How do you use your space and time to nurture your creativity? Here I share my notebook scribbles on that topic from eight months ago. How would you respond to Priscilla Long's prompts?
Monday September 19, 2016
Last night I finished Priscilla Long’s Minding the Muse. Though I
have not yet completed my own musings on her “Questions to Contemplate as You
Continue Your Practice,” I am certain to do so. It’s a book that reminds me I
am a writer despite my distance from new work, a book full of reminders and
suggestions to new and experienced writers and other artists whose practice
has, for one reason or another, gone sideways. Long encourages readers to think
and write deeply about their practice and ways to improve it.
“How well does your workspace
serve the creative work that you do?” (Priscilla Long, Minding the Muse, p. 61)
 |
| I could not function at this desk. Could you? |
I love to write, type, read, edit
at our large dining room table, at times alone, other times with my writing
partner at my side. I love the openness of the space, the living room to the
right, windows to left, front, right. I love the wide view of front yard before
me, leafy green trees, red table umbrella, jasmine-laden picket fence, street
and neighboring houses almost hidden behind our green curtain. Even in gray
rain, even in leafless winter, still I love to work at this table.
Still, on workdays, on what
should, could be every day, my desk in my office serves me well to drink my
coffee and scribble my morning pages and wake to each new day in private, no
interruption, door closed, if necessary.
So I have two workspaces in this
small house, and I have Louisa’s and the Uptown and Pam’s house, and C&P Coffee Company,
and West Seattle Uptown, and the Italian deli/restaurant. So many places to plant myself
with pad and pen.
“How do you sequester time to do
your own work, particularly
during the busiest times when other demands impinge?” (Priscilla Long, Minding
the Muse, p. 61)
This is my greatest challenge. Is
it lack of dedication? When I am teaching I claim to have insufficient time and
struggle to force myself out of bed thirty minutes earlier for morning pages or
a timed write. But then the three-day weekend rolls around (no Friday classes)
and I do not stick to the routine. I sleep in, I dawdle, do chores, look at
email, FB, before morning pages. And so it goes all summer long. Without the
imposed structure of a teaching schedule, I seem to lose all routine.
I suppose I can see and address
this in various ways. I can force myself to adhere to a strict work schedule
whether working or not. Or, I could create and adhere to a list of daily
must-dos and not worry about when or how they are accomplished, as long as they
are indeed done before I go to bed. The problem, as I have seen it, is that
they do not always get done, and yet I still go to bed each night.
So much to consider as I prepare
to return to work next week. I don’t want to return, don’t want to lose this
freedom of summer, of time to use as I please. Yet I have no choice. Fall
quarter begins, my 30th fall quarter, and a salary must be earned.
And honestly, it isn’t so bad, not once I’m there, settled into the routine
once again.
“If you teach, how can you better shape your teaching so it
serves your own creative work as well as that of your students?” (Priscilla Long, Minding the Muse, p. 61)
I return to the
classroom a week from tomorrow, to the campus the day after tomorrow. I do not
teach students with language skills advanced enough to do much writing at all,
but I do require in-class journaling. I could, should provide a topic or
an optional topic when we write in class, and I must write and share as well. I
should not use this time for attendance, grading or anything else.
“Consider the painter Joan Miró’s
phrase ‘vocabulary of forms.’ A
vocabulary consists of separate elements that can be put together in various
ways to make a whole … How could the
idea of a ‘vocabulary of forms’ be useful to you as you go forward?” (Priscilla Long, Minding the Muse, p. 61)
Separate elements: journal,
entries, letters, photographs, music, memories. These elements are the
vocabulary of forms I can use, will use, to create The Ex-Mexican Wives Club. I will stop worrying about what I do and
don’t remember and instead write from these forms or elements to piece together
a story.
Prior posts in this series:
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