Lighting A Fire

My wonderful critique partner, Ryan Graudin, saw the launch of her debut novel, All That Glows, this past week! (It is so very good! Get yourself a copy.)

While I wasn't able to head down South to party with her, I of course rushed out to buy a freshly minted copy (or two).

I wanted to buy all the available copies, but figured
that would make me greedy.

This long-anticipated event has filled me with pride and warmth and all the good feelings. It has also lit a hot, hot fire under my posterior to finish my current WIP and get it out into the world. Anyone who's allowed me to chatter in their ear about my writing knows that finishing this WIP has been one of my biggest challenges in the past (wow, almost two) years. I wrote the first 65,000 words in four months - a new record for me - and then two jobs started happening, and moves and trips and crazy deadlines, and I started having to get up at 5AM just to carve out that little bit of extra time. It's been a molasses-slow crawl, even at the best of times.

It's not because I don't love this novel. In fact, I love this novel more than anything else I've ever written. It's the number of hours in a day. It's how cold it is at 5AM.

But I can feel that fire under me, burning away at my writerly skin. I'm so, so close to being finished.
So I am making a proclamation.

I am 78,392 words into this novel. I have entered the portion of the story that I like to call the Everything Explodes period, where everything comes to a rather startling head. I am ALMOST THERE. And so, I have decided that I absolutely, positively must finish this book by my brother's birthday: March 15th. I started this book in the spring, it is set in the spring, and it will be finished before the first breath of spring.

And with that, I give you some writer's quotes I enjoy quite a lot.

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

- Jack Kerouac

"Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page." - Margaret Atwood

"The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter." - Neil Gaiman

"Be without fear. This is impossible, but let the small fears drive your rewriting and set aside the large ones ­until they behave – then use them, maybe even write them. Too much fear and all you'll get is silence." - Al Kennedy

Why I Didn't Watch Even One Second of The Superbowl

Over the course of the past week, I realized something important about setting goals. I can't say that this realization was completely new to me: it's something I've understood for a while now, but haven't been able to really internalize in a meaningful and actionable way.

Every day, I make imposing TO DO lists. And every day, my to-do listing essentially sets me up for failure. Because my lists generally look like this one to the left.

This list represents the things that I feel I need to do in a given day, or cluster of days. Most of the things on this list are not five minute activities; they are complicated and involved.

There are a couple of things to note here. First, that this list sets up completely ridiculous expectations for a given day, at the end of which I will inevitably feel like I've failed. This list does not catalogue the inordinate numbers of things I need to do that I don't feel the need to write down. Before starting in on my to-do list, I have to teach a full day, eat, sleep, converse with colleagues, respond to email, attempt to inspire students to enjoy critical thinking and reading (and sometimes juggling and sonnet writing), get up and stretch, and maybe even exercise (if I get very lucky). Even if I had a full day at home in the quiet, sipping coffee at my desk, I don't know that this list is actionable. Even if I had two personal slaves personal assistants to help me, I don't think I could pull it off.

Second, its' important to note what tasks have remained unchecked. Which ones, you ask?

The personal ones: my writing and personal health goals. The ones that are really important to me.

Not to say that work-related goals aren't important to me. They really are. But are they always and forever the most IMPORTANT goals, the ones that should always get top billing? I'm not convinced.

My students are often lamenting the fact that they are given so much work and that what's expected of them isn't reasonable. They're right: it isn't reasonable to expect that they can give their very best to every class and every assignment on every given day. We only have so many hours in the day and so many iotas of concentration to contribute. That means you have to pick and choose where and how you expend your energy.  It's about making choices about what your priorities are going to be. It's also about knowing that you can't do it all. You can try, but you can't. At least you can't do it all well - and isn't that what we're striving for? Sometimes you have to ease off in certain aspects of your life in order to live the life you really want. It isn't an easy thing to do sometimes, but the alternative is feeling like you're always failing.

Which is why, instead of watching the Superbowl, I worked on revising my novel. Because I have a big goal of revising this novel in the next six weeks, and watching football isn't going to get me there.

Music I'm Writing To: Ben Howard, "Under The Same Sun"