“Cat: Where are you going? Alice: Which way should I go? Cat: That depends on where you are going. Alice: I don’t know. Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland
As I’ve gotten older time seems to speed up. There are more and more things I want and need to do. For instance, I plan on reading 48 books in 2020, and complete a manuscript. If I want to have a successful year, priorities are more important than ever. But regardless of what I desire or what I choose, time will continue to march on. One day it will leave me behind, buried in the earth, with no more stories to tell, no more depths to mine (“All will be known,” said the monotheist. “Nothing will be known,” said the atheist.).
Regardless, we can all agree on one thing: Time is not infinite for writers with priorities and distractions running roughshod over our lives. And even if there is order, time remains fleeting. We get tired. Either there is not enough sleep, so we suffer, or there is too much sleep, so we suffer.
This is why more than ever the writer with any serious intention needs to make a decision and not look back. We need to draw the proverbial line in the sand and say that we journey to the promised land or bust. The destination of Mecca isn’t in the way back but the way forward.
But how does this look in real time? Let me give you an illustration from my own life. As of late 2019 I am a contract worker. I do litigation research. If I am lucky I can rack up week after week of 40 or even 40+ hours of work but inevitably the well runs dry. Sometimes there is no work for one or two days. But there are other times where it will be one or two weeks before the client gives us work again. This is how my life has been for the past two years. But for the past two years I have had enough to pay my bills, save a little, and then run out, just to do it all over again. Of course, I could discuss at length all the stress, emotion, and job hunting that has gone on during dry spells, but one lesson has become very clear. If I am to ever make my goals come true as a writer, then I must never get confused at the light at the other end of the tunnel.
The Syzygy of Light at Ends of the Tunnel
The point is often missed. There is light at either end of the tunnel. They are similar. They are not the same. The definition of syzygy is “any two related things, either alike or opposites.” If you had been Alice at the center of a tunnel and had had the conversation with the Cheshire Cat then what might guide your decision to go back or to go forward? Would the syzygy of light make either choice valid? If we were gnats it wouldn’t matter. But we are not gnats. We are writers! This distinction of light matters to the writer with aspirations. To go forward toward the light is to go until you reach your writing goal(s). To go backward to the light is to go back, to safer and saner ground. “Putting a book together…is life at its most free…The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever…Your manuscript, on which you lavish such care, has no needs or wishes, it knows you not. Nor does anyone need your manuscript; everyone needs shoes more” (Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, pp. 11, 12).
To prove Dillard’s point, Al Bundy made a living off of selling shoes. When Nigel Tufnel, of the band Spinal Tap, was asked if he would be happy giving up a life of road weary-rock ‘n’ roll to sell shoes, he had one question, “What are the hours?” I have a friend who has made $160 dollars simply because he was wearing a pair of sneakers and the right sneaker-head came up to him and said, “Can I buy your shoes? I collect those.” This happened to him twice, over the span of two years, with the same guy. I honestly can’t say if I’ve ever made that much money off of any manuscript. Maybe I should turn around.
The definitions of “confusion” are helpful. 1. lack of understanding; uncertainty. a) a situation of panic; a breakdown of order. b) a disorderly jumble. 2. the state of being bewildered or unclear in one’s mind about something. a) the mistaking of one…thing for another” (Dictionary.com). Synonyms help underline the point: distraction, embarrassment, turbulence, demoralization, discomfiture, blurring, and cluttering.
Confusion and Its Antidotes
Lack of understanding. When there is no work I have often panicked. Maybe the first day I am okay. It’s nice to have time for my writing. By day three with no work in sight I begin looking for jobs out of fear. This is a form of torture. But many of my coworkers have been employed by the company for 5+ years and law of averages has had me working 30 hrs. a week for two straight years. Work will come around again. It always does.
Uncertainty. With no guarantees of work I don’t always know how I will pay rent. But I always have. This is not a comfortable spot to be in. But as I’ve put my trust in God I have always been taken care of. The 23rd Psalm is applicable here: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
A Situation of Panic. See #1. Panic is never helpful. Fear is the enemy of productivity, creativity, planning, and progress. Pessimism hardens and kills off authors. Hope heartens and makes writers stronger, more resilient. These days when I search for jobs on days or weeks when I have none, I do so in a planned and purposeful way. I make sure to make room for writing too. There were times in the past that my driver for finding work was fear. Changing my attitude has been crucial for happy and productive days as a writer, especially with no guarantees ahead. Just don’t tell anyone that it’s taken me two years to obtain this zen-like approach.
A Breakdown of Order. Benjamin Franklin is purported to have coined the aphorism, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Whether or not he said it, the truth of the aphorism remains. When there are no plans, anything goes. And when you are trying to make order out of chaos you can’t eliminate it by adding more chaos. If you don’t set goals and make a framework for those goals to grow then your world will collapse and your writing goals will remain largely unmet. For every published book there are a hundred would-be writers telling you about their next book idea, or even worse, what your next book idea should be.
A Disorderly Jumble. It’s hard to believe, but there exists a bookstore out there that I severely dislike. I made the mistake of going in there once. I was mortified. Their store was in disarray. They sold used trade-paperbacks at best and plastic dolls and wigs and crackers and old furniture and used t-shirts and lingering farts. But they called themselves a bookstore. Besides being a fun word game, a jumble is “an untidy collection or pile of things.” It was no bookstore. It was a pile of things. It was a hoarder’s rummage sale disguised as a bookstore. I believe my writing has taken on this character in the past. It is expected that your writing will be in many “stages of unpublishable” until it is. But if you’re just sitting on a mess and hording unfinished writing without making an attempt to order things towards publication then you are being as much of a writer as that trash heap was a bookstore.
In a Bewildered or Unclear State of Mind. I did not know I was a novelist until I attempted it. I did not know that I needed to become a plotter until I pantsed two drafts of a novel (1,700 page manuscript currently sleeping in a filing cabinet). I did not know I needed to set goals until I did and began to accomplish hard things. If you don’t know what you want, where you want your writing to go, then how will you get there? Most of us won’t be surprised at this, but books don’t write themselves. They have grand designers behind them. There is no uncaused, big bang. These days I write towards projects and deadlines. I write my best stuff in this way. Assignments are great. I published my first short story, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and won the President’s Writing Award because of assignments.
The Mistaking of One Thing for Another. We can be motivated by fear or faith. If we are motivated in making a living, in achievement, from fear, then writing is too scary to be sustained. Why? Writing takes time and and a diligent amount of effort. Sure, some people are faster than others, and anyone can self-publish or write a blog, but writing that is worthwhile, that has aesthetic quality to it, takes time, and a deep mining on the author’s part. And the greatest an author can do, in my estimation, will be in imprinting some of their soul into their books. But this is a daunting task. It’s a lot to ask of anyone. Again I turn to Dillard, “Putting a book together is…sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. …There are many manuscripts already–worthy ones, most edifying and moving ones, intelligent and powerful ones. If you believed Paradise Lost to be excellent would you buy it? Why not shoot yourself, actually, rather than finish one more excellent manuscript on which to gag the world?” (Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, pp. 11, 12). Make no mistake about it, fear just won’t do. To do your best work must be done in faith. After all, faith is hope in things that are not seen (Hebrews 11:1), “faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen…” (Alma 32:1). And for faith to maintain the necessary hope (the driver) there must be curiosity, and joy. If you are allowing fear to cloud your vision, or even motivate you (although this can work for a short period of time for some), then when the fear of failure barks louder than your aspirations–and it will– you will buckle, turn back towards the lesser light and be done.
The Only Exit
Sartre’s conclusion that hell is other people is a misreading of existence. But if reading and writing are classified as distractions by fear driven pragmatism then for the writer, hell is other distractions. Since I have embraced my pathway forward some significant changes have occurred. According to my Goodreads account, since 2013 I have averaged reading 14.714 books a year. This year I will have read 22 books to completion. I have realized that reading books must be a priority. I am a writer after all. I will attempt to read 48 books to completion in 2020. I am embarrassed at how few books I was reading. I have also recently completed and submitted my first short story in a couple years, am working on an essay for a summer fellowship, and will be submitting a nonfiction book proposal after February of 2020. I have allowed fear, distraction, and confusion to get in the way of reading and producing great manuscripts for the last time. I know which light I am heading towards. I look forward to meeting many this coming year, and beyond, who are traveling the same road towards the greater light.