submitting to the work

I've yet to find the relationship with writing that really feels right to me. Or if I have, I keep letting resistance get in the way of bringing it home.

In working on a new long piece, I've set a goal for myself that I will write 600 words, 6 days a week, allowing myself one day of my choosing to rest. I've come to re-embrace the concept of Sabbath, in giving myself a break from my regular duties to relax, reconnect to what is divine and important in my life, and allow some spontaneity. Otherwise I would plan my life to death. Truly, there have been times when I wanted nothing more than to have a fixed daily schedule in which I spent half an hour meditating, an hour exercising, an hour writing, half an hour cleaning the house, eight hours working, two hours with my partner, and maybe a half hour for unstructured free time. Thus, the logic in my head goes, I won't die feeling regret that I never achieved my goals, though perhaps I might die wondering if I had ever made time to live.

These days I work at a job where the hours change daily, and my days off change weekly. Between that and being in graduate school, I don't have the stability of schedule that allows me to rigidly plan out my life, so I've needed to be even more disciplined while going with the flow. Which means I need to make sure I write when I have time to write. The nice thing about setting limits is that I also give myself permission to stop. I don't have to spend all day fretting about getting enough done if I've hit my benchmark.

The problem is when and where. Lately I've been exploiting the hell out of a Netbook I appropriated from my beloved husband, to the point where it seems to be rebelling against me. I found that writing on the bus could be quite invigorating. Since I had a limited amount of time, I could compel myself to bypass the inner critic and censor, skip past the dilly-dallying, and just write, just get out the 600 words, who cares what they are.

The downsides, of course, were that I only wanted to write when the bus was relatively unoccupied. I hate people reading over my shoulder when working on the first draft of a piece. Such privacy is rare on a bus. If I missed my work on the commute, I would try to squeeze in writing during my breaks at work, but it became all too easy to peruse the Internet and veg out.

Turns out, I have a wonderful computer at home, and a room of my own in which to work. I love my office. I've dreamed of having one for years and now I do, and now there's a part of me that wants to avoid the hell out of it. I suspect it's for the same reason that makes it seem easier to write on the bus. There's something about actually sitting down and sinking into the work that is unsettling to some part of my personality, the one that would rather procrastinate or indulge in some fruitless vice. Perhaps it's tied to why I find it hard to settle into stillness when meditating. Is it the ego? Whatever it is, it rebels against discipline, it hates settling into the process where it's just my self and the work.

I find it easy to half-ass writing. To do it on the bus, say, or at the table while chatting with my partner, or in front of the television. All great ways to avoid totally focusing. Without that full commitment, I'm not sure I can produce my best work, but perhaps that's the out my subconscious is seeking. "Oh, if it's not very good it's because I didn't try very hard." That no longer feels good enough.

So this week I'm choosing to recommit to working on my writing in my office. Not on the bus, not at work, not on the netbook. (Naturally, I am writing this blog post on the netbook at the dining table.) The process of sitting down to write creatively, to write fiction at my computer was wonderful. I could turn on the atmospheric, spooky music I loved, shut the door, and let myself write. When I was a teenager, this was my great passion. To enjoy the music I loved and create, using my computer as the medium of creation. It's a lonely process, and there's a sacrifice in time that could be spent with others. At the same time, in doing the work, I feel freed up to be more there with others. I'm not trying to squeeze in writing on the bus or while half-assing conversation. I can do my work, unplug myself from the computer, and be there for the rest of my life.