Compartmentalization and Integration (Writing, Blogging, and Mothering)

When I wrote my article about productivity, I got a lot of comments from other writers about how they measure their productivity, and I was very interested to see the many ways that writing figures into people's lives. Most of the folks I know who are writers are not what you'd call full-time writers, but fit their writing in somehow. Because of the demands of my own life, I fit writing in amidst the demands of running the household and caring for my kids, who are currently in Pre-K and in 1st grade. It's a big juggling act. But I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk about how my different activities - writing, blogging, and mothering - actually interact and support one another rather than simply having to be compartmentalized into different boxes.

Mothering teaches me new things. I am always fascinated by watching my kids grow, learn and change, and I'm always happy when I find this gives me inspiration to blog. Blogging has gotten easier as I've gotten the hang of it, but I'm always looking for new topics, and my children often provide me with great ones. They also are inspired by my blogging (they tell me often that they want blogs of their own). My kids also provide me with interesting writing ideas - as sort of an ongoing research project, for the most part, but also because sometimes they suggest things to me that speak to me enough for me to include them. My son, for example, was the one to suggest that my first aliens be gecko-like. He takes great pride in that. My daughter has got me thinking about whether I should attempt a children's book - and believe me, that's quite a feat. The kids also support me in my writing, and console me when I get rejections.

Blogging helps my writing. It allows me to think through things "out loud," and question my own assumptions, as well as getting outside commenters' thoughts on my ideas. Just today I was thinking over a blog post on world details and the metaphors that characters use for their lives, and I had a terrific idea about the way that people might understand "the Pit of Darkness," which is the rough equivalent of hell for the undercaste of my Varin world. I think some of them think of it as an afterlife, while others think of it as the ongoing condition of their lives. This reflects a fundamental split in attitudes about the religion they follow, which makes perfect sense in the history of the world as I've designed it (the afterlife folks are more influenced by the "mainstream" religion of the Stargazers, while the condition folks are more true to the ancient tradition of the undercaste religion itself - not that they know this necessarily).

Writing helps my blogging. I need lots of topics to keep blogging like this, and when I can blog about story design, research, characterization, writing process, etc. - basically, anything that I'm doing right now in my writing - it helps me.

I'm a very busy person, and I know I'm not the only one. But I suppose the point of this post is that compartmentalization can only take you so far. I see teachers in my local school who cringe at the idea of adding anything to the curriculum because they already have too much to do. These concerns are real, and I definitely feel overloaded a lot. Sometimes compartmentalization is the answer - I quite jealously guard the time I spend on writing and blogging, just because it's impractical for me to be sitting in front of the computer during family time. But often, integration is the answer. I can talk through my writing ideas with my kids, and I find they have excellent views that can illuminate my thoughts. I can think writing while I clean house. I can take inspiration from my children's behavior, their learning process, or from what they're doing at school. I can blog about my writing and my family, and enrich my thoughts about each.

It's something to think about.

Productivity and the Muse

There are lots of reasons why a writer might feel discouraged. Rejection is a big one. Writer's block (or the phenomena that pass for it) might be another. I personally have a difficult time with productivity, or to be specific, how little of it I feel I have.

I'm not fair to myself. Does this sound familiar?

Writers have different writing styles, and they have different writing processes. My process happens to involve an enormous amount of background work for each story, followed by planning and scene-sketching - for the whole story if it's a short story, and for at least a section of several chapters if it's a novel. My plan can flex, but I like to know where I'm going.

Sometimes it's a good thing that I have lots of background work to do, because this kind of work is stuff I can do while I'm doing other things. And I have lots of other things to do. Typically I get three hours a day to write, five days a week. The hardest part is that I can't always count on having this time - unpredictable things like illness will derail my process for several days at a time.

I write scene by scene. When I have a draft, I get critique. I usually then have to take the draft apart on first revision and change something major (how major depends on the story). I write stories that go somewhere, that have character arcs for multiple characters. It takes me forever. I watch people around me talking about all their story submissions and/or acceptances and I know that's not something I'll be able to achieve for a number of years, or possibly ever. Even if my time goes up, I'm still not going to change into a flash fiction writer overnight.

I imagine though that other people experience different kinds of frustrations with their productivity. Like writing a whole bunch of stories and not having them land anywhere. Or having to trunk things because they don't know what to do with them or where to sell them.

The thing is, the Muse works differently for different people. I find if I try to change my style, I can't function at all. To some extent you have to go with that.

On the other hand, I have learned some things that help. One is that I've learned to keep my Muse awake - i.e. not to lose my drive and inspiration - by making sure to do at least one writing thing every day. That includes pulling out what I've written last and looking over sections of it. This makes it tons easier to resume what I was doing when the free time presents itself.

I also had some really great advice the other day from my friend Deborah Ross (of Darkover fame). I'll paraphrase what she said. She told me when you feel like your productivity is down, you may be counting the wrong kinds of progress. Getting a story finished is wonderful, but if that's the only kind of achievement that counts, you'll spend a lot of time frustrated. Just keeping the Muse awake should count as progress. Each sentence you write should count as progress. The important elements of worldbuilding and planning should not go unrecognized on the progress-meter either. All of these things contribute.

It was really good advice. I can't say I've stopped feeling frustrated by the unpredictability of my writing time, but counting progress differently has helped a lot - so just in case you've been feeling frustrated too, I thought I should pass this on.