Today as classes and Chapel begin again I am holed up in my study
with the door closed, and nothing to do but read and write. Some
colleagues and I have
swapped duties for a while so that I can write the next book, and a
set of lectures. What luxury, I tell myself. But my brain nags at me
that I would be much happier if I was at work.
I
suppose every person who writes dreams of the opportunity to be a full
time writer. But the prospect of it is actually quite scary. I have
written five books, every one of them in
the midst of being a single mother with a very full-time job. I wrote
because the bug got
me, and the deadline was coming, and I got up in desperation at 5.am and
wrote for two hours before work, or I wrote from nine till midnight
when the house was quiet. I would write like that for months at a time,
and then not write at all. That may not be how the experts say you do
it, but I've always believed that you have to live how you can, and not
how you should. Novelist Salley Vickers once said that she didn't
conform to the write-every-day-without-fail philosophy either, and if
it's good enough for her it's good enough for me. (Have you read Salley
Vickers yet? If not, make this the year you do.)
Now,
though, my son stays late at school most days to work on homework or
theatre practice, and I usually don't see him till the early evening.
And for a few weeks, I
have none of my usual duties at the office. The days stretch ahead of
me, and I have nothing to do but write. I know I should feel that it is a
luxury, but in fact without the pressure of having to produce a
thousand words before my son wakes up, or edit four pages before
midnight, I'm afraid the days will just squash into nothing like warm
marshmallows, and there will be nothing. Pressure is actually a good
thing.
I have a little stone on my windowsill with the
word "courage" written on it. Last semester we spent some time in Chapel
where we were asked to tell the person next to us what we were up to,
and they in turn were asked to write one word on a stone that summed up
their prayer. I told the man next to me that I was afraid of the
marshmallow days, that I would disappear into the structurelessness of
pressure-free time and do nothing at all. I thought what I needed was
strength, or fear, or pressure, or something. He turned away and wrote
on the stone, and then handed it to me. "Courage", it said.
So
I have set myself a little deadline for the day. An outline of a
chapter by the end of the day. It can be imperfect. It can be rewritten
tomorrow if necessary, but by the end of the day it will be done. And
then I shall enjoy the leisure of *not* having to write from nine until
midnight. Heck, I might even have a social life.