Make it smaller.
The leaves are falling fast from the arms of patient trees. They have been coming down so steadily in the last few days, making such a regular thrumming on the roof above me, that at times it sounds like rain. These golden days of autumn must be what it's like to live within the pages of a cherished, yellowed paperback. Autumn witnesses to the reality of beauty within a structure of impermanence, to the possibility of newness and surprise despite that all is passing and nearly lost. Leaves fall from trees every year, and they still cause us to marvel.
A couple of friends of mine and I have been talking about writing. It's a favorite subject of writers, which these two friends are. Indeed, talking about writing is a favorite way for writers to avoid writing, but I don't think our conversation hasn't been merely an exercise in mutual procrastination. We've been talking about writing, I think, because we don't know if it matters whether we write anything at all -- whether for us or for others, known and unknown. We each know that the world will go on, and that we will go on with it for at least a short stretch of time, even if we never write a single thing on a page ever again.
Annie Dillard makes this point starkly, in her baldly characteristic way, in The Writing Life. No one will shed a tear over what a writer hasn't written, although truthfully, I have a handful of friends, including the ones I've just mentioned, for whom my longing for them to write and publish is acute, nearly tearful. Yet any kind of creative work -- any kind of good human activity at all! -- is regularly, reliably threatened by an imaginary, faceless indifference. Steven Pressfield called that indifference "resistance," and he writes about it vividly, even mythologically, in The War of Art. I think that's why we writers have been talking about writing. We need encouragement and a pinch of accountability. We don't grow out of this, ever.
What helps me battle that suffocating indifference is to make my task as small as I possibly can. I try to set small, actionable goals that help me be consistent without waking my inner perfectionist. I have learned that I need small rubrics to report honestly to accountability partners -- whether it's to my doctoral advisor or my spiritual director or writing friends -- about where I've been and where I think I am going. And I also need to hear from them if they think I'm reading the map accurately.
Moreover, I have found that productivity or habit-forming tricks like "don't break the chain" can be helpful in some areas of my life, but I have also learned that I need humanly wide margins for failure and rest, which are aspects of any kind of work. In fact, I will break chains deliberately before they get too long and too admirable. For me, the muscle of "picking up where I left off" is more important to exercise than maintaining a perfect chain. Once a system gets too precious, or too inflexible and rule-bound, I know I need to rearrange the furniture.
I'll be picking up my doctoral studies in the new year, and I need to have structures in place to ensure that I consistently study and write in the midst of life as I'm living it. To that end, I'm planning to report updates here -- actual word counts and short reports on my moods and the actions I take in the moody middle. I need to stay curious and practice what works and improve what doesn't, and above all, to keep track of it for myself and to others.
I have witnessed other writers do this, and it's always landed as a relief and inspiration to me. Like me, they struggle to work! They fight resistance too! Sometimes they lose traction! They feel like failures and wrestle with disappointment! They need other people to keep them on track! I'll gladly say more about what I'm studying and writing about later; for now, I'm anticipating the systems I'll need, and see how I can make them smaller, even more livable.
Leaves falling from trees mesmerize us; it matters that they once grew green and now tumble in yellowed or crimson glory. We may be mere wildflowers in God's bright bouquet, but that smallness is enough to matter in a good way, to mesmerize the rest of us.
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What's Bringing Me Joy:
conversations with friends about writing
two friends' newsletters: Jen Pollock Michel and Jessica Hooten Wilson
autumn leaves, candlelight, and Northern cardinals in the green holly hedge outside
A new podcast season of Undaunted: Conversations with Radical Peacemakers from the good people of The Telos Group.