Category: Nonfiction

Working Alone and Together

~ plainswriter ~ 2 Comments

It’s stating the obvious to observe that writing is a solitary pursuit, but there, I’ve gone and said it anyway. No one will write my poems for me, my stories for me, my essays for me, or even that book-length memoir for me. No one. I am the one who chooses (or not) to work on these pieces, even this piece.

I’m by myself at this moment (5:45 a.m.), the rest of my family still sleeping.  A glass of cold water and a cup of coffee both within reach, a candle burning, a solitary lamp lighting me as I work. No one ordered me to set my alarm for 5:30.

To be clear, I am mostly comfortable with this arrangement of my writing life. It’s no real bother to be “by myself” trying to put down the right word, then the next right word, etc. (I’m not sure how strong extroverts manage to become writers, but they do.)

But the other day I was thinking about my “condition,” 12 years removed from finishing my MFA, 5 years removed from finishing my PhD. I realized an essential component of the writing life I was missing: accountability with another writer.

To me, one of the best benefits of the graduate Creative Writing courses I took was the accountability built into the system. I had to turn in a story every few weeks. I had to turn in a poem each week. Beyond those structural “checks,” fellow writers and I talked in and out of class about our writing. There was genuine community, and I made friends with many of these folks, people I still keep in touch with to this day.

My writer-friends are scattered around the country: Oklahoma, Illinois, South Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa, Georgia, among other states. I see these folks at conferences, at retreats. I see them online.

What did I do about this lack of accountability?

I reached out to one of my writer friends, to someone I thought who knows my “work,” what I’m “trying to do.” Would he like to start swapping work? He said yes, and we’re in the very first stage of this process, more accurately, on the first piece we sent each other.

As I write this, I am rereading the poem he sent, pining over what comments I might make. And in this set of actions, I’m moving beyond that inward focus towards the self. I am instead considering how I might encourage the writer, what words I might offer that can be of help.

It is a tiny step, yes, towards focusing outward, toward others. Of course, I am curious about what comments he’ll make on my poem. Right now, however, I am not considering that. I am (re)learning this truth: we were made for community. 

Summer-Writing Recap

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As the fall semester begins this week at my university, I’m pondering my writing over the past 3 1/2 months. In my last post, I noted how difficult July was (in terms of doing any sustained writing). I’ve learned that teaching 2 summer classes will complicate a writing life. (Big surprise!)

In those 7 weeks between end of spring semester and the start of my summer classes, I did make some substantial progress on two projects.

“The Essay”

I signed a freelance contract to write a 1,500-word essay on a passage from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest. The essay will be included in an anthology that commemorates the 100th anniversary of Chambers’ death.

This essay was arguably one of the most difficult pieces I’ve ever worked on. Over May and June, I completed at least 5 drafts, most of them at my local Panera. I consumed many cups of coffee during the process.

Part of the reason that it was so difficult was that I’ve never written anything quite like this: part theological reflection, part personal narrative, and all aimed towards a broad audience.

Don’t misunderstand me: I like to be challenged as a writer. I enjoy taking on a writing project that stretches me. It was refreshing to revisit Chambers’ book and its impact upon me. However, it was also a relief to send the essay off to an editor.

I do count it as a type of “warm-up” piece towards a future project. (See below.)

“The Poems”

I received a summer research grant from  my university to work on a poetry manuscript, Your 21st-Century Prayer Life. Most days from early May through the end of June I wrestled with a different poem each day.

I would ponder a single word in a single line of a poem, change the word, ponder more, and then change the word back. Other mornings or afternoons, I would ponder a line break, play with different possibilities, and then change the line break back. Sometimes, my approach would involve the radical actions of cutting one line (or more), cutting one stanza (or more).

By mid-June, I had revised over 2/3 of the poems. I dug through the remaining poems, and weeded out another half dozen to arrive at 40, a good biblical number. By the end of June, the time had come for the organizing portion.

I spent a couple of hours one afternoon, a big glass of iced coffee within reach, and sorted through the poems, looking for connections among them. Single sheets of paper were scattered around my home office. I began gathering them in small bunches. I was trying to create a meaningful sequence, and I organized the manuscript around the church calendar and certain repeating subjects.

Once I had created that order and copied the drafts into one document, I sent it to an editor. Back in April I’d had a conversation with this editor while attending a faith-based writing conference. I had told him about my manuscript, what my plans were, and asked him if he’d be interested in seeing the project at some later date. He had said, yes.

He and I are now working on the manuscript. He has suggested I attempt certain types of revisions to the poems, and I understand where he’s coming from with those suggestions. I’m excited about the future of this project, seeing that some of these poems go back 9 years.

*

“What’s next?”

I’ll be working on these poems for several months.

I’ll draft and/or revise a short story (or two).

I’ll be writing more material for a book-length memoir.

That’s enough to keep me occupied, I think.

The Rhythms of Reading and Writing

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I’ve commented here before about how I tend to write in the genres I am currently teaching. Although I’ve written for a long time, I’m still discovering things about my writing process, as well as about my writing and reading rhythms. Over the last weeks, I’ve been thinking and analyzing. What trends and tendencies are there? How might I make better use of my time, to write smarter, to read smarter?

One conclusion, after doing some close study, is that when I’m tired, fatigued, or experiencing difficulty concentrating, it’s much easier to write prose. Trying to write poetry, whether drafting or revising, is near impossible and most often futile at these times. I believe part of this is because I’m thinking less precisely on each word, as I tend to do in poetry. (Of course at the later stages of a prose piece, I am scrutinizing each word, but not so much in earlier drafts.)

For instance, a few autumn’s ago, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. each weekday morning to write, more specifically to write short fiction. With the music of Hammock in my ears, with the large mug of hot black coffee, I was ready to enter those fictional worlds. I could pick up where I left off the day before as I gradually awoke to the real and the made-up worlds.

With reading prose–whether novels, short stories, or creative nonfiction–I am also able to enter into the worlds without much difficulty. There’s no warm-up necessary. I resume the novel, the memoir, or start the next short story with relative ease.  Again, this characteristic is a likely result of the way I read poetry, with such close attention.

I suppose it sounds as though I am a “sloppy” prose reader, and when I’m tired, perhaps that’s true. With prose, however, I do focus on the individual sentence, reading just as much for how the writer uses language.

These conclusions are already helping me as both a reader and writer. Poetry is best when I most alert, most awake, which generally means the mornings. I want and need to interact with the poem in as coherent a state as possible. Prose is for any time.

When I have the desire to write but the flesh is weak, I know I can stumble my way through the sentences, wandering through the rooms of paragraphs, not concerned about the hallways, knowing that I can (and will) return when I am alert to renovate the house of prose into a coherent design.