Writing Habits

I do an odd amount of writing, I guess. It is six in the morning on a weekday and I've written three pages by hand. I got an idea while using the bathroom after those three pages and am typing a couple hundred words now. I'll write an email note to my wife to read when she comes downstairs before work. At school, I'll write five to six pages in my notebook, edit a piece I wrote yesterday, and write more of this. After school, I'll have coffee with Mom, dinner with my family, and likely write some more. In bed I may do a page in my notebook just to unload my mind. I could count words today, but I'll just estimate three thousand to five thousand. That's a good day. 

Some of that writing I post to the blog, but most of it disappears onto paper or into the computer. A waste? Maybe, but my way of writing is to put up a lot of words and pick out a few good ones. Most of my writing that goes out into the world begins over a thousand words but ends close to seven hundred. I begin in verbosity then work to be concise, so it makes sense to write thousands of words daily with intentions to publish only a few. 

Still, I wonder if I'm wasting words (and time). I haven't made time to work on bigger projects. All this daily writing is fine, but the long piece, a sustained bit of work that tells a larger story, I'm curious about doing that work. I have ideas and have begun some, but I have yet to develop the practice I need for them. I think I'm ready. 

My writing life is my own and I don't want to convince anyone this is the way to do it. I'm no shining success at this, so it's not my place to evangelize. I'm just sharing my methods because I find writers' habits interesting and I'm a teacher who can't stop teaching. 

I might do 5,000 words today. I hope that some of them are really good. That would be cool. 

Finishing Nothing

This morning, doing my usual Morning Pages, I wrote the following toward the end of page one: 

Funny how much I am struggling with the impulse to stop writing. It feels like too much to get through three pages. I only have three lines remaining on this page though and I'm halfway through this line racing toward the last line of the page.

I was trying to just get myself going and get through. I woke late, having stayed up to see the Syracuse men's team win a great NCAA Tournament game and shocked at a #16 seed finally upsetting a #1 (by twenty points!). All that excitement was lingering in me this morning as I sat in the basement nook working through my pages. I was seeing a game clock counting down and thinking, when will I be done? Being so fixated on finishing, it was all I could do to will myself toward the finish. 

On page two I figured I had sixty two lines to fill, a full two pages. That sounded overwhelming or at least uninspiring. I considered it would take eighteen minutes to finish, but that too felt far away. I was, no matter how I measured it, not done yet. 

Recently, I read Leo Babauta's piece about not to clinging to things. This morning I was clinging to this idea that finishing would fix my life. It's a foolish notion and one that keeps me from feeling content. 

Consider Morning Pages. What happens when I finish? I don't finish them at all. Daily Morning Pages are a practice, something I won't ever finish. Yesterday I finished three pages. Today, I finished three more. Tomorrow I'll keep going because there is no finish. Looking to finishi is a way to be constantly disappointed. If I cling to the idea that these things are undone, I'm racing to fix the problem. 

But there is no problem. 

Writing isn't something I finish. I'll get to an ending of this draft, have breakfast, revise the draft, and post it. The end? No. There are other pieces to write and this one may change. There's more that I want to be doing. I've more working and living to do. 

There's a thing called Six-Word Memoirs in which people capture who they are in six words. I've written many, but one sticks with me as much as anything I've ever said about who I am and what I do:

Still haven't run out of ink.

Writing goes on. So does living. 

I finished today's Morning Pages. I came upstairs and picked up things in the kitchen, putting them away. I washed a couple dishes. I did some recycling. I moved through the house opening blinds and picking up a few more things. I shaved then put in laundry. Still haven't run out of laundry, dishes, things to put away, or recycling. Still haven't run out of breaths in and out or beats in my heart. Still haven't run out of mornings or evenings. I'm in no rush to run out, to be done, to reach the one final finish line. 

Harry Chapin wrote, "it's got to be the going not the getting there that's good." Writing my pages this morning I was surprised and put into a minor state of wonder when I considered what I was clinging to and began to let go. Writing is about that state of wonder and much less about this foolish notion of finishing. 

Write on. 

Hope Is A Good Thing?

“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.”

— Stephen King

““Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -”

— Emily Dickinson

“Everybody’s got a hold on hope, It’s the last thing that’s holding me”

— Guided By Voices

For three months I've hoped for a good thing. I have tried to keep that hope from overcoming me since things depended on other people's decisions. I applied my best efforts, showed the best of who I am, and did well, but Tuesday the funding was erased and my hopes evaporated. I had gotten my hopes up far enough that the fall knocked me pretty much out.

Austin Kleon wrote about Groundhog Day and a quote from Bill Murray's character Phil Connors:

In my favorite line from the movie, he asks his bowling buddy, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?'

And his buddy, who’s a little drunk, looks at him and says, “That about sums it up for me.”

Yesterday, I was that drunk buddy. Such is the effect of disappointment on me. Today, I wonder am I using hope the wrong way. 

I've said that I write without the goals of getting rich or published, but maybe that's not honest. I don't believe I'll get rich by writing, but what is posting to this site but an attempt to be published? 

My therapist says it's natural to want to be heard, seen, and noticed. I asked, isn't it childish to need that? I'm caught between wanting to be known and thinking I should find worthiness from within. Needing approval seems a bad sign. She said, needing to be heard is different from wanting approval. I suppose so. 

This week's disappointment was the result of having built things up such that I was already on my way, out of unhappiness I've felt for years. I soared on that hope then crashed so hard when it disappeared that I still feel broken. 

To hell with the thing with feathers. 

Why am I even writing this? I'm trying to write without hope that it (or I) will be noticed. Austin Kleon seems to say, do the work, learn the craft, and keep going. Do it as if nothing matters. Keep writing and go through the days. But why do something without hope it will lead somewhere? How do I go forward without hope for some result? 

This week I wrote my 4,000th Morning Page. That's eight reams of paper. I've written three pages by hand every morning since July 5, 2014. After this week's disappointment, I wonder, so what? Why am I doing them? What do I hope for and expect from them? I don't have a good answer, but I'll do three pages tomorrow anyway.  

My wife suggests, instead of hoping for some specific or trying to figure out what it's all for, that I concentrate on doing one thing to make today good. What can you do to live well today? 

So I write without hoping it's enough to live well today. 

I feel I'm supposed to be more than I am. I keep hoping and when that hope fails, I lament how little I've accomplished. I'm sure I've written about being content and understanding the good life comes from acceptance, but what role do dreaming and hope play? They seem utterly not of the moment and lead to disastrous falls, but I can't imagine going ahead without them. 

About now, both my wife and therapist would suggest that it's not either hope or the moment but both at once. There are times that makes some sense. Right now, not so much. 

I want to say I'm letting go of hope, but this week of hopelessness has been too awful. I don't know what to hope for or how. Disappointment broke me. I'm not convinced hope is a good thing, that it never stops at all, or that it can hold me. As for one thing to make today good, I've written this. Has it worked? I guess I hope so. 

Happiness in 87 Words

“It is raining hard. The stereo is playing. I am alone. All the windows are shut, five o’clock in the evening. The rain is thundering, coming down hard. The stereo is up loud. I’m completely happy. It feels too easy: like walking in a dream. Surely I am missing something. It cannot be this easy. Happiness is supposed to be sought after, complex, to be found only with the greatest amount of cunning. 

Water roars off the roof, and I am dry. 

Later tonight I will fix coffee.”

— Rick Bass, Oil Notes, 107

This is a complete section of the book. Call it a chapter, a story or call it what you will, this is the thing complete, and I like it. I like the feel of it and the structure. Look closely. Listen. 

The first sentence is four words: one syllable, one syllable, two syllables, one syllable. So simple and clear, I hear the rain more than the sentence. Then another four-word sentence, this time with stereo's three syllables in the middle. Now I hear the music, but it's my music because I've already noticed the third sentence: "I am alone." I'm that I.

Bass, knowing he has pushed this simple sentence far enough, messes with it now. 

The next sentence isn't a proper sentence. It's more poetic than prose, the phrase after the comma left dangling. He repeats that in the next sentence with the rain, but the appended phrase functions more properly. From there he goes back to a simple sentence about the music turned up loud. This is warm up for the biggest thought of the day. Listen: 

I am completely happy. 

He is filled with happiness to the top of his being. It's as if he is happiness itself. It is a revelation.

He says, it feels too easy. His happiness is so large, he turns to simile, to the impossibility of dreaming, something we all know. 

When he begins the next sentence with "surely" I smile and almost laugh. Had he said that he was missing something, I wouldn't have believed. Had he asked, I wouldn't have wanted an answer. "Surely" says that he knows beyond being sure, that he's missing nothing, that he feels this thing absolutely. 

The next line, the longest of the whole piece, states what is the common thinking about happiness, the supposed to be, and puts the lie to all that. 

Not done, he hands out a statement that may or may not be a metaphor. The rain roars but he is dry. 

He finishes out of the blue: Later tonight, I will fix coffee. 

I want that coffee. And later today, I will fix some just to keep feeling this happy and to be complete.