is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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in the midst of a refusal.
Recently, when I gave a talk about my book at the college where I teach, I mentioned how hard it is to write. The librarian who asked me to do the book-talk suggested that I start by discussing how the book came to be—both the origin story of how I got the ideas that built the book and also the nitty gritty of how things get written. You can hear what I said here, if you like.
I talked about how writing often fills me with self-loathing and/or makes me suspect that THIS TIME is the time when the whole world will finally learn that I’m secretly a moron. It also fills me with a strong urge to organize a closet or bake a cake rather than attend to its demands. I read a quote from Chapter 1 of my book, when I’m discussing how central procrastination is to the life of any writer: “As most writers know, procrastination is not primarily the content of a thought but is rather the event of resistance to a weight one wishes to shed. I don’t think to myself, ‘I am going to put off doing what I should be doing, what on some level I even want to be doing.’ Rather, I find myself in the midst of a refusal, failing to do what I aim to do. Procrastination is more mood than intention.”
The practice of writing daily interrupts the force of that mood by developing a habit of writing. Habit is as powerful as mood, at least part of the time, as we all know. In turn, the practice (or the habit) tends to change how I think about what I do--I start thinking of more things to write about, and realizing that there is time to do it, or making that time. I know all of this--about practice, and habit, and mood, and finding oneself in the midst of a refusal--and yet it is so easy to forget that I know this and give myself all the reasons why I’ll put off writing. As the professor writes on the board in Hal Hartley’s film Surviving Desire, knowledge is not enough.
(That is why I set myself the challenge of writing in this online diary every day for the month of December. I am hoping, once again, to reset a habit. This is not the first time I’ve done this. So I suppose that means that even the force of habit won’t get the job done absent a commitment to doing the work.)
Writing is hard. It can also be tremendously rewarding, but the reward often does not arrive during the practice of writing. And so it is easy to forget about the reward whenever one finds oneself in the midst of a refusal. But, as Evany points out, writing isn’t only about the writer. It actively contributes to building a shared world. That’s a really cool thing about it. And also part of its weight (the anxiety, the worry that the world will find out that I’m secretly a moron, etc.). I tell my students: it is brave to take the risk of expressing yourself to the world—you might be loved and admired but you also might be misunderstood or loathed. There is risk. But the risk is necessary, because without it there would be no world. Or it will be world in which you have played no role.
What’s interesting to me is how many students have talked to me about that particular portion of my talk. They are intrigued that writing is so hard, even for me. They feel this way even though any student of mine will have heard me say such things in class many times when discussing writing that I assign to them. I am constantly talking about how difficult good writing is, and offering them strategies for how to deal with it, and telling them that there is no way around the difficulty.
But something about me talking in that setting about my own struggles with writing really struck a chord. I think it helped many of them to hear that it’s not just them. But it also seems to have surprised many of them to learn that it will be a lifelong struggle, should they take it up.
That is what it will be.
11:39 a.m. - December 02, 2015
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