My mom kept a diary for many years and, if I understand her correctly, hated it. I came across a box of her diaries years ago and after looking through a couple of them, I thought I figured out why. They were all about what she had actually done. Things like, “I took Ricky to the park.”¹

I always had in my mind that unless I wanted journaling to become a dreaded obligation, then I should avoid all the mundane details of life. And I have. You could read my last ten years of journals² and not know really basic facts about me, let alone learn anything about actual life on Earth.

Every feeling I’ve ever had is well documented, but I probably only mentioned once back in 2004 that my name is Ashley.

Lately I have been struck by the idea of keeping more of a logbook. The idea of a logbook is just to keep a list of the things you did, who you were with, and maybe what you read. This is the post that got me thinking about it .

Between a blog, a journal, emails and texts, the occasional letter or postcard, and all forms of social media, I don’t think my life needs more documenting. Not even raging existential anxiety about the impermanence of life makes me want to record every detail.

But I do like the idea of a logbook for the immediate benefit of figuring out how I spend my time and trying to be more intentional about spending it doing the things that really matter to me. If I’m going to go through the trouble of writing something down, then I want it to be worth recording! What a great way to gently coerce myself into thinking about what I’m doing right now instead of always thinking about what I will do in some vague future I have imagined for myself.

I am reluctant to make a commitment right now, but I am slowly moving in that direction.

1. Ricky is my brother and he’s gone by Rick for at least the last 25 years. I don’t even think I could get away with calling him Ricky these days.
2. Theoretically, I mean, because you’d have to fight me for them, and then if you were successful, you’d probably die of boredom before making it through the first year.

It turns out that I know myself very well.  I am not good at studying on my own without deadlines.  I am a skilled procrastinator, and I really mean that.  I don’t waste my time like an amateur might; I do a lot of things I am very proud of.  The problem is that none of them get me closer (at least in obvious ways) to that big thing I have kind of been working toward forever now.  

This is not a cocktail party, so I’m not continuing to mention the fact that I’ve been reading a lot just to impress you.¹  It’s just that I’m kind of surprised by it.  No matter how many years of practice I put in, reading for fun is not a habit that came back to me as soon as I had a minute and picked up a book.  Even after I picked up a book, it still took several months, and I am not there yet.  I ask other grad students about their reading habits.  I am entertaining the idea of reading before bed as if it is an experiment I should approach with caution.

A few nights ago when I was walking home from work, I had the thought my 14 year old self wanted to believe so desperately: reading a lot makes me a more interesting person.  Right, except, not really.  I mean, not alone.  You keep reading, 14 year old Ashley, but don’t think that makes you better than anyone.  This is what’s going to happen: you’re going to become a real person with a unique perspective and a lot of thoughts, and all that reading will deepen those thoughts and make you better at articulating them, but the act of carrying around a book does not make you interesting.  Rory Gilmore is fictional!

What I’m getting at is that being a person is really important and it does not always keep pace with all the stuff coming at you.  See, for instance, my first two years of grad school.  I did not know who I was or where I was going, and that made everything really difficult.  I like that I am a person who takes what I study and read personally, but for a while that was really hard.

That time was important, and I know that a lot of life is being faced with things you are not prepared for, but I like that things I am reading now resonate on a different level than they did before, because I know myself better.  I think, “Why didn’t I read this book in high school?”  And then, “I’m glad I didn’t read this book in high school.”

One thing I was certainly better at in high school: writing by hand.  In another feat of advanced-level procrastination, I have been writing in my journal every day.²  Yesterday my hand hurt so badly that I was really excited to do my dishes, since it meant resting my hand in warm water.  I write nothing else by hand, and I’m starting to see why.  It hurts!

I have actually been doing all kinds of writing, which in my life has always been the thing I should be doing.  For many years, I even listened to a podcast called I Should Be Writing.  Reading Patti Smith made me think a lot about how much time I spend working on my art³, and then I realized that I already have a lot of momentum in this area, and please hold now while I pat myself on the back for that.

Just when you have forgotten what this post is about, I am here to remind you.  These are the things that I am doing.  They are awesome.  But they are not the things I should really be focusing on.  So I’ve been having a lot of conversations like this:

Coworker: “What are you reading?”
Me: [Holds up novel]
Coworker: “Is that getting you closer to passing your German exam?”
Me: No. [laughs]⁴

I need to finish my degree.  Not for any reason more important than I want to.  I like that these other things are part of my life.  I hope they are always a part of my life.  But I need to prioritize. School has always quite naturally been my top priority (behind being happy), and this is a really bad time for that to no longer be the case.

I made a decision over the weekend that was not about changing my plans, but rather putting them in perspective, and with this clearer (except here where it is totally vague) goal in mind, I am ready to do all that hard work that history suggests I am pretty good at.

1. What if I could call my blog a cocktail party?  How great would that be?!
2. I was inspired by Cait.  JEDIO (Journal every day in October), anyone?
3. I am so uncomfortable using that word, but I think that’s actually part of them problem.
4. This is a true story, but in retelling it I realize that it makes my coworker sound like a jerk.  He was just joking and he’s actually in the same boat and was also reading a book for fun.  I’m not sure if this coworker reads my blog or not, but in case he does, I just want to say thanks for putting up with me when I was in coursework.  I know that stressed-out me is not exactly the most pleasant person to be around, and you had no choice but to be around me.  I apologize for all of my glaring.

Writing is how I figure things out, so when I’m not writing a lot, I feel distanced from myself.

This Summer has been busy and full of travel, and it’s kept me from writing a lot, but I like the contrast.  When I was younger, the stronger impulse was to be introspective and live a quiet life that was easy to document.  Now I desire more to experience the world and it sometimes makes writing an afterthought.

I resist saying anything too simple about the times in my life when I write a lot and the times when I don’t write as much.  When I’m busier, I write more. When I’m uncertain about things, my journal is my best friend.  When I’m excited about things, it is obvious on my blog. When I’m away from home and my normal life, I write less.

I don’t need a lot of time to write, but I do need space.  Even when I’m not writing as much, it is a comfort to me to know that I can pick it up at any time.  I cannot, on the other hand, quit at any time.  It’s a problem for which I will not be seeking help.

Getting stuff done has taken on this mysterious quality to me. I do it when I have to. I write 20-page papers when they’re due. But it’s never quite the way I imagine it. At this point, I’ve nearly convinced myself that checking email/twitter/tumblr is necessary to the process. I’m never so wrapped up in my work that I forget a meal. Far from losing track of time, I watch it like it needs my attention to keep moving forward.

I find myself romanticizing what grad school must have been like without all the distractions. Concentrating was easier back then and everything had this kind of rosy color to it. Or not. In a room with just my books, I will get distracted staring out the window and thinking about something or someone.

Here in the middle of Summer where I don’t even have deadlines that loom and threaten to undermine all of my best procrastination techniques, I’m floundering. I repeat all of the very best advice. I know that creativity requires a lot of discipline. I feel like I used to be much better at this. I imagine my favorite writers sitting at their desks, but does Joyce Carol Oates really ever waste time waiting for someone to reply to a text? If she does, then I don’t want to know.

I cut myself some slack, because there in the early pages of Infinite Jest, which is without a doubt the most impressive and complex piece of writing I have ever encountered, is the line, “That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work.” That someone who wrote a 1000 page book with an additional 100 pages of footnotes would write a sentence like that, is all I need to know to stop pretending that this is easy for anyone.

I revisited all the very good advice I have heard too many times. This time I got stuck on the one about breaking your goals down. So I went home and tried to figure out how to do that. My first attempt failed. I focused on the work I wanted to complete and not the time involved. I need a deadline looming! I thought about how I write those research papers. I set a schedule of writing two pages every hour and I stick to it as if failure will result in a dementor attack.

So I downloaded the SelfControl application on my Mac and set it to block access to all of my favorite sites for an hour.  I set a timer on my phone so I would know when the hour was up. I picked a task. And I worked for an hour. I still had those pesky windows and thoughts to distract me, but I figured that if I was going through all the trouble to block out other distractions, then I wouldn’t waste my time with the few I had left. When the hour was up, I returned to the internet to find that nothing had happened. So I set the clock for another hour and went back to work.

I’m sure this isn’t the way Joyce Carol Oates does it, but I’m no JCO! She has said that you should write for your own time and not a departed world. I will take that to mean that I should not just write for my own time, but also as a person of this time. And this time provides more distractions than ever.  Lovely distractions that add a lot to my life when I mange them correctly.

I found that I can get quite a bit done in one hour of concentrated work, but what is more important is that I felt like I was moving in a direction and making progress on projects that are important to me. I think there’s a myth that if you’re doing something that you want to be doing, then it shouldn’t require any discipline. I find this to be false. Working on something for an hour, though, I think it becomes pretty obvious whether it’s worth your continued attention or not. After an hour, I was more excited than ever to keep working.

One hour at a time is not just a good way to get started.  It’s also a good way to keep going.  I know and repeat often that happiness is found in contrast, but it is not always easy to get the levels right.   Sometimes the extremes work for me, but other times I need to write just two pages and not conquer the world.  I have to balance my own impulses for creativity and practicality. I have to stop comparing myself to Joyce Carol Oates!

The strange thing is that the path I chose for myself at one point seemed like an outrageous and risky thing to do.  Getting a PhD in the humanities is pretty ridiculous.  Professorships are scarce and even if I get my dream job, I will probably make about the same amount as most people make right out of college, which is fine except that I will have spent an extra eight years of my life in school.

A really big predictor of whether or not you will get a PhD is whether your parents have advanced degrees.  Mine do not and though I could go on and on about how incredibly supportive they are now and have been through most of my life, I didn’t feel like they were completely behind my decision to go to grad school. I think they knew the reality of the situation, which was that I had no idea what I was doing.

It was a financial risk, I had only been studying theology for a year, I wasn’t sure if it was really what I wanted, and I didn’t know if I was talented enough.  I didn’t know things would work out.  I didn’t know I would ever be this happy with myself or my decisions.  I didn’t know I would spend most of my years in school also working full time.  I didn’t know I would recover from near financial disaster.  I didn’t know that I do have what it takes.  I spent at least two years daily considering running away from it all.

But lately I have been looking at my life and asking how I ended up in such a traditional track.  I mean, grad school isn’t all that different from what it’s always been.  I work full time in a library where I have benefits and paid time off.  I’ve lived in the same city for five years and the same apartment for two years.  I haven’t seen much of the world.  And more than anything, my life as it is right now is pretty much the way it will remain for the next several years.  I’m in the middle of things.  I have a lot of responsibilities that mean staying right here.

I look around and see people I know who are on the brink of huge life changes and I feel like I should be setting the world on fire too.  Not out of envy, but because that’s what I want for myself!  I dream big dreams and ask myself all kinds of challenging questions, but what I come back to is that I am still doing exactly what I want to be doing.  And I am also on the brink of big things.

It’s just that big things require hard work and it’s not all that romantic when you’re the one actually doing it.  I am moving as fast as I can, but sometimes it’s not fast enough to set fire in my wake.  More often it means sitting at my desk putting words together.  Not with a flower in my hair and a delightful tea cup next to me, but instead a headache and self-doubt and a cup of coffee bigger than my face (at least some of which I will spill on myself).

I romanticize the idea of having the courage to take over the world, but what I need right now is the courage to be still and take myself seriously enough to not just talk about my dreams, but actually work toward them.  I have a degree to finish, novels to write, and a Kilimanjaro to climb.  If you need me, I’ll be at my desk.

I said several weeks ago that I was looking for my Kilimanjaro.  A big, scary, significant challenge to throw myself into.  I was feeling very impatient then, wishing it would just come to me already.  Saturday, it did.

It’s nothing that will surprise you and so it makes little sense that it was such a revelation to me.  It’s always been a dream of mine to be a professional writer, but when I was younger, I didn’t know myself well enough to think of what that might look like.  And, oh god, the insecurities.  I thought that I would get there eventually, but the road seemed daunting, so I chose another road that is no less daunting, but is at least well-mapped (BA–>MA–>PhD–>Live in a box).

There was something about turning 27 that made me feel like I could no longer put off the big things in life that I wanted.  Then I was hit with a bout of creativity.  And then I finished coursework and was finally able to focus on more than my immediate future.  I pretty much never stop examining my life and rethinking my priorities, but sometimes it takes things actually changing for you to see something you didn’t see before.  Old questions then lead to new answers.

So, yes, I want to make a living as a writer.  Not immediately, since I have a nice job with benefits.  And not exclusively, because I am still working on my PhD and I still want to teach.  But, I don’t want to work at the library forever and academic jobs are hard to come by.  I suppose that I could kick myself for having wasted so much time not pursuing this, but instead I think that this is the ideal time to face my fears and learn to take myself seriously as a writer.

It will probably take some time and failure to figure out exactly what I mean by professional writer.  For now, I don’t mean professional blogger, though my blog has been and will continue to be important to this Kilimanjaro.  Yes, I do mean fiction, but I am also interested in writing articles and I love personal essay-style writing.  This is going to require me to actually write things and then take that terrifying step of submitting that writing.  Mostly for rejection, but I will submit nevertheless!

Failure is a big part of writing and I have been using that as an excuse to sit on my dreams.  It’s really not the fear of failure that has made me apathetic, but rather the very small chance of success.  Now I realize I was thinking too narrowly about both the kind of writing I want to do and what I mean by success.  I am more optimistic than ever before and that makes everything more exciting.

To get more practical and make it much more difficult to back out of this when the the fear hits later, here are some of my next steps:

1. Tell the internet what I’m doing.
2. Keep blogging a lot and at the best quality I can.  This is a great place to continue working on my writing. Also, I love it here and am unlikely to ever stop blogging.
3. Officially quit my second job.  I don’t need the money and I could use that time to focus on writing.
4. Go unanonymous.  Like, attach my full name to this place and everything that I write.  Deep breaths.
5. Step up my self-promotion and pretend not to feel awkward about it.
6. Write like hell.
7. Submit, submit, submit!

There is something really scary about deciding what you want to do, because it means you actually have to do it.  Nothing but hard work ahead.  I know that is something I can do, but it is not easy. In other words, I could use some encouragement now and forever. This is big, internet!

I was walking through the stacks listening to Simon & Garfunkel the other day when I thought about my AP English teacher from high school.  My first thought was that she made me believe my life would never be complete until I drove across the country listening to Simon & Garfunkel.

The second was something she wrote in my yearbook senior year: “You really are as good of a writer as I’ve always said.”  That sounds like kind of a strange comment, but the back story is that this teacher was, like, the teacher.  She had this air about her that made it almost cool to be in her class; I think that we all thought she really knew what she was talking about.

I had been waiting for years, and continued to wait all the way up to grad school, for a teacher to tell me I really wasn’t that great of a writer.  But, when she handed back my first paper junior year, she told me it was one of the best she’d ever read.  Then for the the next two years, she continued to hand back every paper with an A on it.

I developed this “yeah, whatever” attitude to the grades. I started to doubt she was even reading my papers.  But, that comment in my yearbook meant a lot to me. Less for the praise and more because she’d been perceptive enough to pick up on how I felt. I was surprised to be understood.

Later in college, I had an English class with a girl who had also been in those classes with the teacher, and I realized that while she had given me what I needed–mostly encouragement–maybe it hadn’t been the same for everyone else.  This was a smart girl and she was struggling with basic writing.  She didn’t feel prepared for college.

I don’t think enough about my future life as a teacher, because the road to a professorship is so long.  Thinking about it now, though, I hope to meet students wherever they are–to be the teacher to both that girl and to me.

This poor little post has been kicking around my drafts folder since early January. Maybe I’ll just go walking through the stacks listening to Simon & Garfunkel again for added authenticity.

Writing is suddenly easy again.  And I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, because it’s not like I don’t still spend a lot of time staring at a cursor.  Take that last sentence, for instance.  The double negative is kind of awkward, so I tried for several minutes to find another way to say the same thing before deciding that I prefer the awkward.  Then there’s that sentence I just wrote about the other awkward sentence; it had another comma in it, but that comma looked ugly to me, so I rearranged the words in a way that allowed me to take it out.

I could go on like this, but I won’t, because when writing suddenly becomes easy again, the last thing you want to do is highlight all the ways in which it is actually really difficult.

I feel like I’ve been going around thinking and sometimes saying I used to be good at this blogging thing for so long now that I was starting to think I’d be saying it forever.  I mean, what is this used to be I am referring to?  And what happened? Did I stop writing so much because I didn’t have the time or did I stop making time when the writing became difficult?

Well, I could think about that question forever or I could just take this good feeling and run with it.  Because that’s what you should do when you feel creative.  Run.

It’s that brain crack thing I talk about all the time.  I think I’ve repeated the idea to myself so many times that I don’t even need to be reminded of it anymore.  Say everything you can.  Write it all down.  Execute every idea that comes to your mind.  Don’t try to conserve them.  Don’t wait until you’ve found the perfect approach.  Throw them out into the world and then prepare yourself for all the new ideas that will come flying back.

When I think stupid things like, I’ll wait and write that when I’m not so distracted, I don’t even believe myself anymore, because I am always distracted and that hasn’t stopped me from writing many things I’m proud of.  When I think, maybe I’ll just hold onto this draft in case I don’t have time to write something for next week, I remind myself that sharing what I’ve written is the thing that keeps me most excited about blogging. I like publishing things that make nervous-excited.  So when I think, maybe I’m saying too much/maybe I should be quiet for a while, I ask myself what I’m so afraid of.  I’m learning not to regret being open even when it makes things more difficult.

At first it seemed bold to say writing is easy again, because what if I wake up tomorrow and it’s back to being hard as hell?  Then I guess I would have to explain that things changed.  What’s so scary about that?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much I consume.  I spend all day, every day reading things, watching things, and listening to things. Rarely only one at a time. If my eyes are reading, then my ears should be doing something too!  I wouldn’t say I feel inundated with images and noise. It’s rare that I feel overwhelmed enough that I need to take a break from it all.  But I do think about the quality of the things I’m consuming.

I’m as guilty as everyone else of refreshing my twitter stream even though only seconds have passed since I last refreshed it and, hey, why don’t I check tumblr to see if anyone has posted anything in the last minute, and then after that, I should probably check twitter again because it’s been 30 seconds.  At a certain point I realized that cycle is boring and unfulfilling; whatever I’m avoiding is probably more interesting and if I just need to connect with people, I have better ways of doing that.

I get anxious when I think of all the things I want to see and read and hear and experience, so I’m trying to be more intentional about what I consume. As I am prone to do, I’ve been in a rut lately, listening the same music I always do, watching the same shows, and barely reading fiction at all.¹  I stick to what’s familiar instead of seeking out what is new.  But right now I find myself itching to experience novelty.

To consume sounds so passive, but it can really be very active.  It takes some discipline to keep myself moving.  Or at least some intention. I’m ready to take that challenge more seriously even though I am as much plagued by a lack of time as always.  At the moment, I find myself wanting to consume as much quality content as I can. I know it’s unreasonable, but I keep thinking that I should be able to read a novel a week, listen to a new album a week, and watch a thought-provoking movie a week.  I’m going to fall short (especially trying to read a novel a week), but I’m going to try anyway.

What you consume is important, because it becomes part of who you are.  And it becomes part of what you create.  That’s the other part of this.  I’ve been thinking a lot about what I create.  I guess I’ve always placed a higher value on creating than consuming, because it requires so much hard work. More than just hard work.  It takes courage and talent you’re not sure you possess and so much patience. I’m proud of how much I produce, but right now I’m thinking that I want to say so much more.  I want to say as much as possible.  For a long time, I’ve had this crazy idea that I should write a novel and fill a journal every year.²

I’m going to keep up with my own ambitions the best that I can and especially focus on reading fiction and listening to new music.   I hope to find things worth writing about and sharing.  I like the idea of connecting to people through literature and music especially.  I’m going to try to post what I’m reading/listening to/watching in the sidebar of my blog (in part to keep myself accountable).  If you have any suggestions, throw them my way, and I’ll add them to my long and growing lists of things I must consume right this second.

I’m starting to think there might be something about this time of year.  In 2010 I was listening to Contra on repeat and obsessively plotting out the next five years of my life.

1. Well, I actually have been since writing this post, but so far I’ve only read Never Let Me Go.
2. Uh, maybe once I have the PhD.

Sometimes when I think about the fact that almost 60 people have my novel, it becomes hard for me to breathe.  When people tell me they’re reading it, I have no idea what to say, because it’s so cool to think that people are reading my writing, but it also makes me incredibly uncomfortable.  It’s just that I quite like people thinking I’m smart and talented and I have no perspective on the novel, but I think it’s pretty bad.  And I told myself I wasn’t going to say that again, because I hate to give disclaimers, but it is how I feel and not just an effort to save face.

With the way I talk about it, I know the obvious question is, “Why did you ask people to read it?”  The real reason was that I was ready to take a risk, but the reason I will ascribe to it now is that I’m ready to get over needing people to think I’m perfect.  I think it’s pretty cool that I wrote a novel, even if it sucks, and I want to do it again, so anything I can do to lower the stupidly high bar in my head is worth it if it makes writing any less intimidating.

Knowing my fiction is out there also motivates me to keep writing, because I think, “I can do better than that.”  Which brings me to the new novel, which I haven’t been making as much progress on as the Creativity Challenge really demands.  I’ve been taking more notes than actually writing scenes.  I’ve had some trouble figuring out the main character, because for a while she was too much like me and then she became me on crack mixed with Daria Morgendorffer. Now she’s back to being pretty normal instead of an anti-social, unfeeling crazy person.

I was having a hard time finding my way into the story, even though I do already have quite a bit written.  I’m still lacking plot points.  But then yesterday, I just started writing conversations between characters, apart from any scenes they might be attached to, and it felt so nice just to be writing even if I’m not sure exactly where I’m going.  Plus, it’s fun to put things you’ve been thinking about into the mouths of characters.

It’s kind of strange writing about people in grad school, because sometimes I feel this pressure to represent it in a certain way.  Not really out of any personal stake I have in what people think of it, but just because I live it and should know.  In truth I do know a lot about grad school and it’s not all exactly as you would think (though I’ve been here too long to really know what people think anymore and it probably takes a grad school ego to think other people even care that much), but I don’t like to write in that way where one person represents this group of people and another this group of people, so we get a perfect mix and balance.  Seems quite dull.

This post has now reached the point where I must admit to feeling like an idiot sometimes when I’m writing about writing.  It’s like I feel stupid for taking it all so seriously, but the reason I feel stupid is because I have a problem taking myself seriously.  I don’t know what it is, because it doesn’t feel pretentious or silly.  I guess it feels self-important, but what doesn’t?  I guess that was also part of the challenge for me: learn to talk seriously about what you do with other people who do things.  Sideline sitting and preparing but never starting are easier, but maybe risks aren’t that scary even if they sometimes make breathing difficult.

Today is the first day of July and the first day of the Creativity Challenge.  I challenged other bloggers and myself to be creative this month, whatever that might mean for us each as individuals, and now it’s time to make that happen.  The second half of the challenge is that you have to blog about it, you have to share your process.

So, here’s where I am right now: frustrated.  I feel pulled in so many different directions that I’m having a hard time focusing.  I’m realizing just how accustomed I’ve become to running around all the time instead of concentrating on anything.  It’s probably time to admit to myself that this whole internet thing has had an effect on my life. It’s almost entirely positive, except I notice now that I’m anxious if I’m not trying to do at least four things at once and I don’t have the patience to even just sit and read or write anymore.

I think some of it is nostalgia for that time in my life when I had almost endless hours to sit on my bed and read.  Now I’m an adult and I have to be at work all day, every day.  On top of which, life has simply changed since that time.  I didn’t have the opportunity then to talk to people all over the world whenever I wanted.  I’ve gone back and forth in my head about whether this difference  is necessarily bad or really just me changing and the world changing, compounded by the pressing responsibilities of being an adult.

My conclusion is that it’s all of those things, but no matter, I can still recapture some of what I had before instead of simply mourning its loss.  I picked up the collected journals of Joyce Carol Oates again yesterday.  I read through it last Summer and it inspired me then.  It’s pretty clear that JCO spends most of her time sitting and reading or writing.  Ever since I studied the student movement of the 1960s when I was an undergrad, I’ve romanticized life as a student and as a professor in the sixties, seventies, and even eighties.  Study without all the distractions and conveniences and stuff.  I remember a professor of mine saying she arrived at college with just a suitcase and a typewriter.   I’m not trading in my laptop or iPhone anytime soon, but reading JCO reminds me of how much I want to write through my life and how important it is that I let myself have that time, instead of filling every moment with noise and distractions.

The creative challenge I’m taking on for the month of July is to finish the first part, the first four chapters, of the novel I’m working on.  I actually already have the first chapter and half of the second written, but they need to be rewritten, because the main character has changed too much.  I’m a horrible rewriter.  I edit heavily as I write, but once things are down on paper and I’ve walked away, I have a hard time making significant changes.  I think I’ll just have to start from scratch and pull in whatever elements I like and remember from the original.

This novel is still lacking a bit in story, but I really like the characters and they feel fully-formed in my mind.  I think the hardest part about novels is that you need so much for people to do.  Large story arcs are easy, but what do people do and talk about every day in the meantime?  The first novel ended up with this feeling of everything but the kitchen sink for me, and this one seems simpler even though I’m trying to write with four narrators.  I guess it just doesn’t have as much baggage as the first. That’s a relief.

I’m adding to this challenge a commitment to prioritize sitting still and writing while I listen to music or reading while I sit in bed.  I really desire that kind of peace and I think my writing needs that as much as I do.

If you’re interested in participating in the Creativity Challenge, it’s not too late.  Check this post out for more information.  Your challenge does not have to resemble mine at all–you set your own challenge and parameters.  Check this page for a list of the people participating.

I posted this a couple months ago on the Writing Section of my blog.  I thought I would repost it here, because I’ve been thinking so much about it in terms of not just characters, but myself as well.  I did something last week that immediately made me think, “why did I do that?”  Oh yeah, because we’re stupid at the time things are happening.

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  About a year ago, after hearing about it on Filmspotting, I started listening to the Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcast.  In each episode, the host interviews a screenwriter (usually one whose movie has just been released and screened for an audience before the interview).

I love to hear writers talk about their writing and while some writers seem to shy away from talking about their inspirations and processes and the business side of writing, these screenwriters do not.  Jeff Goldsmith, the host, asks them all the questions I want to know the answers to, but would be terrified to ask of writers myself just because they’re the kind of questions I’ve often heard writers complain about being asked.  Things like, “where did the idea for this script come from?”

He also asks them if they use outlines and how much time they spend writing every day.  After listening to only a few episodes, you’ll realize there is no standard process.  Some writers hate outlines and think them useless, some writers think they should use outlines but never have, and others wouldn’t know how to start if they didn’t have the whole story planned out already.  As for how much time they spend writing every day, one thing is pretty standard: for every three hours they sit down with the plan to write, they produce no more than one hour worth of writing. No one to immune to procrastination.

I’ve gained several pieces of insight from listening to this podcast, most of which I wish now I’d written down, because I can’t remember them.  Just today, I was listening to the episode where Jeff interviews Nick Hornby about his adaptation of An Education.  Jeff always asks people about their breaking in stories–how they got into the business.

Out of that came something I’ve thought before, but never with such clarity.  Nick’s first book was a memoir and then his second, High Fidelity, was fiction.  He says that when he was writing the memoir, he could put in every thing he’d ever learned in his life, all of his wisdom.  But, in writing the novel, he couldn’t, because the character didn’t know that stuff and would make  mistakes that Nick wouldn’t.  In the case of High Fidelity, he’d let the girl get away.  He says, “We’re stupid at the time things are happening.”

I experienced this with my first novel, especially, because I was writing about a 16 year old and I am a hell of a lot smarter now than I was at 16.  On top of which, this girl is not me.  In fact, I was smarter and more ambitious than her when I was 16.  She makes mistakes I wouldn’t.  She says things she doesn’t mean.  She believes things that are not true.  Even knowing all of that, it’s hard to keep in mind.  I want to make her a smart girl who no one takes advantage of, who knows that people are there for her, and who doesn’t think that she’ll never recover from this tragedy.  But, she doesn’t know all of this stuff.

Still, with Haley it was easier, because she is at such a different time in her life than I am and her life at 16 is so different than mine was, but it is harder in the most recent novel, because I’m writing about people who are in almost the same period of life that I am and they are smart people.  I do give them insights of mine, because I think they’d have them, but it’s hard not to give them everything I know.  As Nick Hornby says, if he’d given Rob in High Fidelity all of his knowledge, then the central conflict of the story never would have happened.  There would be no story.

It’s not that the characters are dumb.  It’s just that we learn things from what we experience and even the smartest people do stupid things in the moment.  With distance, you forget all the back story and defensiveness.  You want to explain why someone did something in the most logical way, but their motivations don’t adhere so strictly to logic.  The central conflict of the novel I’m working on would fall apart if the characters were 100% level headed and, more importantly, knew what the other was thinking, but they have this huge history that’s shading their vision and they think they know what the other is thinking, but they’re wrong.  It’s hard to stop myself from saving them pain, but that’s where the story lives.

The start of every new month is filled with anxiety and hope for me.  The anxiety is that time is passing too quickly and there’s too much to do and I have no way of slowing it all down.  The hope is that I have a fresh start to make it all happen.

That’s what happened to me on June 1st.

After a weekend spent with my parents eating and drinking and soaking up the sun, I was thinking, “Do you know what this Summer needs more of?  Everything!”  I was even planning the post I would write about it.

When I came down off of my vacation high, I realized that I’d had it exactly backwards.  This Summer does not need more of everything.  I’m driving myself crazy over here just thinking about all the stuff I should be doing now that I kind of have some time.

I really don’t have much time and trying to do everything is just leaving me stressed and confused.

I don’t have a one track mind, so no matter what, the other things in my life will not go anywhere, but instead of trying to journal, blog, read, work, run, jump, and soak up the sun more, I will just focus on writing the new novel.  It’s what I want to do.  I won’t have time to do it later.  And focusing on one thing and actually getting somewhere will make me much happier than speed intervals of all the other things pulling at me.

I’m already one week in and it was a great decision.

Ever since I first read Harriet the Spy in 1996 (right after seeing the movie), I’ve been obsessed with the idea of carrying a notebook with me and writing through my life.  I tried the spy part for a while too, but it’s really the writing that stuck with me.  I gave it a good effort, but it wasn’t until 2002 that I started keeping a regular journal and even that requires a loose definition of regular.

There’s always this tension between living your life and reflecting on your life so that you can write about it.  There’s no doubt that my life has leaned more toward introspection than action, but I always think of 18th century English writers who I picture (however accurately) doing nothing but walking around ponds and writing and talking to the same people all the time.  It’s a wonder they had anything to say.

I live a small life too, even if I lack the leisure time of English poets.  Sometimes I do fight against the boundaries of my small life, but I unconsciously work to keep them in place and keep myself insulated from all the crazy going on out there.  It’s strange to realize how much this works for me as a writer, because I very rarely lack words or ideas to put to paper.

More and more all the time, though, I feel the pull to experience new things, especially new places, and it’s a comfort to know that writing will be with me there too.  It’s a part of my life, no matter what I do.

But of course, I have left out the most important thing about keeping a notebook with you always and writing at every opportunity.  That’s that you’re a secret genius who the world will only appreciate when you’re gone.  No, but I am inspired by Da Vinci-type notebooks, even if my own writing is sufficiently less mature and includes characters such as Adorable Boy instead of the Vitruvian Man.  I’ll let people assume what they will.

I like making plans, but I always have to add a qualifier to that statement.  I don’t like planning events or even what I’ll be doing next weekend.  I like plotting out of my life and making plans for achieving goals.  The more charts and graphs required, the better.

This is all quite obvious if you get a hold of my laptop.  There’s document after document labeled things like 5 Year Plan, Writing Goals, Blogging Goals, and Weight Loss Goals.  Each credit card I’m paying off has its own color-coded chart showing how much to pay each month.  Really, one of the most exciting things about working to get out of debt is all the charts it requires me to spend too much time making and revising.

Making plans has always been empowering for me.  Deep in my bones I have that American attitude that you can change anything about your life that you don’t like.  The first step is to make a plan!  This is the fun part for me.  I guess I just find the prospect of change exciting.  Sometimes it’s the only way to feel like you’re not stuck in place.

It takes a lot more than making a plan to ever actually change and I have certainly experienced my fair share of failure.  Perhaps even more than my fair share, because I’ve never been afraid to dream of living differently.

For a while my plans were so tinged with failure that I stopped creating them.  Evidence that it’s not just about the pretty charts.  In fact, what strikes me as so odd right now is that I’m actually succeeding at both of my two major goals: get out of debt and lose weight.

That’s changed the feeling of plan making for me, because it’s always been driven my present failure and hope for something different.  It’s how I take control–or at least feel like I’m taking control–of my life.

But, I have that feeling again.  It’s related to writing and specifically fiction.  I feel right now that I don’t know what to do next.  I mean, I can say what I should do and I have already written out a list in that document titled Writing Goals, but here I have time on my hands and I don’t know what to do with it.  My instinct: a bigger and better plan.

More than a plan is required, though.   If there’s a disconnect between me and bullet list of goals, then I’m never going to succeed.  There is no plan for getting your head in the right place, except that you keep after it.  It would be easy for me to continue avoiding writing fiction.  I can just think about doing it and write about doing it, but never get into the hard work of actually creating, even when it’s painful.

I try to take the attitude toward writing fiction that you have to show up to the (metaphorical) office every day and sometimes you’ll get down three pages of writing you’ll promptly throw away the next day and sometimes you’ll be struck by brilliance, but you won’t get anywhere if you don’t at least show up.

That will be my plan and once I have some momentum, I’ll figure out a way to color code it.

One of my college professors told us that she always assumes the lives of her students are at least a million times more complex that what she sees in the classroom.  That seems to me a fair way to judge anyone you come into contact with.  So, I don’t mean to make anyone’s interests or motivations or circumstances sound simpler than they are.  But, sometimes in relation to the other students in my program, I feel guilty that my mind is divided by other strong interests and is not adequately focused on theology and philosophy.

I feel this more in the Summer than at any other time.  I love what I study, but the free time I have now is the best opportunity I have to work on the other things that engage me.  And not that my fellow students do not have varied interests.  For grad students, we’re a fairly grounded and well-rounded group.  But, in the hierarchy of things that interest me, there are at least two battling for the top spot.

I’m not spending the Summer in a reading group battling Kant.  And when I’m not busy with school during the semester, I am not doing extra reading just to flesh out my knowledge.  I know this all sounds perfectly reasonable, but grad school is not that reasonable.  It’s highly competitive and if you like what you study enough to go for a PhD, then you should want to pursue it to its ends.  Instead, I’m distracted.

Sometimes when I talk to my classmates, I feel like I’m not sufficiently intellectually curious.  I do my work to get it done an then I spend the rest of my time doing other things.  That’s not really the life of an academic, at least not a successful one.  Really, I shouldn’t have time to blog as much as I do or work as much as I do.  And I shouldn’t constantly be frustrated that there isn’t enough time to pursue my other interests; I should be frustrated that there isn’t enough time to pursue my main interest in theology.

The other interests I keep alluding to are all variations on a theme: writing.  Blogging, journaling, writing fiction, reading fiction, and even reading critical work on fiction.  I was an English major before I was a Religion major, and my whole academic life leading up to the point where I took my first theology class and was struck by lightening like Luther was geared toward English.  Since Elementary School, it had been my thing, and then theology usurped it after only one class.  But, that old interest didn’t go anywhere.

Now it’s Summer and I’m not on the third floor of the library, walking through the theology section. I’m on the seventh floor browsing the fiction and the collections of essays.  I’m pulled there and when I look through the books, I think, what if I’d gone this direction instead? I don’t regret having chose theology.  It feels more important to me (to my person and to the world) than the study of English (sorry, Tom, if you’re reading this), but it still engaging me on such a deep level that I cannot let it just rest inside of me.  That’s mostly what I’ve done for the last four years.   I misjudged even my own passion for it.

My frustration is that there’s not enough time to pursue English and yet it distracts me from putting my full attention on Theology.  I can’t be the person I want to be in either, so I get nowhere in my fiction and I’m not the religion scholar I want to be.  And it’s not just about school; I think my full academic life will be full of this tension.  I don’t know how I’ll work it out or if I ever will.  Sometimes I wonder if after so many years in grad school, I will end up a writer instead.  Assuming I can pay my student loans, that doesn’t seem so bad, but I don’t know if that would satisfying my interest in theology.

I know that there could hardly be a better problem to have.  The frustration is real, but it is fueled by the passion I have for all of my interests.

I’ve had this idea for a post floating around in my head for a long time about how we’re defined by the things we like.  I never had a clear idea of where to go with it, but one night when I had time to write, but no strong feeling for what to write, I decided to take a crack at it.  Two painstaking paragraphs later, I gave up, mostly as a result of boredom.

Reading over those paragraphs, I realized why I’d been bored.  They read like the writing of someone else.  Like the social commentary of a person who didn’t really care.

It’s strange the way you’re taught to write in school.  It’s not the same in every discipline, but in order to advance my writing in grad school, I had to unlearn most of what I’d been taught in high school.  The worst of it was the way they taught us to avoid the word I like the plague.  I still remember the first time I said the world I in an academic paper. It was such a relief to avoid all the trouble of trying to say what you’re arguing and how as if you are not a real person with interests and biases and intuitions.  I’m grateful for the way we’ve stopped pretending we can be objective.  It makes the language way less awkward.

It’s not just about the word I.  It’s about going beyond what has already been said to offer a new perspective, but with full awareness that it is only one perspective and necessarily limited.  It’s more intellectually honest and, I think, way more interesting.  It’s hard for some people write as themselves.  They’d prefer to get lost in third person language.  For me, it’s the opposite.  I have no voice if I’m not writing as myself.  And no interest or stake.

Writing as yourself doesn’t require first person language, though I think language is powerful enough to change your feeling for what you’re writing, so saying I reinforces that you’re writing from a specific context and saying what you think rather than repeating what others have said.  I often slip into second person you as an unconscious stylistic choice.  It’s personal still, but more obviously extends beyond just me.

Writing from a personal perspective has been unfairly characterized as writing with no regard for facts.  I think that has to do with the way we devalue feeling and place it in opposition to reason. To me, strong reasoning is as big a part of personal writing as anything else.  So is the effort to be objective by considering all evidence.  But, writing from a personal perspective helps us get closer to the reality of things, because we acknowledge our own biases and we can be more honest about what we really experience.  What can we really know about anything, but our experiences of them?

I could go on in every direction about this topic.  It plays a very big role in my life as a scholar.  But more than that, personal writing is simply my preference.  It’s how I best express myself.  It’s the way I am most engaged in writing and all the things I write about.  And it’s the style I most enjoy reading. Writing from other perspectives or as if I have no perspective rings false to me.  So does writing about things I don’t care about.  If I cannot find some kind of personal angle–and I almost always can, even about the must mundane things–then my writing is stilted and I am off somewhere else.  I am back to working on that post about how what we like defines us, but this time I’m writing as me.

I’m allergic to cheese.  Not the tasty stuff you eat.  That’s my lifeblood.  I’m talking about fictional cheese, like cringe-worthy dialogue and surprise happy endings that bring out my inner cynic.  You know, when it all gets overwhelmingly sappy and you have to either laugh or cower in secondhand embarrassment.

Subtlety is a real art, a fine line that exists between saying nothing or going too far.  The deceptive thing about subtlety is that it necessarily looks easy, but it is really hard to convey, especially in writing.  Everything that happens has to be described, so that even an understated head turn announces itself.

Often I read through my fiction with a finger on the backspace key, ready to delete anything that even approaches the cheese line.  When I’m successful, what’s left is subtle but meaningful character interactions in language that’s not all, HEY! LOOK AT ME!!!  When I’m not successful, what’s left is horribly boring and lifeless.

Because cheese isn’t all bad.  It can be fun or moving and not cringe worthy. Sometimes, cynic be damned, my face lights up when she’s missing him and she turns a corner to find him standing there.  And he tells her how much he loves her.  And she gives him a Dawson’s Creek-style mouth-full-of-big-words response that’s more of a speech than a “hey, I love you too.”  Sure, if you break it down and read it in a mocking voice, you can go on about how people don’t really speak that way and how did he know he’d find her there? and eww, love.

Cheese: it does have a place.  It’s pretty hard to write interesting fiction in a monotone-like style where nothing too dramatic ever happens.  Even real life often lacks subtlety and fiction is not real life.  So, cheese, I’m learning to embrace you or eat you or whatever makes sense in the context of this metaphor.

I wrote this on March 21st:

Just feeling so crazy excited about life and so capable of making necessary changes.  Was feeling optimistic when I got off work and then I thought to myself that by the end of the week, with two scary presentations, I would not be feeling optimistic.  Then I thought, how fucking depressing and defeating.  I will conquer still!

I’ve been thinking for a while that if I’m going to take writing seriously, then I need to change the way I think.  There are a million things that could stop me from writing, a complete lack of time chief among them, but what’s really stopping me from making progress is that I’m not sure if I’m good enough.

Recent experiences related to my success in school brought me to a new level of clarity.  Don’t let me tell you any differently: I love studying theology.  I love school. I love succeeding at school.  I love debate. I love, even, talking in front of people and sharing what I know.  But, all of my insecurities about whether I’m smart enough or have anything unique to offer replace my excitement with dread.  I find myself thinking that just getting through it will be good enough.

There are a couple of problems with this.  First, I’m capable of a lot more than just getting by and the facts, if you examine them from outside of my head, speak to that.  I do really well in school.  Second, things that could be thrilling to me are instead dread-filled.  And, third, thinking you’re not good enough is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  You procrastinate, because you don’t want to face your own potential failure.  You don’t try as hard as you can, because you always want the excuse that you could have done better.

I don’t want to make this all seem more serious than it is.  I am confident at the same time that I am doubtful of my abilities.  Sometimes I even think ridiculously arrogant things that I would never say out loud.  Maybe that’s what makes this all so complicated.  The more success I have, the more weirdly perfectionistic and fearful of failure I become.

With fiction, it’s different.  There’s this same pressure as in academia to be something special, but my abilities are largely untested.  I’ve been writing fiction since I was 16, but I’ve only written a tiny portion of what I could have, and almost no one has read any of it.  Fiction is hard and most people suck at it for a really long time.  Getting published is also really hard.  Really really hard.  And you’re never going to make any money at it unless your J.K. Rowling or Steven King or Stephenie Meyer or John Grisham.  The odds are stacked against me.

But, if I’m going to keep marching down these difficult roads–one to a PhD and the other to published novel–then I’m going to have to stop expecting failure.  I’m going to have to start counting on success.  I’ll be disappointed sometimes, but I need to stop trying to protect myself from disappointment by always expecting the worst.  I’ll be okay and in the meantime I’m only hurting myself.

What does it mean if you wanted to do it, but never did?  Or even had the talent to do it, but never did?  It means nothing.  Potential isn’t anything to brag about.  I’d rather run head first into my limits.  At least then I will know where they are and I’ll have created something in the process.

I’d love to write with no concern for whether I was producing anything good or not, but it’s impossible to subtract my ego out of the equation. Not as a means of self-delusion, but as a means of compensating for the defeatist attitude I call realistic,((This is a reference to a favorite quote of mine: “Doubt has replaced hopefulness—and men act out of defeatism that is labeled realistic” —Students for a Democratic Society.))   I’m going to assume that it is good.  Decent at least.  Nothing to be embarrassed about.  Will get there one day.  I’m going to kick this imposter complex to the curb and stick my neck out by writing as much as I can and sharing it with whoever is reading.

This is an excerpt from my novel Careful Where You Stand.  You can read more about the novel here and read another excerpt here.

She could hardly remember now how she used to fill the hours of her life.  To keep her mind busy felt like a constant struggle.

She tagged along with her parents as they ran their errands.  She wasn’t much for company.  It was hard to engage in small talk when they were always staring at her with those concerned looks on their faces.  It began when Ally died, but it’d become so much worse since her visit to the hospital.  Always they searched her face for signs.  When she was alone in her room too long, they’d come check on her.  When she said she was going for a walk, they insisted they could use the exercise too.

It was a new dynamic she was slowly getting used to.  She’d always been the happy child. She pushed the limits occasionally, but she never went too far.  They didn’t have to worry about her.  Now she was unpredictable. She was flirting with something serious, and they didn’t have confidence that she wouldn’t fall over the edge.

She knew how they felt.  Her mother was easy to read, and her dad had been forced to voice his concerns directly for fear that Haley was in real danger.  She tried to convince them that things were getting better, but they were watching all the time.  She couldn’t smile through it all, she couldn’t keep her eyes in focus through every dinner conversation, and she couldn’t always eat her food without first gagging.

Though they didn’t ask any specific questions about her sessions with Dr. Vine, she tried to offer them a clue or two after each one.  In passing, Haley would say, “We talked about that trip Ally and I took to Portland when she first got her license.  Remember that?” or “She said I should try harder to talk to the kids at school.”  They’d say something encouraging, and she would smile and agree.  Later when they walked by the living room and saw her staring into space rather than paying attention to the TV, they’d pause for a second in the hall, the look of concern returning, before walking away.

Her mother was most concerned that she continue to eat and shower regularly.  She’d been managing both fairly well.  It was easier if she ate regularly, but sometimes she’d forget and long hours would pass, the juices in her stomach swirling around, making her nauseated rather than hungry.  She liked to stand under the warm shower and think of nothing.  No one could catch her there.  Her mom only knocked on the door when more than a half hour had passed.  Then she’d wash her hair quickly, change into clean clothes, and appear downstairs for a snack before bed.

Maybe it was all a waste of time, since they didn’t believe her anyway.  But, Haley knew it was those subtle looks of fear and disappointment that kept her moving forward.  She’d like to climb in bed after school, but her mother couldn’t find her that way.  It was this self-delusion—the idea that she was really fooling people with her act—that helped her get up every morning and go to school every day.  She didn’t want to think of what would happen if she let the truth in.

Haley couldn’t even explain to herself how she could sit in class and talk and laugh with Ryan and Rick and the girl who sat in front of her, Angela.  Even then she wasn’t without her grief.  It sat in the pit of her stomach, weighing her down like lead.  She never forgot it.  It wasn’t like before when the realization of Ally’s death would leave her and then come crashing down upon her again, the pain renewed.  This was dull and heavy and constant.  But, it didn’t keep her from smiling or joking.  It just kept her from believing it would ever go away.