I've been quiet in the blogging world lately. I confess I stopped doing my Artists' Way group about a week into it, and the blogging momentum I created by doing morning pages died pretty fast. I got sick, and then my husband crashed our car. Brazil being Brazil, any minor fix to the car takes the whole day (like things that would take 15 minutes in the US), and major ones take from a week to over a month. So we've been without a car for five weeks now, and I've been even more isolated than I was before, which I wouldn't have believed possible.
I feel a little bit bad that I quit my group, but then again, I think that what I need isn't more creativity, but more stillness.
I feel that life here is one long lesson on patience. I'm used to immediate gratification and the ability to drastically change my life at a moment's notice. Here, no matter what I do, things outside of me change...at...a...snail's...pace...and...sometimes...not...at...all. And so I've been forced to go inside, and calm myself, and make it okay being where I am, unmoving. And then in that space I actually do notice that some things are changing...
I have a new critique partner for my novel, A Tale of a Schizophrenic Kingdom. Like many beginning writers, I made the mistake of sending out some queries too early during the summer, when it was very far from being ready. I was impatient, sometimes even desperate, caught up in a blogosphere of writers in their varying stages of publication or aspirations to do so. I wanted validation, to have that dream realized right now.
Anyway, I've slowed down. My critique partner has helped immeasurably, even though she doesn't even know it.
First of all, there is such value in reading the work of a good writer whose product is unfinished. It trains the mind-muscles not only to look for what works, which happens when we read good books, but more importantly--how to fix something that doesn't work. The mind is so amazing in the ways it organizes information and ties things together, makes a coherent cosmology out of something that one thought was a set of random and discrete ideas.
But what helps with the patience aspect, bringing me into present time and out of the future, is that my critique partner, because she's working on her own manuscript, has read my work not as a finished product, but as a work in progress. I've noticed that beta readers, or at least mine, did the former. Even when they offered suggestions the feel of it was that one more quick revision would be enough to finish the thing. With my critique partner, there is no such assumption, and I feel that my goals with regard to this manuscript have shifted more toward having a creative process rather than finishing a creation. Focusing on the means and not the end makes the whole thing much more enjoyable and less potentially invalidating.
What things do you find are changing? I have extreme difficulty with anything slow-moving. My impatience got me into trouble this week, too. It's a lesson in what we can control, and what we can't.
ReplyDeleteThat's totally it--I have such a need to control everything and here, I have control over absolutely nothing except my own perception of the world. So that's the thing that changes, and it's nothing, but it's everything--it's the difference between me roiling around in a pit of seething discontent, and being able to find not exactly happiness, but moments of happiness during the day.
DeleteI guess it's also helping with the entire process of writing a novel and trying to get it published, too...I remember when I first tried to get a story published in my mid-20s I couldn't handle the invalidation from getting rejected multiple times, so I gave up. Last summer when I first started querying I experienced that same crushing invalidation and so whenever I sent out any communication about the novel, I began doing so in this energy of desperation and expectation of failure/rejection. Of course that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So another relevant change is that I don't feel that--I'm going through the process not more thick-skinned, so not feeling less, but in a much more matter-of-fact way that doesn't connect rejection with being a personal affirmation of my incompetency.
Sorry to hear about the car. That really makes life tough.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you said you are working on the "creative process". That makes so much sense. Something I shall have to remember.
Thanks, Jai. the car is definitely a challenge but I mind other aspects of Brazil's inconveniences more! :)
DeleteI enjoyed reading your insights and awareness. It is refreshing and satisfies my craving for depth.
ReplyDeleteI am also really happy to hear you have found a person who can critique in a way that works! That is so important. Do you think it is the role an editor would play, normally?
Thanks, Jennifer! You know exactly the right thing to say to me!
DeleteHm, I kind of think this critique partner relationship is different from an editor in that it feels more fluid, but that might just be our dynamic. I guess I'm learning that each person who reads it has a unique way of helping, just by being a reflection of where the story is at combined with that person's "flavor." I guess that's not really answering the question, but I've never had an editor except that one who didn't work out!
I was also thinking that whenever I have been a reader before, it is usually just before publication, after an editor has worked with the author.
DeleteSorry to hear about your car. Mine got totaled right before Thanksgiving and the stupid place had it for a whole month, and I'm not even in Brazil!
ReplyDeleteYes, we are certainly a society of instant gratification. I like to forge ahead, too, and writing definitely makes us learn to slow our roll :)