Friday, November 10, 2006

the elusive literary life (word count: 19,181)

I think I’m slowly getting accustomed to this.

For the first time in my life, I’m actively planning my own lifestyle. This sounds strange—I guess we always have a degree of control over how we live. But so often, that’s still dependent on, say, what your professors have written in the syllabus and what it takes to get that done.

I’ve assumed for years that at this point, post-graduation, I would be answering to a boss at a publishing company, managing manuscripts, large meetings, and hectic deadlines. Instead, and for how long?, I have the chance to be my own boss, manage my own manuscript, keep the meetings small, and determine my deadlines. And the perks aren’t too bad!!

But being the slightly frightened and insecure person that I am, I have resorted once again to list-making. (Hey, it worked for college.) I found myself asking over and over (and over! and over!) what exactly I want to be doing with my time. I thought it would be easier than it has been to organize my ideas, my projects, and my days. Hence, the list. I scrounged around in writing books and in my own mind; I reread the notes I took when I interviewed professors about the writing life. Now I have my own syllabus, or, at least, a mission statement.

It’s a good list, and it makes me happy. I tried to cover every aspect of a fantastic literary life, and every time I read it, I get very excited to be exactly where I am.

Some high points:
- tweeds. I kid you not. This is at the absolute top of my list, because for years now I have linked tweedy clothes with excellent writing… which is why I bought a long, beautiful, black and white tweed coat last Friday. I’m attributing any good or solid phrase in my novel to this coat.

- routinely gather and file snippets of paper. This is important—I’m drowning in scraps of paper! I read Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, for my English 101 class at Calvin, and I loved Lamott’s strategy of carrying around index cards. When she has a brilliant thought, she has a place to write it down. Trouble is… I’m now swamped with my own cards. And I promise they’re not all brilliant. I have something undecipherable that was, no doubt, brilliant the other night at 1:30 when I sat up and scribbled it down. I also have tons of quotes from writing books—things to calm my host of militant fears. (My most recent quote, which comes from Wendy Rawlings: “How else, except amid chaos, to get anything done?” Bravo.)

- send something out monthly. Ooh. The difficult one, the big bad step-sister of the writing life. It shouldn’t be that bad—I’ve sent things out before, thanks to my writing minor experience. But I still fight that resistance. And I know all the reasons why I should send things out, and I really want to, I do. I think I just need someone to stand over me with a wooden spoon until I cave in and throw a piece in the mail. (I did send something out for October. I promise. It was for an essay competition about homeownership. The winner gets… a house! That was wooden spoon enough for me. The biggest difficulty was in the word limit: 350 words! I can’t even keep this blog to 350 words!!)

So there’s the start of it. I now am safely clothed with tweed, the start of my authorial wardrobe. The scraps of paper ebb and flow, and they often find themselves into huge idea files on my computer. And as for something to send out for November, well… I’m working on it.—jl

Note: my novel is gasping for air at 19,181 words. My brain absolutely ran out last night as I finished a paragraph. I’m hoping to do some light research this weekend—still desperate for authentic details! But we’re heading to Nebraska in a few hours, so any quality work time has to wait for Monday…

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 11/10 at 11:39 AM
(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

<< Back to main