Frozen Toothpaste

It has been more than a month since I posted here. And before a short streak of three relatively-consecutive posts, it had been nearly a month before that.

I say this not to apologize — it’s been far too long for that to be anything but hollow — but to demonstrate my point.

Around the start of June of this year, I broke the habit that had kept me filling words into this space on a regular basis. There were a number of reasons for this, not the least of which was a loss of time, ideas, and the feeling that it was necessary to write five times a week, Monday through Friday.

Breaking that habit — that constant pattern that didn’t let me escape without feeling guilty about how I wasn’t keeping to the plan — meant that I was free to interact with this space as I liked until such a time as I reestablished a habit of writing with a certain pattern of regularity. This certainly was a freeing act, but it’s also one that makes you suddenly look down and wonder what happened to your former prolific self.

I type this in a state of awe that I was ever able to write so much of, if not top quality stuff, at least six to eight paragraphs a day that I wasn’t embarrassed by. It seems like a stranger has replaced that prolific writer. Or perhaps that that prolific person was himself a stranger.

I don’t have a stirring conclusion, and my purpose isn’t to tell you to exercise three times a week so that you’ll have good health for far more years than you otherwise would. Though I certainly wouldn’t want to discourage you from physical fitness, I’m not in the business of telling people how to live their lives. But I’d guess that someone who is in that business is now trying desperately to convince a roomful of people of this fact that I’ve now learned on my own, through a series of months: Habits matter.

That’s not meant to judge habits. Some habits — lying regularly and recklessly, acting violently toward others — are galling. Some are undoubtedly bad, but not nearly so ugly. Your habit of having a cookie with lunch may not be doing your waist much help, but it’s hardly as bad as many other habits. And maybe you’ve got some incredibly beneficial habits, like sleeping eight hours a night, exercising regularly, and eating well.

Nor do I wish to encourage dogmatic adherence to your useful habits. Even those can be unnecessarily limiting if you spend too long fearing the impact that breaking them will have.

I just want to write this down so that I never forget: Habits matter.

In school, Sunday’s the day where you have to make up for the procrastinating you did all weekend. Out of school, Sunday’s only the day where you recognize that you’ve done nothing all weekend.

Surely this doesn’t hold true for everyone, but my weekends tend to naturally fill themselves with consumption of media. All the things I didn’t get to read, watch, or listen to during the week become the priority during a distraction-less weekend. As such, the whole weekend can easily be consumed by the act of consuming.

If Clay Shirkey’s assertions are to be believed — and I’m not saying they are — in previous decades all free time went to consuming. In the pre-radio age, it went mostly to consuming alcohol. In the television age, it went mostly to consuming sitcoms. But while Mr. Shirkey’s certainly right that television’s roles as the thing people do with down time is waning, consumption still plays a large part in modern existence.

Today one isn’t restricted to watching what’s on television or listening to what’s on the radio, or reading what’s on paper and in possession, but we still consume a great deal. There’s little doubt that young people watch less television than they used to. But they also have the ability to spend hours in front of YouTube, a different-but-similar dummy box.

The most interesting contention that Mr. Shirkey makes about the future is that we’ll be creating more and consuming less. It’s certainly a possible trend, but it’s doubtful that we’ll move from “all free time being devoted to TV” to “all free time being devoted to creating.” After all, one must consume things in order to create. Things created in a vacuum are usually uninteresting rehashes of painfully common ideas. (Something with which I’m intimately familiar…)

Surely one can go too far in consuming. A quick guesstimation says that of the 15 hours I was awake Sunday, 11 of them were devoted to the act of consuming media. Surely I learned a lot and laughed a lot but by the end I had a bad case of consumption fatigue.

It’s possible that the mythical people who used to constantly watch TV in their free time never had a bout of consumption fatigue, but you can count me a doubter.

They probably didn’t combat consumption fatigue by creating, but it’s possible that did combat it. Because creating was a harder task, people could spend more time doing tasks that were not explicitly either. Cooking from a recipe is both an act of consumption (of the recipe) and creation (or foodstuffs). So too is knitting, sewing, or drawing while watching television an intermediate between the two. Then of course there’s running, hiking, biking, walking, and playing, all of which are neither consuming nor creating by any traditional understanding of the words.

The fact is, we’re not moving from a world of consuming to one of creating. At best, we’re shifting the balance slightly. It’s easier to create and share things today than at any time in the past. Today anyone can write a blog, edit a wiki, create digital art, or mash-up two old things.

But everyone has experienced creation fatigue as “writer’s block.” Or procrastination. Or a general feeling that “it’s just not coming.” We’ll never be able to create infinitely without encountering these roadblock.

People, too, know consumption fatigue. Rarely do they identify it as such, but that general feeling of needing to get out of the house is one of many possible misdiagnoses of the problem. And I’d guess that it’s no more or less common today than it was in the past.

I don’t think the ratio of consuming and creating will change much in the future. Surely more will be publicly shared, but I’m not certain much more time will be spent on non-consuming behavior than has been in the past. And despite some bouts of consumption fatigue, I’m pretty sure I’m fine with that.

Some days I have nothing planned for this site and start to worry about it far too much. In worrying about it far too much, almost every idea I have feels forced. The ideas feels forced because (1) they are a little forced, and (2) this pointless stress tends to make me hyper-aware of any possible imperfection that can seep into what I’m doing. It’s not until a deadline finally appears to really be approaching quickly that I begin to accept anything that seems the least bit feasible.

Some days, yes today is one of those some days, I like to try odd devices that I wouldn’t usually use. Repetition is a favorite. I start consecutive paragraphs with the same word or sentence. In school, I learned that authors sometimes use this to emphasize a point. I just use it because it makes it easier to start the next paragraph.

Some days starting that next paragraph is the only thought in my head. Though the hardest “next paragraph” is usually the first one, it’s sometimes the third. You see, with the faintest spark of an idea the first paragraph is probably already written before one begins writing. There’s usually at least enough extra from the spark that launched the first paragraph to fill up a second. But by the third paragraph, if that idea really was just a faint spark, it’s likely that the idea’s dead.

Some days I push through that difficult third paragraph. If I can manage to make a third paragraph that feels alright, there’s a good chance that the next paragraphs will all come out all right and I’ll be able to sew the thing up into a nice enough package that I’m satisfied.

But some days that third paragraph doesn’t come. Some days the idea I had really was only a two-paragraph idea. In my time writing I’ve at least learned that a two-paragraph idea doesn’t get better if you try to make it look like an eight-paragraph idea. When teachers gave you back papers with a C or below, there’s a good chance it was because you tried to write your whole paper with a few-paragraph idea. Teachers have a keen eye for ideas stretched too far.

Some days I wonder what a teacher would give me for this. This short essay whose sole excuse for over-stretching an idea is that that idea is what the whole thing is built on. From the title down through every paragraph you clearly see an idea being stretched and stretched and stretched. I think that some teachers would think it’s clever, this stretched-out idea. Others would probably give it a D and a curt note about trying harder next time.

Some day I’ll win those teachers over. Perhaps with a device like I just used there. I broke the repetition. Maybe now that teacher who gave me a D would say, “Oh, he knows he’s stretched this idea very thin. A+.”

Then again, maybe not.

Syma Sees (AND)

Finding Forrester was one of those movies. The kind that I enjoy, but can easily see why so many others don’t. It’s the kind of movie light on logic or reality, and heavy on the emotion. And Sean Connery’s character is, well, odd.

However you or I feel about it, there’s one thing I do remember. Sean Connery’s character looking up from the typewriter and saying, “You know what the best feeling is? When you’ve finished your first draft…” He goes on to say that it’s reading the first draft that he likes. That leads me to think that whoever wrote that doesn’t write or at least doesn’t write like I do.

It’s not reading the first draft that’s “the best feeling,” it’s right after you’ve done it. After you’ve gotten all the thoughts out but haven’t gone back to determine if they’re all in order and said as well as they can be. The reality that your writing is flawed, which is what the first reading always unveils to me, is usually a time of disappointment.

The first draft — most of the time — is the easiest to write. If it’s a good topic — one about which I have something to say — it comes quickly and easily. And afterwards, there is a warm afterglow that might merit, well, a cartwheel.

After a first draft, at least one that comes easy, there’s a certain confidence. A self-assurance that comes from knowing that you said what you wanted to say exactly as you wanted to say it. Perhaps, later, you’ll realize that many of your phrases are awkward and that your message is a little muddy, but before you read it you’re not aware of that.

For now, all you know is that it’s done. That deed that at other times takes all the time and effort you’ve got has been completed. That weight that made you pick up the pen or keyboard in the first place is gone, and you have the opportunity to relish the new-found lightness.

But those are the good first drafts. The first drafts that come easy. There is another kind. And the other kind are, I would contend, the kind of first draft you shouldn’t be writing. The kind of first draft that takes studious effort and prodding and pulling and suffering. If the first draft doesn’t come easy, it shouldn’t come at all. (Unless, of course, you’ve got a deadline and no control over your topic.)

Perhaps I’m being unrealistically absolute. No, I am being unrealistically absolute. But after you finally write the first first draft that comes easy after fifty that come hard, you’ll know why I’m so willing to be unrealistically absolute.

This is the second part of a two-part argument that I seem to be constantly having with myself. The first half, Writing is Wasteful, was posted on Tuesday.

bookish in north park (CC)

The idea that all writings a copy of a copy of a copy is easy and convenient. And because of that, we should be especially careful about accepting it without careful thought.

Surely it’s easy to come to this conclusion. Try this: read five random pieces of coverage or commentary on the presidential campaign written in any 24 hour window. You’re more likely to win the lottery than to find that those five pieces are all innovative, useful, and distinct. This problem is only magnified if you try to watch more than thirty minutes of continuous campaign coverage on television.

But — and this is critical — the “conventional wisdom” which all those pieces are likely regurgitating probably came from some speck of innovative writing or commentary. It doesn’t randomly coalesce without someone conceiving of it, translating it in a form that can be shared (read: words), and then transmitting it to others. That is the crucial tool of writing and the crucial thing that your example seems to miss.

And the idea that others may have spoken more eloquently of something in the past by no means says that others are reading what they wrote. It’s hard to argue that Shakespeare — to the extent that such a man existed — wrote some of the best tragedies of all time. But there are only so many people who will read or watch a Shakespeare play. However, reimagined by a modern author in a modern setting, such stories can be — and are — understood by a far larger contingent of people.

Nor is this to say that the only modern writing worth doing are adaption of great works of the past. There is also some value in writing that correctly harnesses something about the times in which we live. Whether fiction or non-fiction, there’s great historical value in such works.

But they’re also useful for their time. Good writing can be an incredibly useful — if not the only — way to spread valuable ideas about the state of the world. Abraham Lincoln famously called Uncle Tom’s Cabin “the book that started this great war.” Writing has undeniable transformative power, and though not all of it can start wars, all of it can have at least some impact.

All of this is essentially to say that writing is important and useful to the extent that it resonates with others and allows for better understanding of the past, present, and future. Surely there’s value in writing well for a small audience, even if you don’t see it at the time.

It’s easy to get down when you toil without external reward or recognition, but that’s no reason to drag the whole act in which you’re participating down into the mud.