The past week or so I’ve struggled with my blog-posts. Each day I’ve felt I had nothing to say, and when I did figure out something to talk about, the words flowed like chilled molasses, thick and clumpy. Each day, of course, I ended up posting something, and each day this “something” was perfectly adequate: good enough for the blogosphere. But there has been stirring within me a restless discontent, a sense that I don’t like the direction my blog-prose is headed.
I’ve considered taking a day or two off from writing; I’ve considered hanging up a virtual “Gone Fishing” sign. But in the end, I’ve decided that a break from writing is exactly the last thing I need. The problem, you see, isn’t that I’ve been writing too much; the problem, you see, is that I’ve been writing too little.
It’s Finals Week here at Keene State, and today is the last day of Finals Week. Everything is all set-up for graduation on Sunday, Mother’s Day: it’s a cherished tradition that KSC has graduation on Mother’s Day every year, a silent nod to the parents who help make students’ graduation dreams come true. Very few students have exams on the last day of Finals Week; most profs cancel these exams or collect take-home essays early. So when I, a stickler for custom, proctored my last exam this morning, Parker Hall was like a morgue.
As my students sat writing their exams, I too sat writing, by hand, as I was formerly and regularly wont to do. This, you see, is the source of my current blog-drought. For the past couple of weeks going on a month or two or more, I’ve been writing almost entirely online. Although I’ve journaled occasionally by hand–and although I’ve duly written with my students for five timed minutes at the start of every Expository Writing class–I’ve fallen completely out of the habit of writing by hand in my notebook first thing in the morning. These days I read student papers first thing, or I check email first thing, or I blog first thing, or find something (anything!) to do first thing that doesn’t involve setting pen to paper.
Although at a certain level writing is writing regardless of the instrument, I consider my longhand writing to be of a different sort than the typed-on-computer variety. A reader, of course, probably wouldn’t see any difference between an essay I drafted by hand and one I composed on the keyboard, but experientially they feel entirely different. When I type, there’s always this thought at the back of my mind that someone will eventually read this. There’s always a consciousness of audience, a need to get it right. When I scribble in my notebook, though, there’s no sense of audience: nobody but me pages through my notebooks, and even I can barely read my journal-scribble. So when I write with pen to paper, the psychological sensation is entirely different: “Here I am just being me, whoever in the hell that is.” When I write with pen to paper, there’s a sense of freedom I don’t feel when I set fingers to key; when I write with pen to paper, I feel free from what Mary Austin calls “the looking and the seeming,” the need to impress others with external appearance and compliance with social norms.
As I scribbled in my notebook at today’s exam, as my students scribbled silently in their own blue-books, it occurred to me that writing with pen to paper is my own silent, sacred space, a place that resides not at the end of some far-off purple hallway but which is both portable and potent, thin sliced leaves of heaven held bound in black oilcloth in my bag. When I open that silent book and set silent pen to page, I’m no longer in a second floor classroom in Parker Hall in Keene, NH: instead, I’ve transcended space and time to visit a realm where words are real and ideas reign supreme, a place where the past is present and the distant draws near. Heaven touches earth as the tip of my pen scratches that blank receptive page, the sound of a nib-scratch being none other than the Music of the Spheres.
I’ve moved beyond seeing journaling as a habit and have come to see it as a ritual, a religious act that helps bring a spot of sanity into an otherwise insane world. It is my own private way of checking in with a soul that others seldom see, my own way of checking in with a Universe that we all (myself included) spend most of our lives busily avoiding. With pen in hand I hear the sound of fluourescent classroom lights humming overhead; with pen in hand I feel through the floorboards a caffeine-addled student’s foot tap. With pen in hand I remind myself to be open to both the Infinite and the Infinitesimal, the demons and Divinity that lurk in daily detail. With pen in hand I stop the flow of time to move backward, forward, then back again, and with pen in hand I am the master of all I see, feel, touch, and imagine. With pen in hand the world I see and the world I imagine both exist in full-blooded clarity, side-by-side, equal and entire.
It is a massive act of faith, this setting of pen to paper…and so too is the act of setting fingers to keys. Whether you light your altar with matches or a butane lighter, the candles burn just as bright: pen on paper and fingers on keys are equally efficacious. In the end, it is the act of writing, the act of withdrawing into that private, silent space, that does the trick: it is a massive act of faith, this belief that “nothing to say” will magically, ultimately, turn into “something said” if you keep on at it, word by word, articulating in darkness, day after day, with faith that the Muse will arrive in her own due time, eventually.
May 7, 2004 at 12:22 pm
I really enjoyed your reflections about the distinction between publicly typed writing and privately hand-written writing. They really are different! You’re absolutely right about this, that a writer needs to write. Personally, my demon is having too much to say. Where to start? Who would want to read it? What’s the best form? Where to start? Sometimes it seems disorienting and overwhelming. Taking a break, stepping back and shifting the frame sometimes help.
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May 7, 2004 at 1:18 pm
there is just something much more satisfying about scribbling on paper than pecking out on a keyboard.
as an aside, we are expected to be slammed on sunday between graduation and mother’s day.
i’m thinking of calling in sick, knowing that if i did that, i’d be fired. and, really, is that such a bad thing?
by the way, we need to lunch again soon – liquid or otherwise. : )
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May 7, 2004 at 1:32 pm
You’re absolutely right that putting pen to paper in a private journal feels different from typing on a keyboard – not just physically. There’s something more internal about writing with pen to paper. If I want to write about something that is deeper within me or if I want to write more creatively – with more of the senses involved, with more metaphor – I need to write by hand in my journal first. Later I can take that and fashion it at the keyboard, which has it all over a written journal in the way of being able to move stuff around!
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May 7, 2004 at 1:32 pm
I so often read of people’s profound connections and distinctions and am jealous that I do not benefit from them in my own life. I never properly learned to write by hand and so can do it for no more than half an hour without cramping and giving in. This essay did not make me jealous though. It could have, maybe if I was in a different mood, or if lorianne was when she wrote it.
I’m left thinking that we all have our own profound connections and distinicitons, and that many may be jealous of mine. But mostly I’m left feeling camaraderie because I know the power I have ‘with pen in hand’, or for me, with fingers to keys.
In relation to the beginning of the essay. I am not a regular blogger, epecially compared to you, but I often dont want to write. When that happenes I choose to write differently. Different setting, different topic, different blog, different style, different computer file. For some reason this always rejuvinates me and my writing. I don’t think anyone would feel abandoned, and I don’t think you would suffer if you let your rigid schedule slide and wrote differently for a couple of days.
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May 7, 2004 at 6:50 pm
This post is sublime. I am guilty of the same thing: not writing for me, but only for “they”. Thank you for your exquisite rendering of the sacred space.
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May 8, 2004 at 8:17 am
Sometimes when I read what you’ve written, the power of your words begins with the first sentence, and carries right on through to the very last sentence. For me, this one was different. This one was spare and struggling in the beginning, as if you deliberately chose to allow an awkwardness to appear in order that we might tangibly feel the struggle of having nothing to write. It seemed a little less cohesive, and a bit forced. Which is exactly what it feels like when the words won’t come.
Whether this was done deliberately, or whether it was the visual pathway to “warming up to the subject”, it added value to the entire piece as far as I was concerned. It was like taking a journey … from the beginning, where things were a bit rough, to the middle, where things became full-blooded and resonated with power, to the end, where the points were gently driven home … it was exactly as the jounrey is supposed to be, in every sense. Your words, and YOUR WORDS, both told the same story.
Pen to paper? For me, to do so is torture. Yet your description of the sanctity of this act makes me wonder if I might not want to give it another chance. Thank you, as always, for inspiring me to think outside my keyboard.
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May 8, 2004 at 4:53 pm
Hi, everyone–thanks for your comments!
Denny, I can commiserate with the doubts you mention, especially “Who would want to read it.” This is why scribbling in my notebook is so helpful to me: since no one *is* going to read it, I don’t have to worry about impressing anyone. If I want to babble on for 6 pages about clipping my toenails, I can! And almost always, in the middle of such babbling, I “say” something that I would have never caught on paper if I hadn’t been sitting there with a pen in hand.
Kathleen, you’re right: you’re going to be a very busy girl tomorrow! I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. Ah, that means you’ll *earn* some sort of liquid refreshment afterward, right? We’re planning to visit family next week (Tuesday through the weekend), so I promise to take you out for your birthday (belated!) when we get back! đŸ˜‰
Leslee, good to hear I’m not the only one who “feels” a difference. There’s something viscerally physical about the scratch of a pen, the feel of the paper. At this point, I actually feel as if my left hand has a mind of its own, that when it feels the heft of the pen it starts thinking, stewing, composing things *I’d* never say! Typing works, too, but it’s not the same tactile experience.
Hank, you’re right about connections & distinctions: once we start comparing our own with another’s, we’re in trouble! The key is to find what works *for you* and then do it. If typing works, do it. If writing with crayons works, do it. If writing with a fountain pen works, do it.
I’ve always secretly envied people who can *draw* and thus illustrate their journals with doodles, sketches, etc. But since my gifts don’t lie that way, I’ve learned to admire their gifts while using my own.
Regarding the need to take a break, I think it’s largely due to the fact that I’m buried in grading: once I turn in grades on Monday, the world will be a larger, lighter place. This sort of discontent descends at the end of each semester, so I just need to persevere. And since we’re planning to visit family this next week, I’ll necessarily have to take a few days off from the blog: it’ll be there when we get back!
Loretta, thanks so much for the kind words. Wherever & whenever we find it, we *all* need a space (even a tiny one) for ourselves apart from the demands of an audience. I hope you occasionally make wonderfully colorful paintings that you *don’t* post to your blog, that instead you hoard to yourself for your private soul’s sake.
ntexas, let me assure you that any pattern or progression you saw in this post was entirely accidental: it always is! When I get typing, the writing always seems to take itself in its own direction, and when I’m good I simply let it rather than fighting it.
I *often* find that the beginnings of pieces (blog-posts or otherwise) start out choppy and then “ease” into stride. I often tell students to lop off the first paragraph or two: often it isn’t until the 2nd or 3rd paragraph that we find our “real” subject. Although I don’t really do that here in the blog, I often do that in my revised writing, going *back* to the intro after I’ve figured at (hopefully!) at essay’s end what in the heck I was trying to say.
Thanks all around for the comments!
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