First, my
heartfelt thanks to all of you who responded to my last post, “Being Cheryl
Strayed.” You energized me. You made me believe in myself again and my writing.
When I read your comments, I wanted to reach out and hug you all and let you
know how much I believe in you.
I hope you’re all still digging
deep for that authentic self, the one you always carry, the one that sometimes
gets layered over with other people’s expectations, perceptions, and needs. The
one that gets lost in our modern world, the world that keeps us so distracted
we forget who we are and what makes us powerful creative beings. A toast to all
of us.
Now to tell
you what happened after I wrote my last post. And it wasn’t what I expected,
not by a long shot.
I truly expected to have a mega
burst of creative energy. I was raw, open, and a little scared, but raring to
go, especially to finish my novel.
Instead, I
found myself drop kicked to the ground. I just couldn’t get up. I couldn’t find
the energy to write, to keep up with my responsibilities, to even be excited
about the novel. What was wrong? What was happening? When I finally dragged
myself to my feet and examined myself, I had a whole new problem to figure out and
another layer to dig through.
It was
morning, a few weeks after the last blog post when I dragged myself out of bed
and realized I was anxious and depressed. I’m not one to be depressed. It’s
just not me. I took my usual half hour to wake up, my usual easing into the
day. Dan was downstairs, drinking his coffee and reading the paper. He knows
not to talk to me first thing and woe is he who asks, “What should we have for
dinner tonight?”
I stumbled
around, heated water for tea, and tried to remember what my last thoughts were
before I fell asleep and what I’d dreamed about. I often use sleep and dreams to
solve problems. When I’m fully in tune with myself (happy, excited,
adventurous, expectant), I go to bed with a story problem and sometimes wake up
with a solution. My dreams are vivid, Technicolor, intense, full story dreams
with a beginning, middle and end. Sometimes they are simply stories. Sometimes
they are a collage of recent personal events and fears, or my fears for the
world. Before 911, I had, like many people did, dreams of being in a tall
building that was crumbling around me.
But that
morning I couldn’t remember anything about my dreams or what I’d wanted to
process before I fell asleep.
While my tea brewed, I wiped down
the sink, put dishes away from the night before, and read part of the paper
standing up at the counter. I grabbed pencil and paper and wrote down a few
groceries we needed. My fuzzy morning brain was waking up, but I wasn’t happy.
I plunked down on the kitchen stool. When was
the last time I was happy in the morning? When had I last woke up feeling
excited, adventurous, expectant? I couldn’t remember.
Okay, the best way to push through
all this was to prepare for the day. I flipped to a new sheet of paper and
decided to write down what I would do that day. I started a list:
Write a blog post.
Then it came back to me, what I’d
gone to bed mulling over and worrying about—I could not come up with a subject
to blog about.
I’d never had a problem writing
this blog. Never. I did think about what my readers would find interesting, but
for the most part, my topics came from what I found interesting. Readers would
find it worth reading or not. Sure, I worried about execution, the old “Can I
pull this off? Or will I sound like an idiot?” I didn’t worry too much about
the last part. I’ve sounded like an idiot before and it didn’t kill me.
Okay. So the problem was a topic
for the blog. Easy then. Quit trying so hard. I could do a follow up to the reader
comments from the last entry. I’d take the “Being Cheryl Strayed” to another
level. I wrote that down on my list. I could write about my decision to drop
the pirate persona, how I now found it tedious, and I’d explain why.
Nah, that wasn’t even interesting.
I took a deep breath. My mind was
all over the place with ideas but I just couldn’t get excited about any of them.
Okay, don’t panic. I’d set that aside for the moment. I would make a list of
everything I needed to do and start working on that. Crossing things off a list
was always therapeutic. I wrote:
Check your Facebook page because you’ve
let that go.
You forgot to check ValinParis
account for comments.
Post the Cheryl Strayed piece to
Women Writing the West Yahoo users group.
Set up Hootsuite; need to follow hashtag
groups.
Goodreads—woefully out of date!
Go through all your email; needs
attention!
Respond to SheWrites messages and
post to groups.
Write the column for Books By the
Bed.
I set the pencil down. I felt a
little sick. I stared at the list.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
I took my now cold tea to my
writing room and stood there, looking at my library of novels and reference books,
the stacks of literary magazines and the binders full of research. A partial
manuscript was tucked in my laptop bag with all my revision notes.
 |
| Reading area in my writing room |
What used to make me happy,
excited, adventurous, expectant was writing. Writing fiction. Why wasn’t I
devoting every waking—and sleeping—moment to finishing my novel? That’s what I
used to fall asleep with—characters, story, plot problems, structure
possibilities. I know I can’t do that all the time, but I remember when I’d
wake up in that fuzzy first hour, noodling ideas and excited about perhaps a
scene I needed to finish.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
Internet.
That’s why I couldn’t move,
couldn’t be excited, was depressed. I’d been letting all this online networking
and social media—creating a web presence, as they call it—take over. What was
the use of having all this “presence” if I didn’t have a finished novel? What
good did it do anyway? Who were these people who said you had to have a web presence if you wanted to be an author? Who were
these gurus who insisted that this new world of publishing demanded an author
FB/Tweet/blog/Google+/Klout/Pinterest, etc.?
I drank my cold tea and pushed away
that old Puritan who said, “How dare you question authority.” What authority, I
asked? I used to work in advertising and marketing. I understood the old caveat emptor warning. So I asked myself,
Who is selling us on the idea of all this
social media and internet marketing?
I don’t begrudge anyone the opportunity
to recognize a need and create a service to fill that need. They have to make a
living and they do give away lots of
good info before asking you to buy something. I subscribe to three of these social
media gurus e-newsletters, so I asked myself, What roped me in?
Use of their urgent language? Use of their
authoritative tone? The fear of not
doing it?
“If you don’t do this, you won’t
succeed.”
Well, maybe. But does anyone have
the numbers to prove this? Sure, I want to be successful. I want to be ready
for the moment when my book is published. But what price am I paying?
If I’m sacrificing
my happiness, my creativity, the immersion time I need to write, if I don’t
have time anymore to read other novels, why bother? I’d even dragged these
demands to Colonyhouse retreats because when you’re on that many sites, you
have to keep up on a daily basis. You have to get online and be “present.”
No, I said to myself that morning. Not
if it means you can’t be fully present in your writing. In that wonderful
creative half-awake state that morning, not once had I thought about my novel.
Not once.
I had to do something drastic.
So I did. I dropped all my social
media activities and went on a blog hiatus. Just like that.
Once again, I was back in the land
of the writer. I went to bed with my novel, woke up with it, noodled it in the
car, devoted myself to it for a month, and fell in love again. The novel grew
stronger and deeper with this immersion; the writing was some of my best.
I finished April 1, the deadline
I’d first set for myself, and that’s not an April Fool’s joke. The novel is now
out with five readers and I’m happier than I’ve been in … damn, I can’t
remember when. Probably sometime before I dove into the social media. Even Dan has
commented on how much happier I seem.
I've heard the argument for balancing both, limiting my time online, giving myself
one hour in the evening, etc. etc. But let’s be honest. How many of you have
been online for an hour? It’s more along the lines of look at the clock and
gasp because three hours have gone by. And never mind trying to return to your
writing, fully present in that. No, you’re concentration, that precious
immersion in story, has been infected. With internet.
As many of
you know, the gift of being a writer is the joy of noodling an idea, slurping
it around the mouth, playing with the creative food. It’s about immersion. When
I’m writing, even the bad days are good. Even when I’m writing drivel, the days
are better than anything else.
I did have
pangs of guilt for not being on all those internet sites I’d joined. But it
didn’t depress me or make me anxious. After the novel was done, I decided to
clear up my writing room, weed out saved articles and old magazines. Spring was
in the air and I like order. As I went through articles I had saved, I came
across one that took away any residual guilt about my dropping out from the
internet.
The article, “Inner Space: Clearing Some Room for Inspiration,” by Frank Bures examines the same problem I’d been
dealing with and that many creative people face. When I was online every day to
do my social media, I had what Bures admitted he developed, what researcher
Linda Stone calls “continuous partial attention.”
Continuous partial attention.
 | |
| Lake Winnisquam |
Ping! I couldn’t stay in the story
or daydream or be in the warm fuzzy creative space upon waking. My focus was
chopped up into too many small bites. I yearned for my childhood days when I
would spend hours sitting under a tree beside Lake Winnisquam, making up
stories that I’d spin into words later on paper.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m organized.
I have systems. I keep great files. I’m pretty good at time management.
This, however, is something
entirely different. Overuse of the internet slices and dices your brain. It
damages your focus, your creative
headspace.
So here we are in this modern tech
age when we are expected to be online every day to create a presence and it’s
rupturing the connection to our creativity? And what of our writerly isolation
and prolonged sitting? (Lots of new info on how dangerous that is.) I know I have
even more reason to limit that “online presence.”
I do love my online communities,
the amazing, helpful, wonderful people, the great resources. But I will from
now on be absent when writing and promise to give you a heads up.
And yes, I finished my novel. Relief!
Happiness! Fulfillment!
For fun—after the novel was done—I
ran the first page of it through the website “I Write Like …” and came up with
David Foster Wallace. Yes, go ahead and play with the site. Drop a chunk of
your writing into the box and see who pops up. I wanted my writing to be like
Margaret Atwood’s, but David’s would definitely do.
I’m celebrating, both the finish of
my novel and my new freedom. You’ve been with me for almost a year and a half, given
me support and courage, and for that I’m giving away a copy of Cheryl’s memoir Wild. If you leave a comment, your name
goes into the hat. Either use the comment box or send to the ValinParis email.
Also, I would love to have your
reactions to my story. Do you have similar stories and concerns? What are they?
Have you experienced a negative effect on your writing from being on the
internet? Or not? I’m really curious. I know we have to market our books once
they’re published, but is all this social media necessary and does it work?
What do you refuse to do? What do you think is really necessary? How do you
make those decisions?
Thanks again for being there, for
reading this. Please join the conversation. In the meantime, ask yourself this:
what is running around inside your head when you wake up? Does it make you
happy or anxious? Why?
And for your information, I won’t
be blogging weekly. I’ll blog when I’m inspired and want to reach out to you.
Until then, hugs all ‘round.
Val
p.s. If anyone heard the NPR Morning Edition story about this same subject/issue, please let me know when you heard it and if there's a link to it. I didn't hear it, but was told about it. Thanks!
Also, if you're interested, check out the books I'm reading, Books Beside the Bed, at We Wanted to Be Writers.
