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. 

Waking My Girl

Last night she asked, can you make sure I'm sitting up when you get me up tomorrow? I smiled. My youngest sets an alarm for 6:30 but has been in the high school musical this weekend and hell week before that. She has been going flat out for three weeks and is tired. On an easy day, she gets herself up, dresses, comes down, packs lunch, makes  breakfast, and sits on the love seat under a blanket to eat. After the musical, she was pretty sure it wouldn't be so easy. 

I said, I'll make sure. 

I'm up before five to make coffee and then write in my basement nook. I go to the couch around six to read and write an email note for my wife to read over her breakfast. When I hear my girl's 6:30 alarm, I creep upstairs to make sure she's up, then pack lunch and get ready to go. 

This morning, her phone's alarm was flashing silently. I sat on her bed and hugged her leg with my hands. Honey, it's time. I said it softly knowing she didn't want to get up. I didn't want her to get up either. She looked so peaceful, so cherubic. I wanted to stay and pass the day with her.

"I'm going to stay in bed today," she said. I smiled. "I'll go to school some other day." Hmm, I said. "I'm so tired," she said, drawing out "so" like a yawn. Yeah, I know, I said, almost whispering and I could feel the words coming from my smile. I hugged her leg some more and waited. She pulled the covers up high. I said, "a girl last night told me to make sure she was sitting up." She sat up and rubbed her eyes. I said, I'll see you downstairs, my love. 

There's not much better in than seeing my girl each morning. I wake her gently because that's what she prefers. Who doesn't? I remember being jerked awake by my alarm clock's terrible click and buzzer or, when I overslept, my mother's shouting, singing, and clapping. It made me angry. I want the opposite for my girl. 

There's a selfish aspect as well. 

I want her to remember me waking her. Not the specifics of today, but that feeling of me talking quietly, hugging her leg. I want her to feel loved without thinking about it and as sure of that love as she is of the sun in the sky. No question, no doubt about it. This small ritual of checking if she's awake and waking her gently is me trying to insure all that. 

I want it for her, but I want it just as much for me. Having her feel loved helps her love me and I'm greedy for more of that. 

Some say I'm lucky she gets up so well and goes to school. Most of the kids I teach come to school only under threat. My girl, unless she's feverish or it's a Jewish holiday, goes to school, mostly willingly because my wife and I have been waking them this way their whole lives. We have engineered this. We seem to have realized early enough that we have our children only for so long. Childhood really is over too quickly. 

When she goes out on her own, I hope she will wake some mornings remembering my soft knock at her door and the shadow of me sitting on her bed. She might almost feel my hand hug her leg and hear me say, "it's morning, honey. I'll see her downstairs." If she does, there's every chance she will begin her day feeling loved and radiating it out into her world. That's about all this world needs is more of her kind of love. 

Small Disconnections

I went to a writing conference Saturday without my laptop. For eight hours I wrote by hand in a notebook. Arriving at the college, I had trouble with the wifi. I couldn't think why I needed my phone at all and powered it down. I turned it on at lunch to call my wife but turned it back off. Writing by hand was good. I could have typed more words, but there was no door prize for most words written. It felt good to be fully there at the conference instead of checking email, Facebook, Twitter, The New York Times, and every other damn online thing. 

Later, at home, I turned the phone on to check email (spam) and the (bad) news. I found an article about a guy who has blockaded all news since the election. Rather than read the whole thing, I began writing this. Why read about someone making good choices when I can make my own? 

My writing last week was spurred by Michael Harris's books The End Of Absence and Solitude, both about the loss of quiet and solitude in a "connected" world. I avoided Facebook last week unhappy with how much time I'm spending there. I limited Twitter to five minutes once a day.

Here's the worst thing about people who disconnect: they write things like this. The evangelist sins more than his flock but still calls them sinners. Don't let me tell you how to live. I'm just trying to convince myself. I know I'm a sinner. 

In another article this week a tech writer ditched online news for newspapers. He coined a Michael Pollen-like rule: "Get news. Not too quickly. Avoid social." I like the article and the writer, but during his two months off social media news he had tweeted a dozen times most days about, wait for it, the news. I follow him and had read those tweets, but when he wrote of unplugging, I wanted to believe, just as I want to believe I can do the same thing. Given that he didn't unplug, I really can do the same thing. 

Let he who is without social media be the first to cast phones. Or something like that. 

No matter what I claim about disconnecting, I'm far from living the life of Thoreau. I want to live that life, but I also want to play piano. It's just I'm unwilling to practice and learn how. I'm ready to drop social media and online news just so long as I don't have to, you know, drop any of it. 

Two years ago I unfollowed everyone on Twitter. Why not just delete the account? Well, it's my name and I would hate to lose that. Besides, I knew I would go back. I'm a waffler and hypocrite. But that time away informed how I rejoined Twitter. Last year, I unfollowed everyone who spread bad news. That was almost everyone given who is running the country, but I wanted to be thoughtful again. I'm never going to be perfect and I'm unlikely to quit Twitter, but I can always be more thoughtful. 

I want to choose what I do instead of following the crowd. It's a lot of work to be thoughtful, but yesterday my phone was an inert lump instead of a demanding master. I focused on writing and the people around me. Even my eyes felt more focused.

Rather than draw grand conclusions from these disconnections I'll say only that they are possible and each one makes further disconnecting a tantalizing proposition. Being thoughtful turns out to be almost as addictive as social media. Who knew?