the limits of "self-control"

Before I began working as a TA (as part of my graduate school program) I had to take a teacher training course. Even though I had already taught while getting my master’s, the course was extremely useful. I especially appreciated the attention we gave to our own feelings about writing (our own and others’) and about teaching writing (our prior experiences teaching or being taught). We reflected on our own experiences as students of writing, we analyzed our writing processes, and we surfaced some of our frustrations about writing in general, all in an effort to develop ourselves as teachers and to help us help our students.

One of the assignments for that class asked us to "inventory" our feelings about our own writing process—what was effective, ineffective for us? What rituals did we practice? How did we go about revising? What kinds of writing did we enjoy doing, not enjoy? Etc., etc., etc. I distinctly remember one section of that piece. In it I vowed never to chastise myself for “procrastinating” because my inability to write (comfortably) on command was not (as had been subtly implied to me) because I was lazy, stupid, or slovenly, but instead because I needed time to envision the papers in my head first. When I write anything, I need to map it out, determine its structure, test and allow or reject particular forms and sources before I am ready to sit down to write. I promised myself then that I would always give myself plenty of time before writing in order to have that necessary thinking time, and that I wouldn’t expect myself to churn out writing like a machine or a robot.

I’m ABD now: I’ve finished my classes, passed my exams, submitted a successful prospectus of my dissertation, and am currently researching and writing a second chapter. Up until a week ago, I’d been satisfied with my writing process. I hadn't let myself down, nor had I beat myself up.

I have a friend, also a graduate student, who insists that writers must get the words on the page, ready or not. She will struggle (her words) for an entire afternoon to craft one paragraph. She considers this “discipline.” I consider it unnecessary and counter-productive. In a recent collaborative writing session we had an argument—she wanted to compose word by word, I wanted to get the big idea sketched out and then circle back to fill in the gaps. It was awful. We’re both strong-willed, so things got a bit ugly. She wanted to get the work done that day, even though it wasn’t “due” for another four days. I suggested that we put the work down (at least for a day) and come back to it after some thought. I finally gave up and helped where I could. I left feeling inept. I also began doubting my writing process.

So I just caught myself, today, yelling at myself for not being able to write on command. I’ve been trying to compose a letter to a fellow teacher about a class of his that I visited. One copy will go to the teacher, another copy goes into an archive as a record of the kinds of teaching we’re doing at the university in 2006. It’s a tricky document: multiple audiences, multiple purposes. For the past hour I’ve been on a freakin’ hamster wheel. I get up from my computer, pace my apartment, berate myself for not writing, sit back down to the computer, try to write, force some words onto the page, read the absolute shit that I just produced, delete it, force more words out, delete them, stare out the window, and then get up from my computer again. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Anyone who tries to tell you that writers never struggle or that people who write for a living must be “naturally talented” are full of it. Writing is hard work, no matter how you do it. More importantly, any teacher (or friend!) who tells you there’s only one way to compose, by sitting down and cranking it out, is also full of it. Right now, I’m more angry at myself for internalizing my friend’s crazy idea of a writing process than I am for not being able to write. And so, with any luck, this rant has purged me of the demonic “disciplined” approach to writing and will reaffirm my commitment to thinking and designing in my usual fashion. Writing is not boot camp.

Yeah. So there.

And on a related note: Jeffery Eugenides’ Pulitzer-prize winning book Middlesex took him about nine years to write. Obviously he was not simply “cranking it out.” Obviously there are many kinds of discipline, and thinking and constructing take just as much (if not more) than merely putting words on a page.

So take that, too.