Writing and motherhood 1

Famous writers and their daily routines conjure up frosty mornings at desks, the gleam of fresh ink on notebooks, the smell of coffee, the rhythmic, steady click of a keyboard, planned, brisk walks through nature that clear the mind and settle words back into their places,  armchairs and stacks of books with pieces of paper stuffed into them, lonely nights of writing, an admirable, torturous self-discipline. I like exploring the "how" of writing, those intricate, personal details of how words end up as stories. It seems to me an incredibly intimate process, those early drafts and struggles with the page and to glimpse them feels a little voyeuristic.

But of course, I can't look away. I am compelled to watch how it is done, my concentration simmering with an unspoken hope of finding that magic formula. E.B. White famously described his writing habits:

"I never listen to music when I'm working. I haven't that kind of attentiveness, and I wouldn't like it at all. On the other hand, I'm able to work fairly well among ordinary distractions. My house has a living room that is at the core of everything that goes on: it is a passageway to the cellar, to the kitchen, to the closet where the phone lives. There's a lot of traffic. But it's a bright, cheerful room, and I often use it as a room to write in, despite the carnival that is going on all around me.

In consequence, the members of my household never pay the slightest attention to my being a writing man - they make all the noise and fuss they want to. If I get sick of it, I have places I can go. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."

Haruki Murakami wakes at 4am and works for 5 or 6 hours and spends the afternoon going for a run and reading and is in bed by 9pm. Ernest Hemingway writes in the morning too, "as soon after first light as possible". Jodi Piccoult says, "Writer's block is having too much time on your hands. If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page." For Khaled Housseni writing everyday is important, whether one feels like it or not. He points out, "I find that writing a first draft is very difficult and laborious. It is also often quite disappointing. It hardly ever turns out to be what I thought it was, and it usually falls quite short of the ideal I held in my mind when I began writing it. I love to rewrite, however. A first draft is really just a sketch on which I add layer and dimension and shade and nuance and colour." Henry Miller suggests writing to program and not to mood and to focus on only one work at a time.

All good advice. All relevant. Inspirational. Based on this I invent my own working routines. Things I'd like to stick to, or try to stick to. I nod as a read. I work best in the mornings too, but that's where reality sets in. Mornings don't belong to me anymore. The little one stirs around 5 am. I could at best swap scraps of sleep for a half hour stretch before the day begins and drags me with it. Day time naps are unpredictable - I find it unsettling to not know whether I have 10 minutes or an hour to work with. I'm left to consider the meager offerings of the heavy-lidded fuzz of evening writing , all that's left after a day shredded up by more immediate demands. I do get snatches of work done here and there, a blog post, some notes, a bit of editing, but nothing that really requires stamina. It seems that this is what I lack. 

I re-read the beautifully worded descriptions of their daily practices; confident, resolute, measured and controlled. They are recipes and habits that help produce something. That gives me a flutter of excitement. I picture Joan Didion, resolutely alone at her desk, as I read about her routine: 

"I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I've done that day. I can't do it late in the afternoon because I'm too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages. So I spend this hour taking things out and putting other things in. Then I start the next day by redoing all of what I did the day before, following these evening notes. When I'm really working I don't like to go out or have anybody to dinner, because then I lose the hour. If I don't have the hour, and start the next day with just some bad pages and nowhere to go, I'm in low spirits."

An hour alone. I know it will come eventually, but right now it seems as far as the stars. 

It seems that writing, like other creative pursuits (or a career for that matter), needs space. It requires time out of which these writing rituals can then be carved. Time and motherhood are two concepts at constant loggerheads, which gets me wondering whether there might be some truth to Cyril Connolly's oft quoted statement: "There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall."

That might be overly pessimistic (and quite frankly false). There is something about the tectonic shift that motherhood brings that moves you, changes you, and in a way, makes more of you. Experiences are heightened, emotions deepened, the human experience amplified and a new way of looking at the world made possible. Therefore it's not so much a question of whether motherhood dulls creativity (I'd have to argue that it doesn't), but rather a question of diverted time and attention. There, unfortunately, Connolly may have a point.

I know very well how traitorous time behaves around small children and babies to the point where time management becomes a meaningless concept. (You plan on working during nap time, but for whatever reason nap time has now disintegrated into a disastrous series of catnaps, for example). For anyone engrossed in their work, these unpredictable and constant interruptions are a problem. And as much as I would like to think otherwise, I sometimes secretly wonder whether it isn't a choice after all: work or motherhood. Is there really enough of you to be both?

(I will be following up these thoughts with a look at some writers who are also mothers in my next post.)

Sources: here, here and here

Translation

Japanese

I totally needed a word for that (I'm guilty of having piles of books that I keep adding to but haven't gotten around to reading yet!) Some words just can't really be translated because there just isn't a word for it in English. I love that about the diversity of languages. Here are some more fantastic examples found via Buzzfeed.

Filipino

Swedish

Urdu

French

isiZulu

German

A dose of book club

An evening of chatting to my favourite ladies, indulging in a glass of wine, perusing a lovely selection of books and having a good excuse to cook up something delicious was just what was needed after this last week. The kid helped me get ready (I'm proud to say we have a very enthusiastic junior member in the making here). She picked the flowers, set the table and got to stay up a bit late, eating chocolate mousse and listening to the conversation.

Afterwards, in the quiet of guests gone home, sleeping little ones and the twinkling harbour lights watched from the couch on the veranda, I took a moment to consider this idea, put so well by E.B. White:

"A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

A black week

"Extra Yarn" by Marc Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen

It's been a week of ear infections, visits to the doctor, sleepless nights, crying little ones, all happening under the cloud of the unfair dismissal of a dear friend and colleague. A week left hollowed-out and pale with dark rings under its eyes.  Fingers curling around mugs of coffee and tea, trying to stay awake, trying to think my way into the disturbing notion that "it is reckless of lecturers to challenge thoughts about religion." It's a phrase that still haunts me. Is it reckless in the same way that it would have been to challenge thoughts about racial inequality during apartheid? Or reckless to challenge sexist thinking around issues of culture? What about challenging religious beliefs that are hurtful towards others? Where is the line with what we're comfortable with and what we're not and who decides on it?

It's been a week where cereal has been poured into bowls, little ones bathed and dressed and even stories read with the monotonous, halting motions of an automaton. My mind has been elsewhere, clouded with disgust and anger and disillusionment.

Teaching and learning is about the open exchange of ideas. It's an arena that allows ideas to be kicked around a bit and it's an arena where ideas shouldn't be protected from becoming a little bruised. If there is no such space where our personal ideas and beliefs can be met with a fair round of knocks and dents, then how do we ever get the opportunity to know who we really are? How do we ever see beyond our own ways of thinking, our limited, immediate world?

In her very apt article, In college and hiding from scary ideas, Judith Schulewitz writes, "People ought to go to college to sharpen their wits and broaden their field of vision. Shield them from unfamiliar ideas, and they'll never learn the discipline of seeing the world as other people see it. They'll be unprepared for the social and intellectual headwinds that will hit them as soon as they step off the campuses whose climates they have so carefully controlled. What will they do when they hear opinions they've learned to shrink from? If they want to change the world, how will they learn to persuade people to join them?"

The same sentiment that carves out universities as separate spaces from the everyday, is echoed by Prof Jonathan Jansen, whom I greatly admire, "In this state of being open and ready to listen to new ideas, students and professors come to university because they believe that in a democracy based on decency and respect, reason is our prime currency. A university is not a place where you throw tantrums in public, or storm out of lectures on topics you do not like, or hurl insults at ideas that clash with your own.

This means, therefore, that a university must be different from its community when what happens outside a campus is often marked by dangerous conflicts in which libraries are burnt down, tyres set alight in the streets, foreign nationals robbed and killed, racial and tribal bonds formed, and brutal acts of mob justice meted out.

To the extent that a university produces future leaders in a democracy, students must learn to be counter-cultural - forming habits of the mind and learning acts of duty that run in the opposite direction to what happens in the broader society.

A university does not bear allegiance to any external authority. It is not a church, even though many of the inhabitants of this place of higher learning might come from church communities. Nor does a university owe any allegiance to a political party or a government."

And just like that a wonderful teacher disappears. Years of stimulating discussions, open debate, of finding pathways into knowledge and experience, of first steps navigating the maze of tricky, uncomfortable topics present in our world, have all been sacrificed for the safe, the mundane, the watered-down, the non-offensive.

The Crucible

Source

I want to open myself!... I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him, I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!    (Abigail, end of Act 1)

Arthur Miller's The Crucible so powerfully captures the religious fervor and mindless persecution that drove the Salem witch-hunt of 1692. I remember studying this play, sitting with it in my lap and reading of the unfolding madness and religious hysteria. I remember thinking how can any rational person with a mind of their own get so consumed that they become blind to logic and reason and turn on each other? It engrossed me to the point that I spent quite a bit of time reading about the historical context.

In a note on historical accuracy, Arthur Miller writes, "I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history. The fate of each character is exactly that of his historical model, and there is no one in the drama who did not play a similar - and in some cases exactly the same - role in history." It is chilling to re-live, through this play, the "crying-out" by Abigail and the other girls which unleashes the hysteria that engulfs the town of Salem and ends in executions. "We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!" says John Proctor in Act 2 after the girls accuse his wife of witchcraft. Reason is replaced by superstition, empathy by revenge, openness of mind by fear.  

It's been a while since I read this play, but I picked it up again this week, wrapped in thoughts about how ideas frighten people, how their foreign shapes stick uncomfortably in the sides of people's minds like thorns. Part of that reaction is natural; we don't want to be uncomfortable, we don't want to be scared, we want to remain where it's safe. The problem begins when anything that pricks or prods us is resisted and viewed with suspicion. That troubles me. We enter that dangerous, monochromatic landscape of antipodean concepts: black/white, right/wrong, good/evil. In reality, ideas are more nuanced; more often than not they sit somewhere in between clearly defined places. Ideas are a journey and if we are afraid to take that journey we can't learn, we can't grow, we deny ourselves the opportunity of understanding a complex, colourful world.

If we don't take that journey, we risk much. We stagnate, our views narrow and wither, we find ourselves stuck. What is out there is encountered as a threat, as either right or wrong and finally condemned. So what separates us from Abigail's actions, from her hysterical "crying-out", from the madness that engulfed a community?

I'd like to think that it is reading and education. But these are useless unless we are open to them. This was highlighted by a recent article by Jonathan Jansen on tertiary education in South Africa. I read it with a renewed sense of hope that we have indeed come a long way from the darker, more hysterical events of our history. He writes,

"A university is a place in which you are supposed to feel uncomfortable as your views are tested and challenged by other views. If a university simply exists to confirm your culture, your language, your faith and your habits, then it will decidedly not prepare you for the kind of world you will enter on graduation. In other words, you will be a social and cultural misfit in a changing, complex and globalised world."

Warning or guideline, if we take heed of these words, then it seems that we are ready for the journey into new ideas.

The raw material out of which literature is crafted...

Recently, I've had my nose in The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker and so far I've found it to be a sensible, entertaining and practical writing guide, but then I'm a fan. It's a reminder (for me anyway) to trim back on adjectives and adverbs but not so much as to prevent anything interesting from growing. I think one of my favourite parts has to be Pinker's advice on using a thesaurus, "I write with a thesaurus, mindful of the advice I once read in a bicycle repair manual on how to squeeze a dent out of a rim with Vise-Grip pliers:'Do not get carried away with the destructive potential of this tool'."  That made me giggle.

I love the way style guides try to capture that elusive quality of language, that something, almost like a taste that the reader can savour and return to for more. It's such a difficult thing to put your finger on. In the seminal The Elements of Style, Strunk and White in 1959 remind us of the intangible yet very present nature of writing style, “here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind?... There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rule by which writers may shape their course.”

This has also made me reflect on writing as a craft, as something that can be shaped and influenced to take on a particular form or tone. Where does that come from? Does it come from hours of rearranging words on a page until it matches some internal echo of what we've read before? Writers are readers first of all, absorbing the language of others, internalising ideas and words like avid, obsessive collectors and creating inventories to draw on in the future. Surely writing has to be built on that and cannot just materialise out of nothing?

And where do style guides fit into this? Books and advice on writing? They prod and poke at prose, nudging it into a particular form. But can good writing really be taught? I have no consistent answer to that question (it often depends on the day). Sometimes yes, it seems that writing is a process like any other that needs to be trained and mastered, that it becomes more refined with practice and with reading. But on other days, it feels like the opposite, that it's either there or not, black or white, like some sudden, romantic gift.

While thinking about all this, I came across Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose via an article on Brainpickings, which affirms that intimate link between reading and writing. Francine Prose's advice to readers is to slow down and pay attention to the craft of writing by examining "the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel...the brilliant characterisation in Geore Eliot's Middlemarch...and to look to John Le Carre for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue."

Francine Prose writes beautifully,

"With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. . . . it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer’s skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything to do with those choices."

Whether it can be learned or not, I don't completely know, but good writing does just what Prose deems necessary: it encourages slowing down and savouring the language out of which it is built.

Rainy days

Rain finally breaks the heat, releasing it out of a ground that simmers and steams under those first heavy drops. I watch from the veranda as shrouds over the harbour bring the downpour closer, closing the view like a grey curtain. The whipped-wet greenery and the scent of earth mingled with summer hint at changing seasons. Is the heat finally over?