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Intentionality, Consuming, and Art

4/4/2016

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I was listening to an episode of the Design Matters podcast this morning, an interview with Eric Zimmer.  If you're wondering why I was listening to a podcast about design, you can thank Steve (see examples of his work at his blog or his website), as he sent it to me weeks ago, thinking I would like it.  He was mainly right, as I liked a lot of what he had to say in the last quarter or so of the podcast.  The first part focuses on his life, which is interesting and inspirational in its own right, but not what caught my attention.

Near the end, he starts talking about living intentionally, though he doesn't really use that word.  He does talk about decision fatigue and a cognitive bank (though I'm not sure if that's the exact term he uses).  What he means is that we have a limited ability to make decisions or think about things.  If we wake up and have to decide what to wear, what to have for breakfast, what time to leave for work (even what time to actually get out of bed), etc., then that leaves us less cognitive ability to make important decisions (you can read about the same idea in Willpower by John Tierney and Roy Baumeister).  Anyone who knows me understands that I largely try to live my life this way.

This idea led into his next one, which was about consuming.  He quoted a friend of his who said that we spend 95% of our time consuming, consuming, consuming, and only 5% of our lives reflecting on what we're consuming.  He talked about how the internet and Netflix are designed to lead us to click to the next article or blog post or show rather than stopping and reflecting on what we've read or seen.  His argument is that, if we stopped and reflected on whatever we've consumed for even thirty minutes, our lives wouldn't be the same.

I like this idea a good deal.  Even the lists I make (movies I've seen and books I've read) can lead me to do the same thing, as it can become about numbers, not about thinking about or digesting what I'm watching or reading.  Our society encourages such an approach to life, as everything focuses on consumption.  If Thoreau wrote that "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation," our society needs to hear that most people lead lives of quiet obliviousness (they might even lead lives of loud obliviousness, given all of the noise in our world, but quiet refers more to the quality of our lives, I would argue).  We consume emails and texts and (ahem) blog posts and videos and pictures and on and on through our supposedly smart phones, and we ignore the world around us.  The only way to be able to create art is to be aware.  For all of the argument that our technology connects us, I tend to see it distract people from what is really important more than anything else (and, yes, I'm fine to sound like a crotchety old man here).

All of this leads him to envy.  He quoted Theodore Roosevelt on envy (I would put it here, but I can't find the quote, unfortunately), where he effectively says that envy hurts both ourselves and the other person.  The host of the show, Debbie Millman, tries to argue that social media forces us to envy people more (or create more envy), but Zimmer disagrees.  He responds that nothing forces us to envy people, and I agree.  We have choice in the matter, and we need to choose wisely.

He doesn't directly relate this idea to art, but it's clearly implied.  He talks about how we believe we'll only be happy once we get x or y in our lives (connecting to consumption, of course), and that's true about creating art.  We believe that we'll be happy when we get a poem published in that journal or a novel accepted by this publisher.  The truth is we won't be happy then, even if our book becomes a best seller or we begin receiving invitations to speak all over, maybe even give a TED talk.  The art itself needs to make us satisfied, not because it is perfect, but because we love the act of creation itself.

If you have thirty minutes or so, you should listen to the podcast.  Then, you should take thirty more minutes and think about what he has to say.  It might just inspire you, too.
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Weird Writing Goals

12/28/2014

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I never believed I was going to have any kind of success as a writer.  I spent the first decade or so not taking my writing very seriously, getting a few poems published in journals that were mainly hand-stapled and distributed in local coffee shops and pizza places.  When I had my first book accepted for publication (it was the third one actually published, due to all kinds of problems with the publisher), I got to write an acknowledgements section, which I sent to some friends.  One responded that it sounded like I had thanked everyone I might possibly thank, as if I didn't believe I would write another book.  I didn't.  I was surprised I had written one that had gotten published.

Along the way, though, I had a couple of goals that I did believe I could meet, though I thought it would take me an entire lifetime to do so.  They were strange goals, but I thought they were realistic and reachable if I continued writing on the pace I had set out for myself.  It turns out I've already met both of them.

First, I wanted to be read by the same number of people who live in my hometown.  There is clearly no way to prove that I have met this goal, as I cannot say who has or has not read my work.  When it comes to print journals, I can only give their circulation, not the number of people who actually read my work in that particular issue.  I also don't know how many copies are passed from one person to another.  Now that many journals have moved online, it is easier to keep up with those statistics, though harder to get from journals.  It's not like I'm going to email all of the editors who have published my work and ask them to give me a count for my particular work.

However, I can use the circulation of print journals and the number of hits an online journal receives.  Using those statistics, I actually hit my goal seven years ago with one publication.  My hometown has a population of about 65,000 people.  It probably would take my entire life to get to that number just going by my poetry publications, as most journal have a tiny readership, numbering in the hundreds, not thousands.  However, I had an essay published in the online version of The Chronicle of Higher Education, which has about one million distinct readers a year.  I'll take my chances and say that 65,000 people looked at that essay.  In the years since, I've published more essays with them and other similar sites, so I'm fairly confident I've hit this goal.

What I like about this goal is that it reminds me of my primary concern as a writer.  While I like to sell my work, I know I'm not going to make a lot (or any) money writing poetry.  Thus, my goal is to get my work in front of as many people as I can, as I want to share that writing widely.  I want as many people as possible to read that work.  It doesn't matter if they buy a book or not.  I used to worry about building a career by publishing in the right places.  Now, I'm just concerned with being read by people who enjoy the type of writing I do, whether that's my poetry or essays.

The second goal has more to do with quantity.  I've always wanted to fill an entire shelf on my bookcase with my writing.  It doesn't have to be all my writing, as a journal I've been published in counts, and I know my work might only take up one page of that journal, but it has to be a work I've been published in.  My books certainly count, of course.  If I were starting such a goal today, it would be much more challenging, given the move to online publications.  However, since I started about sixteen years ago, I've been able to meet this goal, as well, as you can see from the picture below.
Picture
The top shelf is creative writing, and I have clearly run out of room for some more recent publications.  There are the hand-stapled journals in the middle, with some anthologies and my books more toward the left.  The bottom shelf is academic writing, which is why it is much smaller.  I used to have the two shelves combined, so I technically met this goal some time ago, but I liked separating them out, even thought it's a false distinction.  Writing an essay for something like The Chronicle is much more in line with my creative work than it is with academic writing, but I put such writings with the academic, as it's part of my academic life.

Since my focus is getting my work read, I like this visible reminder that a number of people have had the opportunity to read my work, whether or not they have taken it.  Writing goals should help us remember why we do what we do.  For me, it's not about the money; it's about the people who read my work.  Like most writers, I want an audience, and I'm glad I've been able to find one, no matter how small it might be.
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Fame and Small Successes

10/19/2014

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If you ever talk to people who are just beginning their writing career, they will often talk about their first book as if it will change their lives.  That happens for a few people, someone like Jonathan Safran Foer, for example, who sold his first book for $500,000, if I'm remembering correctly.  For most of us, though, we publish that first book, and life continues on just as it did the weeks before the book came out.

I was remembering a former acquaintance/co-worker/maybe friend this week when I was thinking about this subject.  He's one of those people who seems to enjoy the idea of fame from writing more than the writing.  He was writing in one genre and having some success with it, though nowhere near what he wanted.  Thus, he switched genres in an attempt to try to become famous that way.  He's gone through a number of ventures over the past decade to try to finally get whatever recognition he thinks he deserves, but he has largely left his writing far behind.

I have to admit that it took me some time to get over this, as well.  When my first book came out, I did have some success.  I was invited to Colorado to give a reading, and they paid my way, something that I had never imagined happening.  One of my poems showed up on The Writer's Almanac, and I received emails from strangers telling me of the effects the poem had on their mornings (in looking up my poem, I find that it was five years ago today that poem showed up; odd that I should be thinking of it this morning).  I expected the emails and invitations to continue, but they didn't.  I just had to go back to work writing poems, finding the pleasure there, which I did, thankfully.

This week, I received an interview request, not from The New York Review of Books or Paris Review, but from The Mockingbird, the literary journal from East Tennessee State University, where I received my Master's.  I was thrilled and honored, and I accepted the request quickly.  This request will seem small to most people, but it matters greatly to me.  I grew up on the campus of ETSU long before I went there for any academic reason, as both my parents worked there.  My two years pursuing my Master's degree were two fabulous years, as I made great friends and finally began to take myself seriously as an English student.  I didn't yet know I wanted to be a writer, but I was beginning to try (I submitted to The Mockingbird both years I was there, and I was rejected (rightly so) both times).

There are other students there right now, and they're trying to be writers, as well.  Perhaps they're just starting to take English seriously, as I did.  They need to see that there are people who come from ETSU, who attended a poor county high school, who can still have some success in the world.  It would be better if I had the name recognition of a Morrison or Franzen, but I can only bring to them what and who I am, and I can hope that is enough for them.

After my first book, one other opportunity I had was to go on a local radio show done by a friend of the family.  It was in the upper level of a Food City, and it broadcast on an AM station.  I didn't sell any books from that appearance, and I don't even know who heard it that morning.  I just know that I had a great time talking about poetry to people who might not care about it otherwise.  That's success and fame enough for me.
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Advice to Writers

9/25/2014

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David Mitchell gives some good advice about writing in this article from The Atlantic.  Not surprisingly, he talks about how to create worlds, which he's so good at.
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Bad Runs and Bad Writing

7/19/2014

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Rachel Toor wrote a really good article about running and writing a few weeks ago.  When I first read the essay, I could identify with it, given that I've just started a book-length project, and I'm beginning to get in shape to train for a marathon, if my knees will let me (and note those levels of training).  I thought about that connection this morning, as I was running and thinking about my writing.  It was actually easy to think about the writing, as the running was not going well.

I'm sure I can come up with lots of reasons as to why the run was bad (and by bad, I mainly mean slower than I've run in a long time).  I was sore from doing some work around the house earlier in the week; I had also done two hard workouts that week; I gave blood a week ago, and it always takes my body some time to get back to normal after that; it was raining; I've only been back from a two-week trip to England for two weeks, and, while I ran there, I didn't do the serious running I do here.  I could go on, but you get the point.

Whenever I'm having bad runs, I usually have two thoughts that comfort me.  First, I know that I'm out there and no one else is (or at least no one I saw).  Most recreational runners see the rain, and they stay inside, while I'm out there slogging away.  I used to think that during really early morning runs, as well, when I would see people just beginning to move around, lights coming on in people's homes (often blue-ish lights from the television, actually).  But that was before I learned to like early morning runs.  The second thought is that I'm not running for today; I'm actually running for January or February, that time when I am doing the serious training for the longer races I like to run when I'm able.  Today's run might be bad, but putting in the time will help me in the coming months.

It was that thought that led me to think about writing.  Those of us who try to sit down on a regular schedule and write, like those of us who run on a regular schedule, have bad days.  We don't know where the story is going or how we're going to do anything poetic with the one image we have in our heads, and we sit there and look at the page or screen.  And we sit there.  And we sit there.  It's days like this that we wonder if we shouldn't just wait for inspiration to strike and only write on those days.

However, we don't write for today any more than I run for today.  We write so that a month from now or a year from now, we have a draft of something to work with, to make better.  I once heard Ted Kooser talk about his writing process, and he said that he sits in the same recliner every morning from about four until seven or so.  He said that six out of seven mornings, he doesn't produce anything worth keeping.  But one out of those seven will lead to something that just might work.  He believes he needs the other six days to have the seventh.  He's not writing for those days; he's writing for the future.

Whenever I sit down to work on whatever project I'm in the midst of, I try to remember that the draft of the poem or story doesn't have to be perfect, that I'll have a future to hone it and make it stronger.  But I need those bad days of sitting there, writing things I know are not very good, because I know that they will get me to somewhere better, or at least give me something to work from later.  A month from now, perhaps, I'll be looking over the draft and now see where I should go with that image or character.  Or, just maybe, I'll read something I wrote today and I'll think, "That's not bad."  That's a good day.
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    About This Blog

    This blog is where I write about writing, list news and information about my writing life, and just generally reflect on life.  My education-related blog can be found at No Brown-Nosing.

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