No, the ethics I'm talking about now concern the poet who isn't an academic, who has a non-academic job, lives with a non-academic(s), has non-academic responsibilities and shared workloads. Poet parents, poet animal rescue workers, poet carpenters, poet house-flippers, whatever. I need your help and insights.
How do you justify sitting in a room surrounded by books, staring at your computer screen, trying to get to that point where you can block everything out to finally work on something you've been thinking about for days, not moving, not talking, just waiting for the first viable word to present itself so you can take off...but outside, the people you love are manual laboring their asses off?
I'm behind on the poem-a-day challenge. I've done every prompt up to the 18th, so I just need to play catch-up a little. I'm bummed that I couldn't keep up my momentum of earlier in the month, but I'm really happy with the poems I've produced, so I'm focusing on that. But when my boyfriend and I get home from work at the same time and he wants to build a dam to make a third level pool in the backyard creek and I want to build quatrains...
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| Lots of freeloading frogs in this pond... |
What is work? Rephrase: what is production or productivity? Should we tier our work (i.e., get "top tier," home/income-securing work done first)? I may "labor" for hours over editing older poems, reading reviews and issues of lit mags to stay current, and ordering my chapbook, but my boyfriend will have something indisputably tangible to show for his labor, while my fruits and rewards are more abstract. If I'm not being paid to be a poet, is writing a hobby, a passion, a devoted pastime, or is it still the culture I created for myself in grad school, online, and in cities where I've been active as a poet and made supportive contacts?
When you have other more pressing responsibilities, like paying bills and staying alive, is writing important work or self-important work?
These are not new questions at all. But I gotta say, no matter how devoted I am to writing--and I am devoted, make no mistake--these issues plague me. I'm not an ivory tower artist afraid to get her hands dirty, but I'm not physically strong enough to build rock gardens, either. I am highly protective of my alone time, but need the balance of that work and home-building work (I really kinda like doing dishes. The old-fashioned way. Methodical, meditative. I make lots of important decisions while scrubbing Tupperware. Plus, I'm a homebody earth sign who has trouble relaxing unless her space is clear, her fridge full of food, everything in its place...). The balance of being plugged into my computer half the day and the sun on my face the other half. The balance of living so I have things to write about and then actually writing about them.
Writers, help! I can't be the only one who experiences writer guilt. How do you talk about these things with the non-writers in your lives?
Ohhhh....
ReplyDeleteI so get this. I used to struggle with feeling very selfish because I put so much work into writing poems and looking at art (I think many artists might feel selfish).
But really, making art is a generous impulse. It's about empathy, compassion, curiosity for the world.
But paying bills...this is necessary. Balance is hard.
I get writer's guilt quite often. It comes from being surrounded mostly by people who don't share my passion for writing. Some of them don't see it as real "work." When I tell my friends and family that I need some time alone in a quiet room to do some writing, they usually try to persuade me to do otherwise. I remember reading a Neil Gaiman interview where he said that writers are always looking for excuses not to work. Socializing is important, but so is the art we create. Sometimes you just have to turn the phone off. You wouldn't stop a car mechanic in the middle of a job or a doctor in the middle of surgery would you? Why should it be any different for a writer? Writing is a kind of work that I feel non-writers sometimes have a hard time comprehending.
ReplyDeleteHannah, the balancing act is not a one-time thing, right? It's every day. Some days you hit the balance perfectly, others not so much.
ReplyDeleteMarty, I feel you on the "real work." In my experience--and perhaps it's because I know so many writers who are also exterminators, food service employees, working moms, etc.--writers are NOT "always looking for excuses not to work." How is that a writer-specific thing?? I know plenty of lazy non-writers. :) Writers, if I may speak for those other than myself, simply need alone time to process our experiences and communicate them using poetic devices. On good days, I describe this as Having Discipline (which is a virtue, right? Right?!). On bad days, I feel like I'm not pulling my weight and subsequently neglect writing or editing tasks I need to finish. Then I feel cranky and guilty about THAT.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting, both of you!
Actually a better version of the Gaiman quote was that "writers are always looking for excuses not to write," not do traditional "work." He went on to talk about the importance of needing to be alone. When I've got friends calling me or stopping by for a visit, when there are other things to worry about and I can't stop checking emails and Facebook, I need that distraction-free time you're talking about. There are so many shiny objects to distract me.
ReplyDeleteSo the crucial point you're making is that serious writers should--oh look, shiny!! :P
ReplyDeleteThat exterminator you mentioned gets busier than hell during this time of year and literally takes blank scraps of paper into crawlspaces -- just in case. But I find the guilt, which is real, to be a smaller voice than the doubt, which is very loud when you spend your days, weeks, months, etc ... away from the "writing world." When I do find time to put those scraps of paper near a computer, I have few worries about the sound of my neighbor mowing his lawn (which I really need to do) but I tend to have a lot about the dirt stained next to the words. I block when I let that dirt signal the words must be crap.
ReplyDeleteHighly quotable, Tony. "The guilt is a smaller voice than the doubt." Thank you.
ReplyDelete