Summer is a hard time for writing. There are always things to take me away from my writing, but in the summer there seems to be an exceptional number of distractions. The weather outdoors is a constant lure (when it is sunny) to go outside and enjoy the moment instead of sitting in front of the monitor and trying to be inspired. On top of this goofing off there is always work coming up at the least convenient time. With these constant interruptions my schedule goes to pieces, and when my schedule goes to pieces, my writing . . . well, it dies.
Some people (very few I think) are able to sit down and write whenever they have a spare moment. Perhaps you’ve heard one of those success stories where someone worked long hours at a day job and wrote whenever they could squeeze in a moment, and by this means completed their best-selling novel. Much as I wish I could finish a best-selling novel in my spare time, it doesn’t work for me, and it doesn’t work for most other people. Those who do manage it–and yes, some do–most of them end up taking a very long time to complete their novel. The rest . . . well, their work never sees the light of day.
I’m desperately trying to avoid that heap of work that never sees the light of day, but this summer has been very frustrating. “You cannot serve two masters . . .” the saying goes, and in a similar manner I’ve increasingly felt the strain of trying to be two things at once: both manual laborer, and writer. It doesn’t work, at least, as far as making a consistent and successful income. Either you fail at one, or at the other. If you start turning down money making jobs, the work goes elsewhere. If you take the jobs, no writing gets done. The two are opposing forces, and they constantly tear at me. It seems to grow worse with every year. Invariably, so far, the manual labor has won out. I get paid immediately, and, well, I get paid. On the other hand, that day I spent writing when I could have been out digging the ditch, I earn nothing. Writing is long term, with no guarantees. Digging a ditch is immediate, with immediate payment. I much prefer and desire to write, but cold logic, and a sense of responsibility, makes me hesitate from turning my back on what is profitable, for a dream.
But some day I have to. If I’m not brave enough and determined enough to pursue the writing, I should have given up both writing and ditch digging and gone to college for a degree in web design, programming, or something else that earns a respectable living. To do everything halfway is to do nothing well.
When is a difficult question. As this summer heads towards its closing I want to swear that this was the last summer I’ll go traipsing around digging ditches. But hasty words are easily spoken. The responsible part of me says I should wait and think before I make any decision. But then the other part of me says I’m not getting any younger and what real good reason do I have for not devoting all my energy to writing. Fear of failure?
The final answer to that question is for another day. The path of this summer has already been set. When a labor job came up, I went and did it. My writing suffered, and I was left with the niggling wonder if the money in hand was worth the words never written.
The problems with interrupted writing are cumulative. Half of the difficulty in the writing process is the sheer effort of making oneself sit down and begin writing. A fixed schedule reinforces good habits and gets my mind into the rhythm of preparing for, and actually doing, writing. A fixed schedule makes writing not a debatable issue. Some days I don’t feel much like I can, or want, to write, but with the schedule there I sit down and do it. When the schedule is interrupted, this reinforcing structure is blown away. If my schedule is set for writing in the morning and someone calls up for me to help them lay drain pipe it doesn’t matter if I have four free hours that evening. By that time I am tired, unmotivated, and have other things warring for my attention. I might as well go climb a mountain on a whim.
It takes only a small bump to throw a day’s writing off track. An interruption of an hour or two at just the right spot is enough to get me out of my fixed rut of labor. Then, when the schedule of one day is broken, and then the schedule of the next day is broken, this schedule begins to feel like something that is negotiable. Something like, “Well, I didn’t manage yesterday, or the day before, so what differences does it really matter if I go and do this other (really, really) necessary thing?” So, then, even in the days in between jobs I find myself doing things other than writing.
The longer I am away from the writing the more frustrated I am about getting back to work. But, at the same time, the longer I am away the more dread I have about going back. The longer I am away from the writing the more my thoughts become lost. Where I was going with the passage becomes vague. The motivation of characters loses its vividness. Writing is almost like a second skin, or the sneakers that you wear all the time. If you’re away for a long time you come back and the skin feels strange or the shoe feels hard and stiff and not like your own. A day away from writing is a minor bump. Two days is a little bigger bump. But when one day leads to another day, to yet another day . . . after several weeks it can seem like a mountain has reared up, towering ahead. My own writing can take on some threatening quality. How can I pick up from where I’ve left off? I’ve forgotten things, surely I’ve forgotten! Everything is so complex. I can’t pick it back up, I just can’t!
By the end of July I felt like I was in that situation. I had left off my writing just as I was opening a new complex section of my book. When I had headed into it I had a lot of momentum behind me. I was into my world, I knew where things were going . . . and then the real world intervened. Day after day passed. The writing grew cold. More and more I desired to get back, ever looking forward to when the other work would be done, but at the same time my dread, and feelings of inability grew. I had left off at what felt like the worse time. How could I possible get back into the groove?
Perhaps ironically, the solution came in the form of another job. An uncle of mine was going away for a week on vacation with his family. They had two dogs and he really didn’t want to send them away to a kennel, so he asked me if I would be willing to stay at his house and watch the dogs. I would be paid, but more important in my mind at that time, I would be in an empty house. Away from all of my usual distractions. Away from all the things I might say I “needed” to do, things that would delay returning to writing. In that empty house it would be just me and my writing.
It wasn’t easy. When I went up to my uncle’s I printed out the last several chapters I had written. In the first few days I was there I just re-read what I’d written. I read to get back into the story, to get back up to speed, to see that my story was actually working, and regain my momentum. Then I couldn’t stop there. I had to sit down in front of the computer, and pick up from that last sentence I had trailed off so many weeks before. It is so easy to say I can’t do this, to look at the last hanging sentence and say I don’t know where to go from here, I’ve forgotten half of my thoughts, and my notes don’t make sense anymore. But at least by this time I was in familiar territory. A writer always must battle with that little voice that says “I can’t.” Having sat down and re-read what I had already written, I knew where I was coming from–I just had to write where I would go.
So I wrote. It would be nice to say I got oodles and oodles of writing done. I didn’t. No sudden and amazing powers of writing came on me. I did stay up very late some nights writing, but in the end I only got a good amount done, nothing more. The important thing was that by the end of the week I had myself going again. My thoughts were stirred up. I was looking ahead, I was planning. I had scaled to the top of the mountain. I was no longer looking at a dreadful wall of rock in front of me but instead looking out ahead over a vast panorama of what was coming.
I would like to say that everything has been smooth sailing since then. It hasn’t. Interruptions still come. And, in fact, I have another job this Friday tearing down a retaining wall and building a new one. But at least in August I’ve done a little better fighting back against the forces of disruption. I haven’t had a perfect week in August, but I’ve kept myself from leaving the writing behind. I figure if I manage to hold everything together until the end of August I should be able to settle into a good solid schedule for writing.
Then there leaves the question of next year. May . . . June . . . July . . . August . . . how much writing lost in those months laboring away for money? How many drainage lines swallowed up written words? Is it worth it? It was once. But maybe not anymore. I ponder the question, wondering what decision I should make.
Whatever my decision, most important for the present is the writing of today.
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