Earlier this week, I took out my keys and discovered that one key inexplicably had become wedged in the ring of another one such that I could not for the life of me untangle them. It was like one of these mechanical disentanglement puzzles that I was never very good at solving. All week I wrestled with them every time I took them out, alternating between reasoned calculation and frustrated acts of force, but with no success.

Yesterday morning after finishing a rather unproductive session of dissertation writing at the coffee shop, I put the pointy ball of keys in my pocket for the ride to work. When I arrived and took them out to lock up, I noticed with some amazement that they were no longer tangled. Apparently, my peddling for 25 minutes was smarter than days of conscious effort, but at this point I wasn’t complaining.

I took it as a metaphor for writing, reminding me that sometimes writing happens best when I’m trying the least. Of course, a good deal of writing happens with deliberate, focused attention on the task, but I should never discount the subconscious work of writing that often gets me through the knottier periods when I can’t seem to untangle a particular ball of thoughts. Quite regularly the real writing of the morning happens either on the ride to work when the ideas are still warm from a couple hours of writing or on the ride home when thoughts re-animate themselves once I’ve relaxed my white-knuckled grip on them.

Writing is not a brain-in-a-vat activity; it is as embodied as anything else, even though it’s easy to forget when I’m in the mode of writing that involves putting words on the page. Biking is my favorite way to write when I’m not at the computer, but running or walking or taking a shower often can work just as well–whatever method let’s the body do some of the heavy lifting for a while so the mind get the sweat out of its eyes and tie its shoes before making its next sentence.

Read more

It’s one thing to not follow your own advice; it’s even worse when you’ve forgotten what that advice was in the first place. I used to dispense insights about writing to my freshman writing students; now I feel like getting back in touch to see if I can borrow their notes (yes, let’s pretend they took notes, just for the sake of illustration).

It appears that not only has being a graduate student in English squelched my love of literature, but it also has undermined my ability to write, which is a problem when you’re supposed to hand in a large, dissertation-shaped document in order to graduate.

A couple weeks ago I woke up one morning and did a little math. This isn’t normally my strong suit but this calculation wasn’t too hard to figure out: 1998 = when I started the program; 2008 = now. What I came away with was “10 years = I’ve become one of those guys.”

It’s not quite fair to be hard on myself, I guess, since I’ve been working at real job that enjoy for a couple of years, and I’m not planning to look for academic positions. But it did bring on an existential crisis of sorts, one that helped me realize that I need to either finish this thing or move on with my life.

I realized that I did have a choice. Plenty of good friends have decided not to finish and have been better people for it. I finally allowed myself to imagine who I would be if I stopped, and I decided could live with that person.

So now I’ve given myself a small window in which either to give this one last college try or to graduate with a masters and move on. Which means I’ve had to begin remembering how to write, and write quickly. Not to take notes, or find a better way to organize my notes. To write.

I’ve dusted off Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers for old time sake, and it was good to find some inspiration, however basic the principles might be. Two quotes from Elbow have provided the basis for my writing mantras:

1) No thinking without writing.

“Think of writing not as a way to transmit a message but as a way to grow and cook a message. Writing is a way to end up thinking something you couldn’t have started out thinking. Writing is in fact a way to free yourself from what you presently think, feel, and perceive.”

2) “You have to be a big spender. Not a tightass.”

“I know perfectly well that the more I utter, the more I’ll be able to utter and–other things being equal–the better I’ll be able to utter. I know I can. Noam Chomsky knows I can. But it doesn’t feel that way. I feels like the more I utter, especially the more I write, the more I’ll use up my supply of meaningful utterances, and as the source dries up, they will get worse.”

I’ve spent all day today writing, more than I’ve done for a very long time. And I have one big document where I’ve been making sentences and putting them into paragraphs. And I think I might still have a story to tell about place blogging, about Fred and the Ecotone gang, about finding our sense of place in digital networks.

So there it is. I’m putting myself out there. My last stand. Either way, it will all be over soon and that’s something I won’t let myself forget.

Read more