Do it

I asked myself the other day if, am I still a writer?

Inciting incident: I haven’t published in a year and a half and am itching to release my new work.

Conflict: I can’t right now.

Result: I’m stuck. Lulling. Pacing a hypothetical waiting room while the masters of my fate deliberate over what to do with me.

Conflict #2 (result of result): I haven’t properly written in over a month.

So… Am I still a writer?

Let’s rephrase the question with the conflict in mind: Am I still a writer when I no longer write?

Descartes would say no, but Hemingway would say yes. I'm not sure whose hypothetical (and deceased) opinion matters most here. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to answer the question when looking at all the criteria. It’s paradoxical. If I am only a writer when I write, but I cannot write without inspiration (which is derived from time spent not writing), then how does one actively cultivate the inspiration necessary to write? In fact, if being a writer necessitates the constant act of writing, then how is anyone a writer?

All this thinking sounds needless, but thinking, much like writing, requires us to filter the noise in order to reach the gold. Aaron Sorkin, much more bluntly, showcased this process to a class of film students by joyfully expressing how “very bad” all of their ideas were until, finally, they began to propose some “decent” ones.

Taking these month-long breaks from writing, I actively remind myself, is a symptom of fear. Not laziness or lack of discipline. Fear is a killer of creativity, which makes sense. Anxiety is your mind’s way of telling you to sniff the air for smoke and watch out for the tiger in the bushes. My point is, I doubt Oscar Wilde was running for his life when he came up with Dorian Gray.

But we must face reality. Escape the loops of noisy thinking and look at the facts. I’m sitting at a desk chair in a well-ventilated office where any tiger would have trouble getting in. Not a forest full of predators on the brink of catching flame. My anxiety is telling me, “Avoid this, avoid writing, we’re scared of it.” I’m not writing because I’m afraid my writing won’t do my “decent” ideas justice.

Which blows. Because to be honest, some of them are more than decent. Some of them are quite good. Some of my characters are really fun to be around. Some of the conversations are really interesting to listen to, some of the scenes are gorgeous and tense to witness. So why can’t I just buckle down and put them on the page? Because my evolutionary biology is afraid I won’t measure up to my own standards?

Logically, we know all this. We know that attempting to make your novel perfect in its first draft is as productive as reading a book backwards. We know that we aren’t actually in any danger if we create something we aren’t proud of. I’m not particularly proud of this piece, but God does it feel good to put all this on a page.

Though I didn’t write much this past month, I remind myself that it wasn’t a month void of any action. In January, I received my diploma. I applied to master’s programs for creative writing. I submitted a new story outline to my editor. I began working on a business plan for my own little publishing company. I competed with my little rescue horse in his first recognized show ever. And I did write. I wrote over 12,000 words. For my novel, yes, but also for papers, poems, and applications. Muscles well stretched.

It’s in these moments, writing this, that I remind you all, that it’s not always easy to be a writer. You need to filter out the noise. Your own and those of others. You must read, ferociously, learn, hungrily, and live, cultivating inspiration like wheat. Then, sit at the keyboard. Expel it. Remember that the work writes the novel, not the dream of it. Go in with realistic expectations. It won’t always be golden. Some “very bad” ideas simply need to be written and that’s okay. Writing becomes easy when you remember how much you love it.

I say this, determined to hold myself accountable. To write, even when I’m afraid to, even when I feel stuck in fate’s waiting room. I’ll write every day that I can, even if it’s only for a little while. For myself, and of course, for you.

See you next time.

Progress

Blue’s Shadow:

Draft 1: 180,000 words

Draft 2: 150,000 words

Draft 3: 25,000 / 110,000 words (goal)

Second unreleased novel:

Draft 1: 35,000 / 100,000 words (goal)

Book of poems:

40 / 60 poems completed  

Book Review

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney.

I was slow to enter Rooney’s messy little cast of characters in the backdrop of Ireland, playing at their chess events and loitering in college apartments while they should be at the attorney’s office.

Rooney’s style is forever evolving. She has some unconventional habits, but particularly difficult to get used to was the cutting of prepositions. Once I did get used to it however, I found that it matched the characters quite well, especially Peter, who is uninterested in excess, a minimalist who prefers a clean house and drugs to avoid the messiness of emotions.

Rooney also dissects class in a way I haven’t seen many authors do. The miscommunication between characters feels genuine because miscommunication is so common between people of different social classes. Peter and Sylvia tend to communicate so well because they are both wealthier academics while Ivan, who is suggested to have some sort of social impairment, connects to a shyer woman who has cut herself off from others due to her divorce. These dynamics make sense and more importantly, reflect how difficult human relationships can be when people don’t speak one another’s social language.

Despite all these pleasing aspects of Intermezzo, Rooney has a pattern that puzzles me: She writes women who repeatedly allow men to treat them poorly. They are often jealous and nonsensical in their actions towards the male protagonists, permitting men to take advantage of them sexually and romantically. I have tried reading into it more, but I cannot find a purpose behind Rooney’s tactics. Naomi is a particularly troubling character for me as she practically begs for Peter to engage in sexual relations with her later in the novel despite Peter making it clear he wants to be with another woman. Not only does this take me out of the novel as it verges outside of a realistic reaction, but it is genuinely puzzling. What is the purpose of Naomi’s self-degradation and why is it never resolved?

Which brings me to my largest conundrum with the novel: it’s ending. Peter and Ivan have changed, their relationship has improved, and they have both matured for the better. Sylvia, Naomi, and Margaret are unchanged, undeveloped, and have no resolutions of their own. I was expecting Margaret to finally make a decision about her relationship with Ivan, or Naomi to stand up for herself, or Sylvia to commit to Peter, but the fact that absolutely no change came about for any of these female characters leads me to question Rooney’s goals for this novel and whether or not she forgot about the women or just decided their stories weren’t as important as Peter and Ivan’s.

With that being questioned and acknowledged, Intermezzo is undoubtedly a beautiful, entertaining, and thoughtful novel that reflects on the challenges of brotherhood, family, and how one deals with loss.

Essay:

Blood, Ink and Tears
How Academia Neglects Creatives 
© Lou-Andrea Callewaert, 2022

There is a faded scar on my right hand from the first time I ever held a pencil. Mimicking my left-handed mother, I grabbed this foreign tool. I did as I was told, bringing it to paper. Unfortunately, my eagerness threw off my infant motor skills and the pencil ended up stabbing my other hand. Once I was done screaming, my mother patched up the wound. Then, I tried again, and, if a bit messily, wrote my name. That is my first recollection of pain, yet also, of creation.

None of that is true. But it’s an interesting way to start an essay. I don’t actually remember the first time I held a pencil. I do remember that I wrote my Ls backward and that I did, in fact, like writing my name. There was something so unique about this power to write even a single letter.

My mother taught me how to read. Stories became my great love. At home, I spent most waking hours sifting through books and movies and trying to write my own. They were redundant and nonsensical, but I loved it. I loved the feat of translation. I loved letting these worlds flow from the confines of my head, through my veins, to the free lands of paper.

School, however, was an entirely different playing field. There, my name and my love were alienating characteristics. My name is foreign, not quite right on the tongue, to others and my desire to write constantly was not welcomed. Strange that stories could be a vice in this realm, but in a classroom read, imprint, recite, repeat was the name of the game. Consuming or creating material not directly assigned by the teacher was a form of rebellion. On the cusp of the second grade, as LED lights hummed overhead, I sat in one of those perfectly spaced rows, lost in one of my little worlds. One of the teachers stormed to my desk and ripped the story I was writing from my grasp. The pencil and her red nails tore through the paper, crumbling the ripped sheet into a ball, and throwing it into the waste bin. I spent the remainder of class in silence, twirling my treacherous pencil as I held in my tears. That is my first memory of shame.

Academic literacy universally surrounds rigidity and repetitive structures. In turn, a conundrum often looms over the creatively inclined as it did over me. How can teachers encourage creativity in one breath and in the next, expect standardized regurgitations of knowledge? It took me some time to understand that authority figures are the greatest influence on children’s creative inclinations. We are breeders of consumers, not creators, because we are taught with a consumer’s mindset. Knowledge is spooned down our throats and once it is vomited back out, we are stamped with gold stars having actually retained nothing. Knowledge can only be truly acquired when it wants to be. And there is no more curious force than a child’s rebellious mind. I only performed well in school because any other result led to punishment. Performance was demanded and so, I performed. It was through the exposure to knowledge in other fashions, exposure to sources that demanded nothing, that I stumbled across an old seed of curiosity.

The written expression, whether through art or language, is the only immortal form of communication. It has aged, its breath palpable since the ages of antiquity. Academia is invaluable as its preservative. This passing on of knowledge would not be possible without it. The problem remains that if such studies demand expansion and application in all fields, there is something to left to be desired in the way children are instructed. It still shocks me. The power a pencil I twirl between my fingers—a little piece of wood and some graphite—holds. That this power is never taught. It is realized. Such is the consequence of the need for obedience. Obedience is originality’s only natural predator. You can write your name in the corner of a page, but if you cannot write papers rehearsing someone else’s ideas, you do not have the luxury of expressing your own.

I wrote the final chapter of my first novel in the cramped corner of a college room, my roommate wine drunkenly typing away at her marketing ethics paper. She paused, snapping her fingers for my attention. I left my characters to themselves, mid-sentence, and leaned back in my chair. She said to me then, that she admired my tenacity, that she was envious of my talent, and that she wished she had been encouraged to write when she was a little girl as I was. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I wasn’t. That talent, as Stephen King has so often tells us, is cheaper than table salt. And that encouragement is a scarcer commodity than gold.

Creativity will survive. It is the dandelion that sprouts between concrete slabs. The weed that searches for light even when it is squandered time and time again. But there are artists who will never have the luck of coming across a pencil’s power. I never came to terms with my fate. I fought for it. I ate what the spoons fed me and when they turned away, I tended to my dandelions. I still write my papers with a touch of flare that cares not for the opinions of points. I might’ve left some of those touches here. Forever the same, is my name, alienating, in the corner of the page. But it’s no longer painful. It no longer evokes shame. If anything I’m proud of it.