Category: writing life (Page 11 of 17)

Starting a new notebook

January 3, 2021 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

My daughter watched as I began a new writer’s notebook today. She wondered if it was a new notebook because it was a new year. I told her it wasn’t; I just happened to finish my old notebook the other day, so now it was time to start a new one. I showed her my “guardian spirit” from the old notebook (I chose J.R.R. Tolkien last time, because I started the old notebook in September and therefore felt very much like an academic who’d rather be niggling around in my imaginary worlds than grading papers), so my daughter decided to make me a guardian spirit for my new notebook.

The first creation was made from recycled paper and was three-dimensional (which wouldn’t quite work on the inside cover of a spiral notebook), so she tried again and made a colorful picture from an old piece of paper towel. I decided it was perfect for reminding me to be playful and use whatever material might be lying around.

After adding the guardian spirit, I copied over my list of “Books to Read” from the previous notebook into the new one. This is a ritual I always do when starting a new writer’s notebook. My list of books to read is LONG, so it takes at least four pages to fit all the books, plus I leave extra room for new books that I’ll add as the weeks go by. I used to use Goodreads to keep track of my books, but when I said goodbye to social media, I also said goodbye to Goodreads.

Honestly, Goodreads made me anxious. I didn’t like people knowing about my reading habits; it made everything seem very performative, as if I had to play a part (“self-published fantasy author”) instead of just being myself. Not that I read weird books or anything; I have nothing to hide, LOL! But it was just stressful having my books-to-read and my currently-reading books all out in the open. I felt pressure to add books to my lists so I could been seen to have all the same books as everybody else.

(A lot of this was tied to my work as a self-published author. Goodreads was a marketing tool as much as it was a personal one, so all my interactions on the site felt driven by that marketing aspect. I felt compelled to keep up with the latest self-published books as a way to show my support for the community. I’m not opposed to supporting other authors — not by any means! — but my books-to-read list became more about that than about what I really wanted to read.)

Even more stressful was getting updates on other people’s reading progress. I have a bad problem with envy and jealousy, so I would get super envious when I saw other people reading more books than me, or when I saw other self-published authors getting all kinds of good reviews. It was not a healthy way to spend my time, and it wasn’t making me feel good about my reading (or my writing).

When I decided to keep track of my books using my notebook — and keep it private — everything changed. I started reading whatever the heck I wanted, and I let myself go down strange reading paths that had nothing to do with my public persona as a fantasy author. I’ve been much more prolific as a reader since I’ve stopped doing the Goodreads challenge thingy: I don’t set any goals for myself, I just try to read as much as I can. No longer is that little bar graph thing on Goodreads taunting me and reminding me that I’m behind on my goal. Now I can just read and see what happens, and be excited by all the reading I’ve done. After I finish a book, I mark it as “Read” and write the date I finished. It’s my big, beautiful, analog reading list, and I love it.

For the record, I’m not opposed to others using Goodreads or the reading challenge. My husband still uses Goodreads like a boss, and it’s a useful tool for him. I just know that it didn’t work for me.

So now every time I start a new writer’s notebook, I get to use the first few pages for my book list, and it’s a nice little ritual: I write “Welcome to the notebook” and the current month and year on the first page, then I start my “Books to Read” list on the second page. Four or five pages later, I have all these book titles calling out to me, and whenever I’m ready to start a new book, I go to my list and see what stands out. The notebook is no longer blank; it starts off newly-christened with a gloriously long list, and I feel as if I’ve accomplished something (even though all I’ve really accomplished is copying a list).

A new year, a new notebook. I’m ready for 2021.

Input Update 12/28/2020

December 28, 2020 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

Reading: Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

Reading: Atomic Habits by James Clear (This one was a Christmas present.)

Reading: The Golem and Jinni by Helene Wecker

Listening to: Alice Coltrane, Reflection on Creation and Space (A Five Year View)

Listening to: Brian Eno, Thursday Afternoon

Drinking: Diet Pepsi (and too much caffeine)

Thinking about: My dream of working from home.

Today gave me a little foretaste of it. My husband watched the kids from about 11:30 to 4:00, with an hour-long lunch break in between (where I made the boys their sandwiches and cut up fruit), and I spent those three-and-a-half hours editing, listening to ambient music by Brian Eno, and drinking tea. I never felt overwhelmed by my work or unqualified or anxious or anything. I knew what to do, I knew I was good at what I was doing, and I knew that I could solve problems if I needed to. I was enjoying my work.

It was a much better feeling than the one I have when I’m teaching. When I’m teaching, I’m always second-guessing myself. I’m constantly anxious that I’m not doing a good job. I have a wicked case of imposter syndrome with teaching, and that leads to tons of stress and sadness. In theory, I *like* being a teacher. I like sharing my ideas about the world, about literature, writing, art, rhetoric. I like helping students discover their own ideas about these things. I like mentoring others, especially in their writing. But in actual practice, I find teaching — in schools, in the way we’ve structured secondary education — to be burdensome. I feel like it’s not the best environment for my talents. Managing and instructing lots of students all at the same time is an ill fit for me. I’m much better as a one-on-one teacher, or someone who works with small groups.

That’s why editing feels so natural and enlivening. It’s a lot like teaching — but it’s one-on-one, and it gives me space to really use my knowledge of language, grammar, and craft in a way that’s useful. I’m not a master of the writing craft (far from it!), but I have something to offer other writers, not least of which is my attention to detail. It’s always nice to have another pair of eyes catch typos, grammatical errors, and inconsistencies. I don’t feel like an imposter when I’m editing someone’s manuscript.

But with classroom teaching, I can’t spend my time just sharing my knowledge or mentoring students to improve their writing. Oh no. There’s the curriculum and the units and the lesson plans and the standards and all the stuff that has to be covered or else the students won’t do well on the SAT or AP exam or whatever. I’m much more of a “teaching is an art not a science” kinda person, but most secondary and elementary school administrators these days are convinced “teaching is a science,” and if we just have enough data and enough standards and benchmarks and evidence of growth, then we’re doing alright and kids are learning.

But this approach doesn’t gel with my instincts and personality as a teacher. I’m not particularly interested in benchmarks or even a curriculum. I’m interested in my students and their needs, and I know what knowledge and skills I can share with them, but for education to really happen, I need to be flexible and meet my students where they are, not where the curriculum says they need to be. I once told a colleague that my approach to teaching shares a lot in common with jazz. It’s improvisational. There’s a starting melody, a core theme, but around that theme, we might go off in various and digressive directions. I don’t like being wedded to “learning goals” or whatever because that doesn’t account for “X-quantities.”

Anyway, this is my long-winded way of saying that being an editor feels more like being an “educator” than my current job as a teacher does. Most likely, my failures as a classroom teacher are my own fault, but whatever the reasons may be, I know that I’m starting to feel much more comfortable in the editor’s chair. I liked working from home today. I liked reading a manuscript and writing down my notes and suggestions. I liked thinking of ways to help the writer’s prose sound clearer, more vivid, punchier. And I liked being able to do it all from home.

Do I need to have something to write about?

December 27, 2020 / JennyDetroit / 1 Comment

I often tell my students that in order to write they don’t have to have “something to say.” Instead of trying to figure out what to write, they should just write, and let the act of writing help them discover their own thoughts. Writing is magical in this way. Even if we don’t have “something to write about,” when we put pen to paper and start writing, even if it’s just “blah, blah, blah, I don’t know what to write,” if we keep going, if we keep moving the pen, then eventually, our thoughts start to form, they go from being invisible to visible, from formless blobs into recognizable shapes.

This happened to me recently during a training session for 826Michigan. We had to write about a moment when we learned something, and I honestly couldn’t think of any such moment. I’m sure I’ve had many, but as I sat there in the midst of the training session, my mind was a total blank. I wracked my brain for something, anything to write about, but nothing was coming, and the timer on the computer screen was ticking. So instead of waiting for that “something” to appear fully-formed in my head, I just started writing. I wrote about how I couldn’t think of anything, of how I was sure I’d learned many, many things in my life, but no particular moment stood out, and on and on I wrote, very stream-of-consciousness. And then — as I’ve told my students so often before — suddenly an idea came into my head, as I was writing. The writing pulled the memory out of my head: a memory I NEVER would’ve thought of, even if I had sat and thought for hours.

But here’s the kicker: Even though I tell my students about this phenomenon, about how writing IS thinking, and that we don’t have to wait until we have something to say, that we can just start writing and let ourselves think on the page, even though I preach this over and over, I STILL end up forgetting it when it comes to my own writing, to my own craft. Physician, heal thyself!

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to start blogging everyday, but as you might see if you scroll down through this page, I have not been particularly successful at reaching this goal. There are spurts here and there, where I manage to write for a few days in a row, or nearly. But then there are huge gaps. Weeks. Months. I backslide continually. And then I always resolve to get back on the horse and try again. Which is good, in a way. But despite my best intentions and resolve, the thing that trips me up is that I don’t know what to write about. I come up with schemes (“write a poem everyday for thirty days!”), but they never work. I’m afraid to write those thirty poems because most days, I don’t know what to write about. I don’t have anything to say. So I don’t put my fingers on the keyboard because I don’t have any ideas. It’s the same problem as the one I had in that training session: I can’t think of anything. My mind is blank.

But what I’ve missed is the simple, true fact that writing IS thinking. I don’t need to have anything to write about. I can just write. I can write and let ideas come as they may, and in that act of writing, I will discover what I have to say. Just as I’m doing right now. When I sat down at my computer this evening, I had no idea what I would blog about, I only knew that I needed to blog. If I was going to make “blog everyday” a thing, then I needed to do it. Not think about it, not wait for an idea, not even try to come up with an idea. I simply needed to start writing.

Metaphors: Writing as rambling, wandering. Writing as discovery. Writing as a physical act, not just a mental one.

And here I am, blogging. Writing. I tell my students all the time, “To ‘essay’ means to find one’s way.”

(I stole this quote from Barb Rebbeck and my high school AP Lang teacher).

I need to remember my own advice.

Input Update 7/19/2020

July 19, 2020 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

Listening to: “Achilles Last Stand”

Reading: Merlin’s Mirror by Andre Norton (I put down The Worm Ouroboros for now. Wasn’t feeling it.)

Drinking: Diet Vernor’s in a handmade glass

Writing: an Arthur chapter in Ysbaddaden

Get Lost

June 7, 2020 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

I am self-critical of my work. I am a perfectionist, so if my stories or essays or blog posts aren’t amazing/wonderful/mind-blowing/totally awesome, then I get down. Sometimes very down. I consider not writing anymore (or at least not sharing my writing anymore). Many days, I feel like a failure because I don’t have a big audience or lots of five-star reviews.

As a result of this self-criticism, I’ve been on the lookout lately for new metaphors to help me approach the writing process and the work I’m doing. Bradbury had this metaphor in Zen and the Art of Writing where he wrote about “stepping on landmines” first thing in the morning and then spending the rest of the day picking up the pieces. In other words, explode yourself — your memories, your ideas, all the things you’ve ever experienced — and see what pieces you can find to write about. Elsewhere in his interviews with Sam Weller, he mentioned jumping off a cliff and “building your wings on the way down.” I do like both of these metaphors (especially the wings one) because they advocate for courage, for jumping into the unknown, for not being afraid to do something shocking and see what happens. But both of them are inadequate for me because I don’t quite have that much courage, and also because they imply a goal or end-game at the heart of creative work. Jumping off the cliff means, “Build those wings or you’ll go SPLAT.” Stepping on the landmine and picking up the pieces means, “You had better pick up a good piece or you’re screwed.” They seem to be saying, “If you fail, then you’ll be toast.”

For a self-critical perfectionist like me, that’s not a great message. Not only do I have a fear of failing, but I think most of my work is a failure. I jump off the cliff but don’t build very good wings. I step on the landmine and can’t pick up the right pieces.

This is why I’m in need of new metaphors. Metaphors that encourage me and help get me past the fear of failure. Austin Kleon uses a garden metaphor for creative work in his book Keep Going. I like the garden metaphor, but there’s still a goal inherent in that one: what happens if I’m a terrible gardener and all my plants die?

I need a metaphor that has imperfection built-in.

This is why I’m attracted to the idea of writing as a form of “getting lost” or “wandering.” The wanderer, or rambler, has no fixed goal, no endpoint. She isn’t trying to get anywhere. For her, the whole point is to GET LOST. Wandering into the wilderness, adventuring with only a vague idea of where she’s going, traveling with a torn and faded map (ancient and indecipherable in parts). She’s willing to lose her way, to stumble through the forest.

What would writing look like that embraced this kind of ethos: that wandering is good, that getting lost is a happy accident?

I know the conventional wisdom would be that “wandering” and “getting lost” will result in a muddled, messy, incoherent story. Some might say, “That’s okay,” and suggest writers then do a lot of revision. But I’m getting less and less keen on doing major revisions in my writing. It takes me a long time to write stories and novels (due to lack of time); the thought of spending years and years writing and revising the same book sounds unpleasant. My goal is to write clean first drafts (minus the occasional typos and wonky sentences). By “cycling” through my draft as I write, I can avoid the need for major revisions.

And even more so, I think that “fix it in revision” is actually antithetical to the “getting lost” ethos. It suggests that the wandering is a mistake, something that needs to be fixed. If I have a destination in mind, then yes, getting lost is probably bad and I would need to course-correct. But what if I have no destination? What if the whole point is just to wander? To ramble and see where I end up? In that case, the “fix it in revision” model doesn’t work. If I’m not trying to get anywhere in particular, then what is there to fix?

This is what I like about the “wandering and getting lost” metaphor. When I go out for a walk, I often just walk around; I don’t have a fixed destination. I just ramble. But in my rambling, I discover beautiful things, I feel a wonderful sense of freedom, I get to enjoy myself without thinking about a “destination.” What if my own writing process could be like this? What if I could ramble, discover new things, feel that freedom, and enjoy myself? Would all my stories turn out like garbage? Would all my books end up incoherent and sloppy?

Maybe they would. Maybe this metaphor is not a good one, in the end.

But I kinda want to try. If nothing else, it’s a useful image for me to keep in my mind. When I sit down to write, I’m like the adventurer who wants to experience something new. I’m the wanderer with no fixed destination, only a desire for discovery. I’m the rambler who just wants to ramble, not get anywhere in particular. And by rambling, by getting lost along the way, I might discover something I never could’ve imagined otherwise.