I’m back in the writing seat after a two month long hiatus–life really does get in the way sometimes. Of course, me being me, the relief at being able to to get back to my usual routine is tempered by the dreadful “I’ve lost so much time!” soundtrack. It’s especially hard coming on the back of the start of a new year - that annual reckoning of time wasted and time left, the pacts with oneself to do better. The paving of whole new roads to hell begin on January 1; a third of the year in and I’m still staring at the blueprints.
I voiced the frustrations stemming from the winter of my discontent to a close friend, part of our mutual bitching sessions about our awful lives - his as a hedge fund manager, mine as a struggling writer. “You’re so lucky,” he unhelpfully opined. “You don’t have bosses and investors riding your ass. No targets to fulfill, no pressure to perform.”
“Hey, I have targets! I have word count goals, and submission deadlines and–
“And if you miss those or fall short, you lose your job as a writer, right? Yeah, I didn't think so.”
Who is the writer accountable to? The reader? The agent? The publisher? All of the above but those are entities that come much further down the line. First and foremost, we are accountable to ourselves. My friend is right. We are our own bosses. No one puts a gun to our head to make us write. All our motivation is self-generated. We write because we want to, because we have to, because we are miserable if we cannot. We, and we alone, give ourselves permission to satisfy the urge to put thought on paper.
We tend to be horrible bosses, though. We do not clearly articulate to ourselves what is expected of our writer selves. We are horrid in our self-criticism, constantly berating ourselves for not doing the work, or if we do indeed do the work, we question the quality of our creative output. We doubt our abilities, do not reward discipline, believe the worst of our creative talents. In short, we are the bosses from hell.
I look at my own internal monologue. I’m beating myself up right now for not having had the time to write. A good boss would probably pat me on the shoulder in a spirit of understanding and camaraderie and encourage me to take the time I need to deal with these other very real priorities and then ease back into work as soon as I can. I am hard on myself and it can be debilitating. I’m my own worse critic. I denigrate my successes, small though they may be. Oh look, I just did it again.
It does not work. And in the interests of doing better, I’ve decided to revert to an old resource from a previous life - the performance appraisal. In its new avatar, this takes the form of what I call my Process Journal. I think of it as a periodical review, a sit down with the boss to go over what has happened and what needs to happen. It's a few lines jotted down, dealing with what I’m thinking and feeling about my writing life. What’s working, what’s not.
It's early days yet. I started out with plans to write a short note everyday, but who am I kidding? This is me, after all. So, no targets. I’m allowing myself to write notes into it as I when I want to, when I think there is something I want to jot down. Every time I’ve opened it to add something, the previous notes look back at me and I feel encouraged to do it more often. I like the idea of having an ongoing check and balance system rather than that one big reckoning at the end of the year. I think it will allow for course corrections as required, injecting more flexibility and agility with my decision making. If something isn't working, I can tweak it and fix it right away. And it forces me to be self-aware, to think about the doing of the work, and not just about the work itself.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve noted frustrations, plot epiphanies, interesting structure experiments I’d like to try, a helpful tip I came across on writing flashbacks, a great quote from Philip Roth and a charming metaphor. A regular magpie’s nest, but I like the idea of the Process Journal serving as a catch-all. Someday in the future, my writing self–that poor old thing slaving away in darkness and solitude–can look back on these random thoughts. I’m sure she would like the company and it might stir her creativity in an unforeseen manner.
And yes, there will be accountability. The boss can show up and take me to task for not sticking to my goals, for falling short on targets. Together we can forge a way out of endless meanderings that lead to dead ends and celebrate our successes. And at the end of a project, we can look back and trace its evolution from a random synaptic firing to a real thing, and the demons we wrestled with along the way. There has to be learning that will stem from this.
One of the most inspiring things writers like to do is read about the writing life of other writers. Their notes, their diaries, their journals, their interviews–all tabulate their personal journeys and the insecurities they deal with in the creation of their art. It is both humbling and motivating to see how we are all terrorized by the same ghosts. I’m hoping my own notes inspire my writer self in much the same way.
Time will tell. But what an interesting tale it will be.