices represents, the underlying reason often remains obscure.

Most writers agree that the first line of any piece determines what that piece will be, as well as what it cannot be. Setting aside academic arguments over what constitutes a poem versus what constitutes a short story, it’s reasonable to suggest that once a writer ends a first line of writing somewhere before the right margin, the work in question can be labeled a poem. Conversely, this small but significant decision to hit the return key before the punctuated end of a sentence reasonably rules out the possibility of such forms and genres as the essay, the article, the epic novel, the play, or even the short story.

And that’s only the first line.

Since each line of a poem necessarily does a great deal of work (or should), the choices made and ruled out with each subsequent line after the first will determine the poem’s rhyme scheme, its form, its overall length, and whether the poem will be narrative, lyric, or something likely to be described as experimental. In the act of writing the poem, then, the poet – whether aware or not – is evoking every craft lesson, every respected opinion, every piece of mythology, and every aesthetic preference they have ever encountered or developed in their respective writer’s journey to this very moment of selective choices. What’s not overwhelming about that? Further, because (and most writers agree) the imagined poem is nearly always better than what appears on the page, the act of writing (and selective limiting of choices) is nothing less than a courageous gesture of considerable mettle resulting in an extraordinary ability to conquer fear on a daily basis.

So while it may seem logical that artists fear a lack of choice, it is in actuality this strategic limiting of choices through the act of creation that triggers fear for most writers. And though it is most decidedly difficult to do so, writers must make consistent effort to avoid brooding over choices sacrificed and believe with conviction in the choices they have made.

Gather your mettle now and try one of the strategic choice-limiting writing exercises below:

  1. From a literary magazine, of which most writers have dozens, select ten words you DO NOT usually use in your writing. Use these ten words in a poem, perhaps one per line. The more foreign they are to you, the more interesting the resulting draft will be (and the more fun you will have writing it).
  2. Formal poem construction strategically limits choices for you, leaving your creative mind room to focus on other aspects of a poem. Most poets find traditional Sonnets relatively rigid while Pantoums and Villanelles are considered by some to be a little more flexible. Experiment with these and other forms regardless of your opinion of their merits.
  3. The blitz is a form that makes choice elimination particularly fun. Follow this link for directions on how to construct a Blitz Poem: http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/poetry-prompts/poetic-form-the-blitz-poem.

Day 5: Run Toward Confidence (The First of Several “Tuesdays with Nari”)

Nari Avoiding Evasion Strategies, Setting Writing Goals, Tuesdays with Nari, Writing Advice, Writing Prompts Tags: , , 3 Comments

Yesterday I went on the longest run I’ve gone on for a while. (Using patchy to describe my exercise record for this past winter is optimistic at best.) It hurt. For the last two miles, I was out of energy and out of breath. I had to pause four times to rally my muscular and respiratory systems, each time imagining that my body was a story’s punk villain staring insolently at me as she raised her middle digits. When I got home, I sank down onto the carpeted stairs, chugged water, and felt pathetic. But also accomplished.

This is not me.

This is not me.

After enjoying a snack–which I’d like to say consisted of exquisitely balanced portions of carbs and protein, but was really a Trader Joe’s cinnamon roll slathered with cream cheese frosting–I embarked on the next item on my agenda: three hours of writing. 

I love what my friend Sam wrote about seeing writing as play, as enchantment. But for whatever reason, yesterday’s writing session was for my attention span what the run was for my body–hard work. I’ve been revising a personal essay that’s almost finished, but it’s not there yet. Sentences need to become cleaner and sharper. Sections need to be swapped around for maximum potency. I thought this final drafting process would be easy, but it’s not. And yesterday I had to summon all remaining willpower to keep at it for those three hours. As the minutes ticked by, distractions continued to appear: The couch wasn’t comfortable. The air felt too cold, then too warm. I was thirsty. I satisfied each need as it arose, determined not to let it eclipse my productivity. Although the going was slow, I got through the three hours, at the end feeling mentally hyperventilated. But, again, accomplished.

My point here is not that I’m awesome (though my back is always available for patting–that is, unless you’re creepy). My point is that on the days when writing feels like work, that’s okay. Adjust the thermostat. Kick your roommate/partner/spouse/cat out of the comfiest chair and claim it. Just keep writing.

Recently I read Stephen Koch’s fantastic book The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction, and there’s no other book about writing that I’d recommend more. The chapters travel through the writing process, from inception to the final draft. Chapter two, “The Writing Life,” is about becoming a writer by living as a writer. Koch says that any talent a writer has “will go to waste unless it is sustained and strengthened by the nagging, jagged, elusive thing called obsession, that stone in the shoe of your being known as a . . . vocation. Call it dumb persistence. Call it passion. Call it a fire in the belly or the madness of art. It is less the ability to write than the insistence upon writing.” I freely admit that I’m not obsessed with writing. I’m not the crazy wordaholic who sees scribbling in a notebook as her bread and water. At least not now. For me, writing is a choice–in the case of this Writer’s March, a daily choice. And today, day five, I can’t say that my writing is that much more brilliant, but I do feel like more of a writer. After all, as Koch points out, “Productivity is the only path to confidence. . . . Since writing is what generates inspiration–and not the reverse–abundant writing produces abundant inspiration.” So when you don’t feel the enchantment, write your way toward confidence. If you produce writing, you’re a writer.

Or, to speak for myself, the more I write, the more I know I’m a writer.

This is not me either.

This is not me either.

Exercises (No Actual Running Required)

In the spirit of generating writerly confidence, feel welcome to try one (or more) of the following:

  • Pick a phase of your life (high school, for example) and write about how your spent the bulk of your free time. What did you love to do? What images and moments can you recall involving this activity?
  • Write about something that you’ve produced (infuse that last word with whatever meaning you wish).
  • Write a scene that shows you practicing something (an instrument, a sport, a concept like compassion).