Garrison Keillor’s poem today is Louise Erdrich’s “Advice to Myself.” Given that I have wasted much of the day being angry at my husband for asking me to rinse out a cereal bowl, it’s good advice to me, too.
Plus we get the added benefit of listening to Garrison read a poem. An experience of calm.
Rinse out the bowl, Bethany. Move on.
Okay, I’m thinking of what it is that my sister’s GPS says to her (in its sexy English accent) when we make a wrong turn (which we do fairly frequently as we when we are together as we are talking too much to pay attention to the GPS). Is it “repositioning”? Re…?
That’s what I’ve been trying to do over the last several days. Going to Boston and the Gell Center was such a gift of time, as well as energy–which seemed to simply flood into me and fueled a full eight days of invention. Then, the trip home, which given the timing of Hurricane Sandy had its own heady quality. Seeing my daughters and husband again–that was good, too. But getting back to the maelstrom of teaching (not my students’ fault, mine in fact for scheduling all of their midterm papers to be turned in the week I returned) and meetings and doctor appointments…that was…taxing. I could get a little time in each morning on the novel, but not very much. Then one day I overslept and missed my morning writing time altogether. Now I’m in Chehalis at Mom’s place.
I’m going to challenge myself to write a series of blogposts about finding time–and energy–for writing. The truth is, I’m not the only writer in the world who has a day job. Most writers have day jobs. Some of us get to teach writing, which can be a drain of creative energy, but any occupation can drain one’s energy . Isn’t being a carpenter creative work? Isn’t a realtor always trying to help imagine a new life for someone or other? A massage therapist? A 7-11 clerk? Is there a job that an imaginative, curious, thoughtful person cannot expend creative energy on?
Maybe one way to reclaim energy, if not time, is to reframe this equation. In what ways do my students nurture and encourage me? In what ways do they infuse me with creative energy?
Writers write because they are writers, not because they have scads of time waiting to be filled.
A wise friend once told me that God is always waiting to create a new path for us home. A little like my sister’s GPS.
(Recalculating! That’s what it says!)
My Creative Nonfiction students are getting ready to turn in their “big, true story” and so, even though they should have done so already, we spent time this week thinking about How to Begin. Among other activities, we watched the first 15 minutes of Wall-E, the 2008 Pixar movie directed by Andrew Stanton. It was fun to talk about how this movie works–without dialogue, without a human character to identify with, without really anything much happening for several minutes–and manages to beautifully engage our attention.
Wall-E begins many years after the last human beings have left earth behind. It begins with the main character, the robot Wall-E, compacting garbage and stacking it into skyscraper like piles. He’s been doing this, we’re given to understand, for 700 years. But there’s a bit more going on–and that’s change. A new character is just about to appear and start the clock ticking on a new thread of interest. Sometimes a story begins when we wake up and become aware of a change. But stories are always about change.
“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. I say ‘one chooses’ with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who–when he has been seriously noted at all–has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own will choose that black wet January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these images choose me?” -Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (p. 1)
A recent wise saying on my day-to-day calendar advised that our lives would be better if we would take the advice we give to others.
Reading Carolynne’s response to my last post made me smile. On Sunday she was telling me why she doesn’t have time to write, and as she talked I thought of how she has all the time there is, the same amount as all the rest of us. We all get 24 hours per day and not one minute more. On Sunday, I refrained from giving Carolynne any advice; I smiled and nodded and looked so understanding, but I was thinking it.
You have to be present with your life. (What choice does one have?) And arguing with reality is a serious time-waster. Early in his first presidential bid, Barack Obama was advised that a later time would offer a better chance for his election. But Obama knew–the only time is now.
My goal right now is to get this novel finished and into the mail to my agent. I can do that by working a little bit every day. I can do that–work a little every day–while being faithful to my family and my students.
Then we’ll see what happens next.
Meanwhile, Monday’s reading with Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken went swimmingly. Kathleen’s new book, Plume, is about Hanford. It is also, as she put it and I am still brooding on, the book she was born to write.
No news on the release date for Sparrow. I’m being very, very polite and not pestering Writers & Books, even though they said “October.” I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.