Friday, January 12, 2007

these things that i’m learning

One of the hardest parts of this new kind of life is the uncertainty. Much as I despised the inevitable “syllabus shock” of every semester, I miss having a few sheets of paper that outline what exactly I would be doing in the next four months. Faced with the assurance of a challenge, I could dread it or embrace it; but in the end, I planned out my time and work, and I made it through. (With the support of twenty other students, and a professor encouraging us.)

I would love a syllabus right now. (Maybe I should make my own? An interesting thought…)

How do I balance the difficult, challenging work with the enjoyable and relaxing? When should I push myself to try something new, and when should I relax and follow my creative impulse? That’s the thing about professors. They’ve taught their classes again and again. They know when to assign, say, a fifteen-page paper, and when to have us role-play scenes from a novel.

I am much more ignorant about what I need.

Since I’m not in grad school or working a forty-hour work week, I feel like I have to make up the difference somehow. I’ve been keeping track—since June!—of the amount of time I’ve spent writing, as well as the number of words I’ve written, nearly every day. I feel like I need to put in the same amount of effort and time as what I did at school or at work.

But this belief tends to make me feel driven and unhappy, filled with guilt when I don’t get as much work done as I could. No surprise, then, that I am the same kid who plunked down in my advisor’s chair, in October of my freshman year, with questions about summer school and graduating on time, concerned that I wouldn’t be able to fit in my whole major. He was very kind, and (without laughing!) told me not to worry, that everything would work out just fine. (And it did.)

This is so hard for me to remember! One of the many writing books I’ve read (Page after Page, by Heather Sellers) recommended inviting rather than demanding yourself to write. And so, instead of feeling under orders to get x amount of words done in a day, I’m remembering that I write because I want to. I write because it feels like the most important kind of work I can do right now.

I am attempting, then, to quiet down the screaming Type A person inside me. This week, I’ve done the unthinkable—I haven’t kept track of my hours of writing or the amount of words I have written. That sounds so funny written out… (Seriously, do they have a twelve-step program for the anal retentive??) But it’s been such a wonderful week! I feel like a whole person, rather than a guilty little kid, who lied to stay home “sick” from school. (One thing that’s always worried me about my writing-life decision: am I just indulging my inner slacker? Augh! More doubt!!)

This week, also, I’m dabbling in character sketches, working with the advice of Elizabeth George in her excellent book Write Away. She says to thoroughly understand your main characters before you start plotting, before you make your story. This is something I already knew, already had heard… and hadn’t practiced. That’s in part why I haven’t touched my NaNoWriMo novel since November 30. My main character became someone I didn’t know, which made my story something I didn’t understand or like. So, in a sense, I’m back to square one on that novel. Trying to unearth the girl that I meant to write about, and then seeing where she would really go, what she would truly do. And, in the meantime, I’m getting ready for that New York conference… just a month away!!—jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 01/12 at 02:33 PM
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