You Can Have It All--Just Not at the Same Time

The winter blues have officially set in—and not just because we're buried in fifteen inches of new snow and vacation is now a fading memory. It dawned on me this morning that in June it will be five years since my novel, THE GREATEST MAN IN CEDAR HOLE, was released in hardcover.

Oh, my. Time has certainly slipped away from me.

Knowing that five years have passed and I have not published anything makes me feel quite panicky, I assure you, though I’m a little less panicky than I used to be. The first and second anniversaries of the paperback edition gave me the prickly sweats and led to many sleepless nights. If I had had a project in the pipeline, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But I had nothing. I was losing momentum. The more I white-knuckled it, the harder it was to write.

So, I relaxed. An idea finally did come to me, but the problem was more about time than will. Being the mother of very active, preschool-aged twins leaves me with very little mental or physical energy to be productive. It used to be that when I had a moment to be still, a narrative would constantly be flowing in my head. Now, when I find that rare moment of quiet, I hear nothing.

When I started my writing career, I was single, living in New York, and producing four books a year as a ghostwriter in addition to working full-time at a literary agency. I lived with a constant adrenaline rush, always facing a deadline or having a book coming out. It felt great to be doing the very thing I loved the most. In six years, I produced 14 books, though I won’t pretend for a minute that ghostwriting teen books is anywhere as difficult as writing an adult literary novel. It took me five years to do that, largely because I am a very slow, deliberate writer.

I remember a conversation I had with some housemates (I lived in a boarding house) about work and relationships, and someone brought up an old adage that has many different permutations, but his version was this: “You can have a great relationship, a great social life, and a career, but not all three at the same time.” Everyone at the table looked at me, as though I was the apparent exception to this, but I assured them that even though I had a great relationship and a career I loved, I had no social life at all. This seemed to bring great relief to my housemates, who all felt that they were lacking in some aspect of this trinity of happiness.

I used to think that people who complained about not being able to “have it all” just weren’t trying hard enough, but now I’m thinking that the rule of three is probably true for most of us. I still have the great relationship (and now family life), I have a great network of friends (though some of you keep moving away), but at the moment, no career. There are some people who appear to have no trouble with this balancing act—Soule Mama, for example—but I have yet to figure out the trick to having success on all fronts. Every time I focus on one aspect of my life—writing, for example—something else goes to hell, like the housekeeping. Every time I put out a fire, I inadvertently start a new one someplace else.

I take the edge off my panic by telling myself that there is a time for everything, and right now, it’s my time to be a mother. In two years they’ll be in school full time and I’ll have a much easier time with my juggling act, so enjoy the moment. And I really do. But I’ll never fully surrender to literary idleness, either. My moments of creation are so rare but they still give me such deep satisfaction that giving up just isn’t an option. As far as my career goes, I'm thinking I may have to re-adjust my expectations just a little.

(P.S. If anyone familiar with Blogger can help me with my inconsistent fonts, I would really appreciate it. For some reason, I can't fix this problem.)

Write a Novel in 30 Days?

I know I promised to divulge a secret for creating sympathetic characters—and I promise to get to it soon—but I couldn’t help commenting first on National Novel Writing Month. Through the month of November, writers and aspiring writers alike are encouraged to try producing a 50,000 word manuscript. Obviously, speed is the goal here, as well as ignoring your inner censor. It’s a chance for self-critical writers to let go and just produce instead of second-guessing every word. Admittedly, the quality of the work will suffer, but by the time the November 30th deadline rolls around, the hope is that the writer will have a first draft to work with.

As someone who has spent MANY hours fretting over word choice when I should have just kept plowing ahead, I fully understand the need for momentum. I also like the community and accountability aspect of such an exercise. If someone is too afraid to take the writing plunge, this project just might be motivation he needs.

And yet I really wonder if this exercise is really all that valuable. Except in those rare instances when a writer is overcome with frenzied inspiration (like my friend Pat, for example), it’s completely unrealistic to think a writer can force himself to write a novel in a month. At best, he will likely end up with a glorified outline—not a complete novel—which is definitely a fine starting place, but not an end unto itself. At worst, he will end up with a mess of false starts, wrong detours, and shallow thinking that will require much more work to untangle than he would have otherwise had to contend with had he taken a more deliberate approach.

What I suspect might actually happen for most writers who attempt the exercise is that at the end of the month they’ll fall short of the goal. Either they won’t make the word count, or the story will be unfinished, or maybe they will hate every word that they’ve written. What concerns me is that these writers will be too discouraged to work beyond the end of the month, and that they’ll blame themselves instead of seeing that their expectations were unrealistic to begin with.

I also question the wisdom of celebrating speed over quality. It’s easy to write the first thing that comes to our heads, but the real art comes from digging deeper, past even the second or third idea that comes to us. I would argue that a writer should take more pride in a single, well-crafted sentence than a month’s worth of thoughtless purging.

The concept of a month dedicated to writing a novel would serve writers better if the requirement was a daily time commitment and the goal was determined by each writer, individually. Many writers will find that they need a push to get started, but many more will need support in the middle of their novels, when the initial inspiration has worn off and the end is nowhere in sight. It is here—in this tenuous no man’s land—where most writers abandon their stories and where they need the most support. The solution is commitment, not speed.

Maybe This Cookie Will Help Me Write...

My previous post about the difficulty of filling the blank page reminds me of a conversation I once had with an agent about a certain superstar of the graphic novel world. The writer apparently told her that one of the biggest struggles he faced every day was forcing himself to sit down and work. Hearing that procrastination is a problem for someone of his caliber has been a great source of comfort to me over the years.

I’m one of those writers for whom settling down to work involves a lot of avoidance and no small amount of superstition. I liken it to a professional baseball player up at bat, with all the spitting, helmet-and-elbow-touching, dirt kicking and glove adjusting that needs to take place before he feels psychologically and physically comfortable enough to swing. In order for me to work, I need a glass of water and a comfortable room temperature. The house needs to be completely quiet. The weather can’t be too nice or I’ll want to be outside instead. I can’t be too tired or even a little sick. Then, if all these conditions are right, I have to check my e-mail, my favorite blogs, and do an online crossword. Then I might check the weather, and then my e-mail again. If no one has written to me or I haven’t received notice of a sale at one of my favorite stores, I’m good to go.

Once I begin writing, if I get stuck on a word, I find myself “write walking”--a phenomenon closely related to sleep walking, in which a writer gets up from her desk and suddenly finds herself standing before her open refrigerator with no recollection of how she ended up there. This occurrence is usually followed with an unhealthy snack and a wave of guilt, and can sometimes be repeated several times during the writing of a particularly difficult passage.

If writing is one of my great passions in life, why is it so hard to be disciplined? The best answer I can come up with is fear of failure. When I’ve written nothing, that nebulous masterpiece floating in my head retains all of its perfection; the moment I try to write I realize just how far my work is from my vision. Yet this should never be a deterrent, for it is extremely rare for a work to perfectly echo one’s vision. I wonder if artists in other mediums have the same problem with procrastination. I can certainly see songwriters having similar angst, but what about painters and sculptors or performance artists? Does fear of facing their limitations put them off, too?

Today, I might get down one good sentence if I’m lucky. Or maybe a particular word choice might sing. Or maybe it’ll all sound stiff and boring. So be it. Tomorrow I’ll sit down at my desk, with my water and silence and optimal room temperature, check my e-mail and play my word puzzles. And when all is right I’ll settle down to work and try again.