“Actions express priorities.”- Mahatma Gandhi
I was wondering why I felt like I couldn’t get any traction on my writing.
I’m not talking about the blog writing or the occasional article writing. No, I’m talking about the Thing That Shall Not Be Named, the Thing that continues to haunt me, taunt me and generally inhabit my dreams as I studiously avoid it and even pretend that I don’t care anymore. (No really. That’s SO finished).
It started with a rather innocent moment. I was doing my clever avoidance of anything that looked like real writing, by ‘working’. That is, reading other blogs, commenting on them, scrolling through Facebook, trying to further my Twitter education, all stuff that is supposed to vault me into the blogosphere and make me a contender of epic proportions (My site will have ads! I’ll have a million followers! I’ll spend all day keeping legions of fans at bay! This will translate into a book contract! (especially if I actually write it – see above) Thousands of dollars in passive revenue! Etc!)
I found myself on one of my favourite blogs, Becca’s Byline. She wrote a post called Waking Up; a short piece reacting to someone else’s blog (does this remind you of those funhouse mirrors that keep reflecting back and back into infinity?) where they were talking about the changes that had happened in the last ten years of their lives.
Well, hold the door! I sat and thought awhile and then I wrote a comment that started like this,
Ten years ago…2002. I would have been 42…
(I just deleted an entire paragraph that listed so many changes in that year alone that I decided it was ridiculously long).
But. Your question has started the realization that my life is in a constant state of change. More things have happened in ten years than I can list.
I am not saying this like it’s a good thing. This is not about that at all. In fact, it scares me a little. Why the constant spin of the next thing and the next thing and the next BEST thing?
I grew up on a steady diet of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. The aforementioned italicized comment, or so my Inner Girl-Detective surmised, might be the clue as to my lack of writerly productivity.
Yes, I believe I was hot on the trail as to why I was not getting anything done.
I’m never home.
And when I am? I’m planning my next trip.
According to all those official Travel Blogs That Matter, that is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing; Content is King! Keep shaking it up! Add new destinations! New delights! Wa-fecking-hoo! Keep those readers engaged!
So, even though I crave to be home, to have a routine, to do all those sedately writerly things that will help me bring forth the writing that matters…the whole thing lasts about ten minutes before I think, hmmm…yes, well…Mexico sounds good. Why haven’t I walked the Camino yet? What about Chile? I’ve never been to Chile.
Surely you can see the danger of living in a head like mine? (Some people have written me and told me they love living vicariously through my blog. People! You should be scared. Very scared. You could get sucked into the vortex of my world. It is not always a pretty place).
All this to-ing and fro-ing is not a complaint even though I realize it sounds suspiciously like it might be. This is more like ramped-up curiousity focused on what I say I want versus what I am actually doing.
Obviously I love traveling. I love the way it rearranges (change!) my perspective on everything. And I think that’s what happened again. Here in France I have some very real distance from my home life. Not to mention a very handy excuse not to do any writing, what with the company, the things to see, the meals to eat and a myriad of other truly honourable reasons.
I guess this is just me being greedy and wanting to honour both sides of my Gemini-schizoid-self. Truly, I AM doing what I want to be doing, but not EVERYTHING I want to be doing. That makes sense right? Right??
I want to be an introvert AND an extrovert.
I want to stay home AND I want to see new places.
I want to write AND I want to talk.
Oh dear doctor. I want it all.
I am not one of those people who can write at the drop of a hat. I need to have nothing else going on. Time to think. Time to sink (perhaps that’s what I’m really avoiding?) Time to stare at the ceiling. No demands on my time. Familiar space. My favourite coffee cup.
In short, all the things that make me also want to run screaming into the nearest airport and get on a plane to Somewhere Else.
Somebody throw an ankle chain on me and lash me to the desk. Save me from myself.
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Colleen, well, I wouldn’t say Just Do It if I didn’t think you could. If you consider the journey – look at what you’ve done and experienced regarding all of the events and work leading up to the inspiration and conception of ‘the book’ (if it’s still the story you talked about, yes?) then the writing of it will be the easy bit. Hey, here’s some advice: forget the word ‘book’ and think, “my story” Will that help? Ah, yes, petard – I think it might not be an actual thing you hang from, but some sort of bomb… I’ll be interested to know before I go lobbing it about again.
pe·tard (p-tärd)
n.
1. A small bell-shaped bomb used to breach a gate or wall.
2. A loud firecracker.
[French pétard, from Old French, from peter, to break wind, from pet, a breaking of wind, from Latin pditum, from neuter past participle of pdere, to break wind; see pezd- in Indo-European roots.]
Word History: The French used pétard, “a loud discharge of intestinal gas,” for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. “To be hoist by one’s own petard,” a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare’s Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means “to blow oneself up with one’s own bomb, be undone by one’s own devices.” The French noun pet, “fart,” developed regularly from the Latin noun pditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, “fart.”
OMG Your use of petard was quite obviously & most utterly divinely sent!
I believe my excuse-filled post was a “loud discharge of intestinal gas” HA! Or how about “to blow oneself up with one’s own bomb, be undone by one’s own devices.”
Miz Sarah, you nailed me. And you know what my dear and lovely and understanding husband said when I told him about your original comment? “It’s good you have friends who can call you on your bullshit.”
And he’s right. And you did.
I’m hereby owning up to my petardedness and getting on with the writing of ‘my story’. Thanks!
“Time to think. Time to sink”. So familiar to me also. I tell myself that is why my blog posts are relatively few and far between. When I was working a daily job this winter I almost never wrote. Didn’t have time to think of anything that I felt was worthwhile saying–that was the reason/excuse I gave myself. I much prefer to have the time to digest an idea, emotion, situation or story, letting the subconscious do most of the work. Many of what I consider my best things seem to spring whole as if from the forehead of Zeus. That doesn’t always have to happen at home; but the constant changes, accommodations, uncertainties of the way I best like to travel make it harder to do on the road. Collette, I understand where you’re coming from! (And maybe going to.)
Mandy, I’m realizing it all is just a bunch of excuses; I keep thinking and reading and pondering the writing, instead of actually doing the hard work of writing the damned thing. Thank you for letting me off the hook with how it’s ‘harder to do on the road’, but I think it’s more about the bit you said about yourself…”that was the reason/excuse I gave myself.” I believe that’s what’s really going on with me. Sigh.
I really only have one thing to say: http://ehdom.com/flowchart/
Laurie. Lovin’ the flow chart, especially because it’s long and involved and takes lots of time to read! Thanks for nothing 🙂
I found your blog through TravelerVoice, and am so glad I did! The constant conundrum that we have as travel writers (go or stay? network or research? blog or do my laundry?) is part of what I LOVE so much about the process…constant decisions, but in the end, they’re all good decisions because something is getting done.
Have a LOVELY time in France, and I look forward to following along with your travel adventures!
Hey Jess, Welcome aboard the Madness Train!
Conundrum 101 – Should I clean out my closet or go to Tibet?
I like your attitude that at least something is getting done. I have to remember that.
I don’t think I know about TravelerVoice. I’ll go check it out and look up your site too. Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Ah, but you’ll hang by your own petard by thinking you NEED to be home to write, that you NEED a familiar ceiling to stair at and a certain coffee cup. We only write in our heads, after all – the minute you put such limitations or ritualistic demands on your writing you’re done for. Besides, Collette (!) you’ve already contradicted yourself by being able to write this blog while on the road. I hate to quote a tennis shoe company, but ‘Just do it.’ By the way, all this gnashing you’re doing? It’s probably part of the process.
And I might admit here that writing this has effectively allowed me ten minutes of work avoidance on that novel that’s due in two months!
Oh…oh dear.
Sarah, surely you’ve realized that I am nothing but contradictions. That being said, it does sound like a bunch of inflated excuses doesn’t it? Oh dear. And I was so sincere to boot. Why, oh why, must I keep reinforcing the impression that I’m off my nut?
And what the heck is a petard anyway? It’s not often one gets to see it in print. I’ve used that expression myself but now I’m going to look it up cuz that will take at least 3 minutes!
I am encouraged to think that all my gnashing and public lamentations are part of the process. So. I think the gist of your message, if I were to take the liberty of paraphrasing, would be, Suck It Up!
Admittedly, Just Do It, sounds friendlier, so thanks for that.
Bless you. So this means, I can do it all, right? I like this plan. Bless you.
Now you’ve got ME thinking about your situation and the dichotomies in your life. I think your need to be on the move is very deeply ingrained – just like my need to be mostly at home. I almost NEVER feel the need to be anywhere else except home. When we had our house in Florida, I often had the urge to go there (especially in the dead of winter) but it was really just another version of home.
I wonder if you could even be productive if you gave up your wanderings and stayed put for a while? I think fighting your basic nature is counter productive to doing anything worthwhile artistically. Takes too much energy.
That being said, I certainly don’t fight my preference for being home and I’m not terribly productive on my own Thing That Shall Not Be Named 🙂
Oh dear…all the King’s horses and all the King’s men…
That’s a very good point; that fighting my basic nature to keep moving would take up too much energy.
I guess what I’m struggling with too, is that I want to further myself as a writer. Blog posts and magazine articles come pretty easy to me so I think that I’d like to stretch myself as a writer by pushing harder on this memoir project and the larger demands it makes on my writing.
I don’t want to set myself up to be ‘punished’ by staying home too much but at the same time I want to stretch myself by pushing against my usual nature. Of course, the next part of this crazy equation is that I’ll go for months when I don’t want to go anywhere and think I’ll never leave home again.
Is that experience my usual nature or an aberration?