Starts and Fits

Blogging is one of those things that I've always flirted with in my head but have never actually successfully done. Thinking about doing all the the things that actually go into blogging makes me queezy. Not necessarily the work, but everything else, just doesn't sit right for me. I don't want to be a Blogger. Yet, years ago I started this thing here and I've been sad recently that I abandoned it in it's infancy. So hear Ye, hear Ye: I now publicly announce my intent to commit to this again and do this thing in anew.

This post itself is probably just another false start. 

It may have been years since I've touched this here blog but it has not been years since I've last written.
I am a Writer after all. 

As it stands today, right this minute, I'm more of a writer.*

As far as I'm concerned I've earned my -er.** I've written five novels (two are just slush pile manuscripts, the other three are in various states of revision) and numerous other essays, short stories, poems, drabbles, what-have-you. I've done the writing (and will continue to do the writing).

It is just that, sometime at the end of last summer I fell completely out of the habit of writing everyday. This happens; life happens. What doesn't so much happen is dropping from writing over 100,000 words in a year to writing maybe 2,000 or so words in about the same amount of time. Yet, that is exactly what happened, for a number of reasons I will outline here, for prosperity. 

July 06, 2016:

Context- I spent the summer of 2016 in Atlanta for TFA's teaching Institute. After a year of prep-and-dread Institute was actually pretty ok and for the first time ever I was able to maintain teaching and writing at the same time. It was pretty exciting. This was one of the last days we were in Atlanta and I had all morning and afternoon free--so I found myself a coffee shop and I wrote all day.

At the coffee shop (a Georgia Tech bookstore Starbucks because it was what I could find in walking distance) I unplugged from the outside world, sat down, and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I ate Starbucks lunch and wrote some more. My writing output was fantastic. I worked my way out of a couple dozen corners and think I put down upwards of ten thousand words. It was exhilarating. 

Eventually my free-time ran out and I had to go to some kind of TFA thing. So, as you do, I packed up and starting walking to the meeting place. It was probably about half a miles walk.

Atlanta in the summer is generally excessively hot and oppressively muggy, and this day wasn't any exception. The sun was out in full force and it was probably 97 degrees. Usually, I'd mind a lot. This time I didn't. I was on a high. The warmth of the sun on my skin mixed with the internal glow of creative-production. I noticed the slight breeze stirring the air more than my own sticky sweat as I walked. As far as  I was concerned it was an all around good day. 

I was walking and thinking about where I stopped and one of the character development problems I was having. It was time for Fin, one-armed black dude and all around mensch, to have sometime a POV-filter character and I really wanted to take the opportunity to take his character to the next level, allow him to be as dynamic as his counter-parts. To date he had pretty much been stoic and dependable, mostly notable for his nose-to-grind-work-ethic and distaste for drama. As I was working on some aspects of his character and really trying to make sure I wasn't falling into pits of stereotypes or spinning Fin into the perfect token character I realized I wasn't entirely sure where exactly I was going to I got out my phone and turned on the data to get directions. 

That was when I got the push notification. Alton Sterling had been killed by police in Baton Rouge. Sterling was the 122nd black man to die at the hands of the police in 2016. I dismissed the notification, thought something along the lines of "well, that sucks" or "oh that's sad for him," and kept pulled up the map to my destination. All the while I was thinking about Fin. I kept walking.

One step. Two step. Three step. Four step. Wait.
I stopped. What was wrong with me? How could I so easily dismiss Alton Sterling's life, the violence, brutality, injustice, the pain. I had the privilege of choosing not to feel this pain and I knew using that privilege would cause a great number of my friends pain. Especially, because I did care, deeply. But for a moment, for four steps, I didn't. What did that mean? Had police brutality really become that normalized? Was I ready to accept it that readily? The cognitive dissonance was real. I was still on a writing high. 

I went to my TFA thing. Where tensions ran high. I was with a community I really cared about*** and we began to unpack the newest incident of police brutality, with questionable degrees of success. By the time I was free again, I was in an entirely different place feeling wise. A feeling difficult to describe somewhere in the intersection of anger and mourning mixed with the acceptance that I was probably only feeling a fraction of what my friends and others more directly affected by racism were feeling. 

Already, (and if very self-centered manner) I wasn't sure how I was going to pick up the pen again but I knew it as important that I tried if only to keep the momentum going. So I tried to funnel those complex feelings into my fiction and wrote a bit, kind of. It didn't go terribly well and I diverted to facebook where I learned of the murder of Philando Castile at hand of police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. I lost it. I spent the rest of the sitting in grief and listening to the stories, testaments, and calls to action of my communities at large in reaction to the tragic and inexcusable death of innocent black men symptomatic of living in a systemically racist country.**** From that moment, early July 2016, until the end of January 2017 I'm not sure if I wrote a single word. I still haven't returned to Fin or that project (although I yearn to and eventually will). 

Beyond July 06, 2016 I've had a pretty rough year.
I just finished my first year teaching. That first year in the classroom is always brutal. I had the honor of also muddling through it in an toxic and abusive school environment. Stir in some Depression and Anxiety* and I wasn't even able to keep reading. In the 2016/2017 school year I read two half books (the first-half Barskins by Annie Proulx a novel about colonial French Canada, stolen from the library, and the first-half of George R.R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons). 

Now, I've made it through. I'm reading again (the second-half of Dance with Dragons, Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything, some of the short stories from Cory Doctorow I have saved on my computer, next up either Corrections by Jonathan Franzen or maybe the second-half of Barskins). I'm writing again; and it feels good. 

Stay posted for more. 

Now I am going to go edit a student's resume and go grocery shopping. 

*see this future post about w/W/d/D/a/A difference that will totally, definitely, exist by the time an audience of any size actually reads this
**I really wish Blogger had an option to do superscripts for footnotes (if anyone know how to make it do it, let me know). Anyways, credit to Writing About Writing for the idea of earning the -er. 

***Maybe some other time I'll share my complicated relationship with TFA

****Still a very, very important issue. For more reasons than being tangentially related to my prolonged writers block, seriously. #BlackLivesMatter -go learn more about it, what amazing organizers are doing to make change in our society, and how you can maybe help. 

(Long enough for you? Feedback of all shades welcome.)