“an unblinking eye” by devi laskar

There are certain things that satisfy in and of themselves. If you exercise on a given day, you’ve done what you were supposed to do and can check it off your list. If you read for pleasure, you’ve had the pleasure. So, too, other intimate pleasures. They are in and of themselves or part of a pattern that must continue on a daily or weekly (or in grimmer times monthly) basis, in an ongoing manner. The daily (or weekly) doing of them is what is required.

Other projects–and the key word here may be “project”– have a finite end, however far to that horizon, however illusory it may seem. The book can be completed, the garage organized. Immediately, the mind objects: the garage, once organized, will be instantly undone. It is the genius of five-year-olds (and every other human being) to work on behalf of entropy.

In any case, this is the point: meaningful work must have a daily goal that supercedes the overarching goal. In his 21 Lies Writers Tell Themselves, Alexander Chee includes that plum, “I’m almost done,” as Rule # 4. Ah, yes. This is my favorite self-lie, and it creates a sense of urgency, an enormous need for time, that overwhelms the limits and requirement of a daily schedule. One cannot finish the book today. But one must labor at a small corner of it today. This is true for drafting as it is for revision. For planning as it is for spell-checking.

Everything takes longer than you think–my mother’s Rule Number One, to which she has added, “and costs more.” Whether revising your book will cost more than you think financially, it certainly will in terms of emotional and creative expenditure.

A schedule is a net for catching days, Annie Dillard says in The Writing Life, a raft to which you find yourself, decades later, still clinging. (I am not putting this in quotes because I am doing it from memory and my memory seems to be faltering these days . . . ).

My best schedule under current circumstances looks like this:

• Wake up . . .
• Try to do morning pages before children get up but usually fail.
• Hang out with kids doing breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth, making lunches . . .
• Take kids to school.
• Go directly to cafe. Do not pass go. Do not collect $100 dollars or check email or otherwise engage with the pounding minutiae that threatens to overwhelm whatever dreamy thoughts have survived the fight over a crayon and the daily mad hunt for socks.
• Write a minimum of 1000 words. These can be drivel, grocery lists, to do lists, rants, rages, universal questions, musings, stories, blogs, political analyses, scenes–and usually contain a jumble of these items. The practice of morning pages reminds me to be in conversation with my mind, reassures my mind that I do pay attention to it every now and then even if everything around seems to be conspiring to make me lose it, and connects me to the fact and pleasure of words, language, sentences, images. Images are key, and each morning session must conclude with a paragraph of description, whether of something in front of me–the new art in the cafe–or something in my head–the view of the enormous moon across classic cars and vineyards from the Marinos’ place. This reminds me of what crafted writing, of the business of creating worlds on the page, and sends me off to my project.
• Work on writing project, in whatever current daily unit is involved. (Here is the problem of right now–my new unit has not been resolved; I am revising–again–and haven’t picked a deadline or confirmed my path or otherwise rooted myself in dailiness and steps-taking.)
• Then–and only then–turn to emails and business and the world at large. This, too, needs limits, needs a unit–whether of time or of quantity.
• If exercise is to be fitted in, it must have its place here and its quantifiable, completable unit.
• On we go, then, to picking up the children, groceries, Halloween costumes or whatever seasonal upkeep in required,
• and then teaching and editing
• and then dinner and dishes and bedtime (theirs)
• by which point I am usually too exhausted to do much but if I read (rather than stream some show) I will go to sleep sooner and wake up more refreshed and engaged and begin again . . .

What is missing?

1. Reward and acknowledgement for each quantifiable, completable task–celebrated chunks.
2. Clarity on some of the tasks (groceries, for example, and email as a completable task, and Halloween costumes)
3. Will power, sometimes, to do what is best rather than what is easiest right now . . .

What works?

1. Repetition
2. Dailiness
3. Getting out of the house
4. Avoiding the electronic world before I write
5. Letting the writing start loose and include everything on my mind and then funnel down to the project
6. Quantifiable, completable units
7. Staying connected to my own process and bringing it to the teaching and the writing and the reading

My goal for this week is to establish clear chunks for each area that demands my attention, clear daily chunks, and then to celebrate them as they happen, to check them off a list or post them on the BWW bulliten board or in some other way cheer on the accomplishment of each chunk, each day. Shifting the focus from finishing to working is a tremendous boon for the creative soul. Give it a try.

What does your schedule look like? Where might you implement quantifiable, completable tasks? What is missing in your routine? What works? What might be your celebrated chunks, and how might you celebrate them?