Chapter 154: Neither Lovable nor Loving
The expression comes from Penelope Leach, my generation’s parenting guru, in her assessment of newborns. I always found the sentiment too harsh by half – I thought my kids were beyond lovable as newborns even if they were not yet reciprocal in their displays of affection. But it did come to mind recently when I had the chance to catch my breath after a summer of writing.
I’d spent months with only my book filling my working hours. Not quite being home alone with a newborn, but still a focused intensity I had not experienced in a very long time. Actually ever. I always had other things demanding my attention which at the time felt like unwanted distractions but which in retrospect were as welcome as the naps new parents allow themselves when their children take theirs.
I’ve now had a few weeks away from the book; I’d written what I’d intended to write and recognized that I needed to step away before plunging back in. I have a long, long way to go and, apologies for the cliche, book writing is a marathon not a sprint.
The break has given me the chance to breathe and with it time to consider the curious relationship we writers have with our most demanding, ambitious work of which books are one, but by no means the only form. Curious is an understatement. More like dysfunctional.
After all, we don’t necessarily need to embark on the journeys such work entails. We can write shorter, turn pieces around, move onto the next ones. I am not suggesting that that work is easier; writing never is when you do it right. But keeping things brief is a way to avoid the messiness of the long term. Also the pleasure. If I am making this sound like dating-courtship-marriage it is not accidental.
Relationships are at once simple – when they work there is a rhythm that both partners hear, even if no one else does – and complicated; there is every day, week, month, year, decade busy-ness of the melody. People dance to the rhythm and when they try to dance to the melody they are all elbows and knees.
While I cannot speak for all writers, any more than I can speak for other couples, I know enough writers to appreciate how often the way we talk about our writing mirrors the way we talk about the people at the emotional center of our lives. I have listened to writer friends talk with despair at ever finding a way forward; at losing sleep and feeling beaten down; and also of the relief of finding themselves in a “good place.” And while there is delight that comes when things are going well, it is not always cool to boast about it, lest the Gods of Love and Literature catch on and turn things upside down.
When people who wanted to write books used to ask me about the wisdom of taking on the challenge I’d reply: can you write 1000 words a day five days a week for twenty weeks? A hundred thousand words=300 books pages and you’re over the finish line. It was a facile answer that I probably offered between books, when the memory of what I’d just been through had faded and I could not quite recall what the pain had felt like.
It was also pretty dumb advice: not every successful writer cranks out 1000 words a day (see Chapter 122). It failed to consider the fullness of the experience – the twists, turns, ups and downs, joy and sadness that characterizes the relationship so many writers have with their big projects.
Ask me that same question now, while I’m in the throes of it, and I believe I can offer more useful advice. I never discourage anyone from taking on a big project; but I can tell you what my current break is allowing me to see more fully.
Writing a book (I am using book as a shorthand for all big writing projects; that it’s a four-letter word does seem fitting) is akin to love in that it is always with you – days, nights, weekends, vacations. It follows you to the movies and interrupts your reading and watching TV. It begins seeping into your life and before you know it it’s there, all the time. It can make you tedious company, driving the people around you nuts: yes, you can tell me this one new thing you discovered today but only one.
Like love, writing a book has the capacity to keep expanding. Just as you discover greater depths of feeling, so too does researching and writing a book force you to confront that there is always more to learn.
This can feel both daunting and thrilling; daunting in that you’re forever reminded of how far you still need to go; thrilling in that the search can be so exciting. Except when you hit a wall, or three and despair at ever fully knowing all you feel you must know to write with the authority your project demands.
I’ve started book projects that never quite came together and which I felt I had no choice but to abandon. Those projects looked promising but never gained momentum. Best to move on, acknowledge that things were not meant to be, and even feel a little sad that what had seemed so filled with possibility didn’t work out.
But with those projects that do not fade with time and scrutiny there comes a point when there is no going back; before you realize it you’re in too deep. Yet even the myriad frustrations you encounter are off-set by a growing sense of assurance and command – I’ve got this.
The experience can last for a while – for weeks at a time. A good thing, because that feeling sustains you when, seemingly out of nowhere, it vanishes and you’re left with no choice but to go back to the beginning and sort out how you got here.
I’ve spent the past three months guided by the realization that even as I move forward – gotta hit the daily word count, the default rule of writing of the long ago newspaper reporter – I see that I have no choice but to challenge every assumption that I brought to my project. In the case of my book, this means the core beliefs and assumptions that were inculcated in me as a child and which I carried into adulthood. Every. Last. One.
As with love I have no choice. I must do this; my heart demands it. But I remind myself that this relationship is by no means one-sided; the book gives even as I feel it taking. It reveals a world as nothing else can. It allows time to stand still; the intensity of the writing experience brings moments when you are so immersed that you will look at the clock and discover an hour has elapsed while you were someplace else.
A book tests me and when I can meet the bar, when I can look at the words I have written, at the growing number of pages of a book that exists only because I need it to, I feel both exhilaration and exhaustion.
My heavens that was hard. Where did the time go? Now, where were we?
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If you have a question, a problem in your work, if you are feeling lost, stuck, confused, at sea, searching, grappling, or baffled, email me at Michaelshapiro808@gmail.com and tell me what you’re confronting and what help you need.
It is seldom, if ever, the case that one student’s problem or question is their’s alone.
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Nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves. We know writing is hard. We’re here to show that it doesn’t have to be torture.