I've been thinking about writing today--the actual work of it--and realizing that as a poet, I don't do much of it. Poems either come quick or a couple lines at a time over days or even weeks. I spend more time revising, and I usually do that in chunks of several poems at a time. In any given week (the last 3 or 4 excluded, since my brain has been on vacation) I probably spend less than 4 hours actually writing. I wonder what would happen if I tried to do it on a more regular basis. I tend to think I would stare at the screen and not get much more done than usual, although my post-Bisbee blitz from last August sort of proves otherwise.
This is a major difference from when I considered myself primarily a fiction writer. When I first sat down to try to write a novel (this was about 6 years ago), I spent every free moment at the computer. I wrote 80 pages in a month--and I was working full time. Now, I never finished that draft, and I doubt I'll ever go back to it since the writer I was at 21 is not the writer I am today, but it shows me that I can produce pages, words, pretty quickly if I put my mind to it.
I wrote the outline for a memoir this past semester for my Non-Fiction class, and I've been thinking about fleshing out that outline. But I don't know if I want to commit myself to that kind of project. I could easily spend 6-8 hours a day hacking away at it...and then what would happen to all my other projects? I'm all for multi-tasking, juggling, keeping my plate full, but I feel like a prose project would become all-consuming, and aren't I, after all, supposed to be finishing this poetry manuscript I keep freaking out about?
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I met a friend for beer yesterday and we talked writing and academia...and I freaked out a bit. K has a PhD in something else and is working on her MFA in poetry, so she knows all about the life of the grad student and academic. She's been on the job market. Defended a dissertation. She re-opened my eyes to the un-glamorous side (okay, so academia isn't really glamorous from any side, but she talked nuts-and-bolts) which I had been ignoring while going through the application process. I am so, so glad that I finished my apps before I had this conversation, because if I had had it before, I might have talked myself out of it entirely.
I want this, I do...but sometimes I think about sitting in my office with my books and my poems and forget about the politics, the creepy MLA hotel interviews, the committees, the hoops. I forget about being poor. The conversation yesterday reminded me of these things, and now I'm thinking, "It wouldn't be so bad to go back to HR."
AAARRRRG! Why can't I ever make up my mind and then stick to it? Granted, I'll be back to gung-ho in a week or so, but right now, I'm flailing. Good thing the wheels are already rolling.
the anxieties of blue skies
1 week ago
4 comments:
When it comes to writing, I always think of myself as a poet who happens to write novels. I can pick up a piece of prose any time of the day or night and work on it. The poems are all products of inspiration. I write very few poems really these days. I only have so many because I've kept everything I wrote since I was thirteen. To my mind the poetry is my real writing. It's the most personal. I've never sat down and tried to write a poem. They come or they don't. People ooh and aah when you say you've written a novel but a bunch of poems? Naaah.
As for your memoir? What you have to ask yourself is why you're writing it. A lot of writers need to work the auto-biographer out of their system before they feel they can get down to being a 'real' writer. If that's you then get it out of your system and be done with it. I'll be honest part of the problem I'm having with my fifth novel is that, although it's fictionalised, the core material is the death of my father and my relationship with my daughter especially now she's settled down and we hardly see each other. It's over ten years since Dad died and the only way I'm ever going to write about will be under the cover of fiction. That's an approach you might consider.
Jim - all the fiction I've written in the past has been mostly autobiographical, so I feel like this memoir idea will either a) get that out of my system or b) show what I've been trying to write all along is creative non-fiction. I don't know if I'll ever really sit down and face it, but I think it will be cathartic in one way or another if I do.
Good luck with your project! It sounds fascinating--as a novel or non-fiction!
just wrote you an extremely insightful comment (ha) but my computer went all wonky. will write back later.....
I hate when computers go all wonky--and can't wait to read your insightful comments!
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