The Writing Experiment Concludes (With a Little More Joyce)

Well, it's been 10(ish) days, and the experiment has come to its final moment. The final post!

I'm kind of sad, to be honest. Sure, maybe y'all are sick of reading the words "the experiment" and equally sick of all my pontificating on the CRAFT, and DEDICATION, and WORK ETHIC, and shiiiat. But it's been a good 10(ish) days.

It was harder than I expected. I don't feel like I completely succeeded, as there was a day or two here and there where I didn't post, or I'd be highly productive one day and then feel completely spent the next.

But I guess that's why it was an experiment. Now I want to try another one, and see how I do. I'm not sure what that would be, exactly, but I'm open to suggestions.

I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to write about today. Marco and I spent all afternoon at the bookstore, me reading, him drawing, and of course I got all these "brilliant" (ha, ha), fleeting ideas at the strangest times. Like when I'm waiting in line for the bathroom, for instance. Those ideas are still floating around in my brain, somewhere, but for now, I wanted to keep the focus on writing, in general. So I thought I'd bring it full circle with some words of wisdom from Ms. Joyce Carol Oates, once again.

The following is excerpted from her 1976 interview with The Paris Review (all emphasis is mine):

INTERVIEWER

Do you find emotional stability is necessary in order to write? Or can you get to work whatever your state of mind? Is your mood reflected in what you write? How do you describe that perfect state in which you can write from early morning into the afternoon?

OATES

One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function—a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind—then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally I've found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes . . . and somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Or appears to do so. Joyce said of the underlying structure of Ulysses—the Odyssean parallel and parody—that he really didn't care whether it was plausible so long as it served as a bridge to get his “soldiers” across. Once they were across, what does it matter if the bridge collapses? One might say the same thing about the use of one's self as a means for the writing to get written. Once the soldiers are across the stream . . .

INTERVIEWER

Do you enjoy writing?

OATES

I do enjoy writing, yes. A great deal. And I feel somewhat at a loss, aimless and foolishly sentimental, and disconnected, when I've finished one work and haven't yet become absorbed in another. All of us who write, work out of a conviction that we are participating in some sort of communal activity. Whether my role is writing, or reading and responding, might not be very important. I take seriously Flaubert's statement that we must love one another in our art as the mystics love one another in God. By honoring one another's creation we honor something that deeply connects us all, and goes beyond us.

Of course, writing is only one activity out of a vast number of activities that constitute our lives. It seems to be the one that some of us have concentrated on, as if we were fated for it. Since I have a great deal of faith in the processes and the wisdom of the unconscious, and have learned from experience to take lightly the judgments of the ego and its inevitable doubts, I never find myself constrained to answer such questions. Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And even when we as individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it.

I particularly love what she says about how "the activity of writing changes everything"—because I agree with her. It does. Like the other night, when all I wanted to do was either go to sleep or watch another episode of Weeds, but instead I picked up my laptop and just wrote. I wrote as my eyes burned staring at the screen and the battery level on my Macbook flashed to red.

If nothing else, by trying out this little writing experiment, I was finally able to remember that feeling, that eyes burning from staring at the screen, adrenaline rush, that creative energy, that fucking feeling, that I can put words on a page and they can mean something, and that I can use "one's self as a means for the writing to get written."
 

The Experiment, Take 1: In Which Joyce Teaches Me to Prioritize

I've been reading The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973-1982 the last couple of days, and the majority of the time I'm reading it I catch myself nodding my head, in awe of her genius and insight. (I caught myself doing this head nodding yesterday as I was reading on the train during rush hour. Something tells me the lady who was staring confusedly at me wasn't in awe of my genius and insight.)

Nothing better than reading the journal of a hugely productive, successful contemporary author (and teacher! how does she find the time?!) to give me a much needed kick in the ass to start writing again.

An excerpt from her November 15, 1974 entry (all emphasis mine):

Balance between private, personal fulfillment (marriage, friendship, work at the University) and 'public' life, the commitment to writing. The artist must find an environment, a pattern of living, that will protect his or her energies: the art must be cultivated, must be given priority... 

Goethe: 'People go on shooting at me when I am already miles out of range.' 

Some of us are never in range: never totally represented by any work of art... Is this a strategy? No. One does not choose one's nature, though perhaps the habits, the adaptations of one's nature are freely chosen.

Ok, first off: Joyce! My God! This is the kind of journal entry I DREAM someone might stumble across in one of my journals when I'm dead. Instead, they'd probably find some sad bastard song lyrics and shitty poetry about boys. That said, I think this was one of the parts where I was nodding, wide-eyed on the train, as I read.

Every day I fight this inner battle, struggling to find the balance she mentions. Typically, my struggle ends up with me talking a lot about writing, and then getting distracted by everything else. Like, the sun shining. My cat Layla sneezing. Texting my friends. Falling asleep. It's ridiculous. Basically, I haven't prioritized my art. The writing.

Although Oates is clearly a writer with an incredible natural gift, it's evident that she also struggles with the notion of whether writing really is easy, or if it is a daunting task to overcome. Discussing her work on a novel, she writes:

Or am I wrong, have I always been wrong, should I perhaps have said nothing at all rather than give the impression that writing is 'easy'? For in a sense it is easy, it is utterly natural. When it isn't easy, it probably isn't much good. At the same time it is not easy at all, because it requires constant thinking, worrying, puzzling, arranging and rearranging. The organization of mountains of material. I must have 500 pages for Part II alone; which must be drastically condensed; and who is going to do this, except 'I,' in the most conscious, calculating sense of the word? One part of the personality has had its freedom, its flowing sprinting exhilarating freedom, and now another, more somber consciousness must take over....But I've circumnavigated this task for days, while thinking miserably and guiltily of the fact that it must be done: and who will do it?

I felt such relief reading this. I thought, Joyce Carol Oates gets me! Even the writing genius feels this way!

Look: here's my problem. I'm obsessed with the rush I get from writing—"its flowing sprinting exhilarating freedom"—and I'm scared to death of the rest. "The constant thinking, worrying, puzzling, arranging and rearranging." I'll write and write, loving how all the words, the sentences, the thoughts, just start flowing from my brain and appear on my screen. But then, once it comes to all that thinking and editing and rewriting and planning ... well, sometimes my brain simply shuts down.

I'm going to try to keep my brain open to all of it. And I'm starting by prioritizing my writing. After all, it's my one love that just doesn't seem to quit.

Wish me luck.