I shared the Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules with my English students today. It was part of our ongoing discussion about education, grades, and what it means to learn. Each of my four classes focused on different aspects of the rules (this wasn’t intentional on my part, but happened as a result of their own interests and ideas). Some groups really responded to Rules 6 & 7, and we got into a big discussion about how “win” and “fail” are concepts that only work if we focus on either the past or future. We can either spend our time dwelling on past successes and failures, or looking ahead to future successes and dreading future failures.
But if, instead, “there’s only make,” then we’re living in the present moment. There’s no past or future when you’re in the process of making, there’s only the now. This is something that’s proven really helpful for my own writing. I’ve been making a conscious effort to do my work without thinking about what will happen after it’s done. The act of writing is more important than the finished product. Instead of thinking ahead to the future, or being stuck dwelling on the past, I’m allowing myself to do the work that’s right in front of me.
The one rule we never really got to discuss was the last one (“Break all the rules… Leave plenty of room for X Quantities”) that comes from John Cage. This rule is the one I’m struggling the most with right now in my teaching. Because of Covid restrictions in the classroom (which are all very necessary and I fully support), and because I’ve chosen to make all my assignments available online at the beginning of each week (so students quarantining at home can still keep up with their work), I’m not leaving much room for the “X Quantities.” The spontaneous and unexpected are in short supply this year, and it’s hampering my work as a teacher.
But what about “X Quantities” in my work as a writer? Am I leaving plenty of room for them there? That’s a tougher question, and one I’m not sure of the answer. I do tend to have several projects going on at the same time (i.e.: a novella, a short story, and my second novel are all works in progress at the moment), but I don’t think that’s what Cage means by “X Quantities.” I see it as being more about leaving room for the unexpected, for tangents and digressions. Am I doing that in my writing? Am I willing to try something new if that’s where my work needs to go?
Writing poetry has been an “X Quantity” for me. It’s not something I normally write, and definitely not something I normally publish. I think that by allowed myself to “break out” of my normal writing patterns, I’ve had more fun and learned new things. But I wonder how I might “break all the rules” and leave room for those “X Quantities” in my fiction writing. I’m not sure I have an answer for that yet.
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