Sarapen and I have had a bit of an ongoing discussion about writing as a process. Procrastination as a moment within that process has been a frequent topic… ;-P In our most recent exchange, we’ve also gestured at the ritual dimension of writing - the ways we need our time and space organised, in order to be productive - and the emotional dimensions - the familiar feelings through which we cycle when we write.

I’m not sure how typical I am on the ritual side of things: individual works tend to have their writing rituals, as do connected periods of writing. These rituals change fairly radically over time, though - mainly because my broader schedule always seems to be in flux and, if I were too inflexible in the conditions I required for writing, I’d never get any writing done… At the moment, for example, I have carved out a consistent period for writing in the early morning. What I write in this period has usually been sketched, or dot pointed, or at least thought about in some way, the evening before - I make a decision that tomorrow morning I’d like to write something on [x], try to get my thinking to a point where I can begin to feel a bit stuck (I’ll return to this in a bit), and then sleep on it… In the morning, if I’m heading to the office, I usually stop at a particular coffee shop and write there for a while, as I’m less likely to be interrupted, these days, than if I go into the office. If I’m staying home, I deposit my laptop onto the arm of the couch, and write while curled up there… Either way, I tend to spend several hours writing during this early morning period. My day now feels out of joint if it can’t start this way.

This particular constellation of writing rituals is very amusing to me as, even up to several months ago, I had always insisted that I was someone who could write only in intensive and all-encompassing bursts - that advice we all receive to set aside some time for writing every day seemed quite sound, but I could never see how it would work for me. Instead, I’ve generally written in enormous manic cycles - spending weeks writing massive pieces in an all-consuming process that excluded everything else (including, for the most part, sleep, as I would continue tossing and turning with fragments of my text all night long). Then, the work completed, I would collapse (at least as far as writing was concerned) for several weeks while the rest of the world came back into focus for a while.

This manic approach requires very tolerant friends - and is simply too much to ask from a child. So I decided to force myself into a new pattern - and have discovered that it is actually so much more pleasant than what I used to do… ;-P The things we need others to motivate ourselves to learn… ;-P

Aside from these ritualised times set aside for writing, I also do quite a lot of incidental writing during the day. I’ve taken to keeping a list of the things I’m intending to write - if a space opens up in the day, I’ll generally work on one these topics. And I do a lot of incidental writing while reading, as the text opens up something I want to reflect on more systematically than reading alone will allow me to do - a lot of blog entries emerge at some remove or another from this process.

The one “ritual” I can’t seem to shake, though, is the emotional swing that occurs when I write. I mentioned above the issue of getting to the point where I feel “stuck” in my writing, and then sleeping on the issue. I don’t know how other people experience their writing - how consciously in control of the process they feel. Personally, I feel like I have reasonably conscious control over how I am expressing what I am trying to say, but very little conscious control over the problem-solving dimension of my writing. Generally, if I’m writing a major piece, I am doing so because I feel like I’m on the verge of figuring something out, but need a better feel for the contours of the problem to push me past the line - writing is the process that gives me the feel for those contours, because it helps me become aware of what I haven’t yet understood: if I can’t express it, I don’t “get” it, and so I know I need to dig in and do more thorough work on the problem.

This leads, though, to a dynamic that still feels very odd to me, although I’ve never written serious works in any other way: I will think or write enough to realise that I have some fundamental confusion that I can’t seem to break past. I will then, essentially, pass the problem off to whatever part of myself it is that figures these things out - if it’s a simple problem, sleeping on it will probably do (at the expense, often, of a restful sleep, but at least I’ll have some sense of breakthrough in the morning). More complex problems, though, can be much more draining - I seem to continue working on the problem in the back of my mind for as long it takes, waking or sleeping. And the process of doing this saps energy from everything else. It’s not quite depression, but it feels a bit like I’ve been exiled to take care of mundane existence, while the better part of me hides itself away to work on more interesting and important things… ;-P My existence feels significantly shadowed until I’ve worked through the underlying conceptual problem.

This emotional dynamic intersects oddly with the fact that I’m now writing a lot more, and a lot more consistently. These intense, drained periods of trying to figure things out used to be somewhat cordoned off from everyday life, because I wrote in such intensive and isolated bursts. Now I’m having to try to juggle this reaction to my work, while I also manage a heavy and ongoing load of other responsibilities. Sometimes, these other responsibilities are actually helpful, in that they provide a bit of an emotional buffer and - in the case of activities like teaching and the reading group specifically - often seem to steal a bit of my energy back from the otherwise very emotionally demanding problem solving process. I also, though, worry that I come across as very distracted and inattentive - and feel a bit guilty for not giving other activities my full attention, in a very literal sense… I’ve never worked out, though, a way to write without this strange fractionalisation of self as an integral part of the process. I’ve always been curious whether this is how other people experience the writing process, as well (with the caveat that I’m not speaking here about forms of writing where you express content you have already mastered, but about writing used as a means to break through problems you haven’t yet solved).