Grading Papers, General Slog, and the Glimmer of Perfection
"It's better to arrive on time than to arrive late because you're chasing a particular notion of perfection." - Note I wrote on a student's final exam paper.
This fall I took a long-term substitute position at the school where I coach. It was a three month commitment. One of the teachers left on maternity leave, so I took over her two English classes for a few months. It was good to be back in the classroom and nice showing up to school at 10am and leaving by 1:30 everyday. It gave me time to keep writing, and in a perfect world, I would have been writing my third Tully Harper novel this fall. I should have been writing my third novel. But I wasn't. And I didn't.
Here's what happened: I played a lot of volleyball. I stayed out late on weeknights with friends. Okay, that happened but it's not what made me stop.*
What made me stop writing the novel was I stopped writing the novel. At first I told myself I was taking some time off "to process." Processing, it turns out, looks a lot like procrastination when I do it. Processing included research and outlining -- necessary work for a writer. So, after several weeks of processing, when I did sit down to write again, the story didn't come out right. It worked in my head but not on paper. So I dreamed up new ideas but didn't update my outline. I took notes but didn't write chapters because they felt...off. Gone were the glimmers of perfection amid the general slog. Gone were the fevered all-nighters where I knocked out 5,000 words in a sitting. I expect the general slog when I write, but I need those glimmers of perfection and authorial heroism to keep moving forward. The glimmer and heroism didn't appear.
So National November Writing Month rolled around. Hoping to finish my first draft in a month, I announced I would do just that; however, I couldn't sit myself down to do the work. Every word I wrote felt faulty. Every sentence a derailment. Every paragraph a train wreck. Anxiety crept into my writing life. Day flew by without hitting my word count. Finally, realizing I would have to write 10,000 words a day, I threw in the towel. NaNoWriMo defeated me. At the end of the month, I had scarcely 30,000 words toward my next novel. Just think of it: all those words and none of them see to be the right ones.
As a novelist, I was a bit of a mess.
In December, after a few more weeks of "processing," I tentatively got back to work on the Tully Harper Series. Just dipping my toes in the water, trying to figure out if I could acclimate to the cold of a first draft again.
I got back to writing the novel this week, in part because of the note I wrote on a student's paper.
"It's better to arrive on time than to arrive late because you're chasing a particular notion of perfection."
Today I added that quote to the comments section of a student's final paper. He's a talented writer. He wrote a wonderful essay. I loved teaching him. And to me the problem was clear: he wanted to write a perfect paper for his final exam, but he didn't have time with everything else going on at school and in life. So he submitted the paper a week late. He couldn't bring himself to finalize until then.
Nevertheless, my guess is that his essay would have been only good to great if he had submitted it on time.
I imagined him polishing each paragraph to a high sheen, spending hours on the first body paragraph when he hadn't yet written the second one yet. He spent all his time polishing that one paragraph and didn't have time to write the others. I drew up a simple solution to this: it included writing the whole paper before revising the first part. Just get the draft down, imperfect as it may be, however much you want to make it perfect before moving on to the next part. Then do your best to make it excellent along the way.
There's nothing wrong with seeking perfection, as long as you don't become its slave.
My gosh. That reminded me so much of myself. It's why I delayed writing this novel. I wanted my first draft to be perfect. This is, after all, the third book in the Tully Harper Series! The third book has to blow the readers away. It has to be perfect. What's more, I have to be perfect to write it. Perfect posture, perfect outline, perfect coffee, perfect me.
Ah, perfection, almighty inhibiter of creativity, destroyer of self-esteem, causer of much fretful processing. Please excuse my (or her) language, but I forgot one of the greatest tenets in all of Writerdom, as explained by Annie Lamott: "Everyone's entitled to a shitty first draft."
This student was. I was. Annie was. The third novel, like the third time, may turn out to be a charm, but I shouldn't expect its first draft to be better than the bad first drafts of the first two novels. It's not perfect, but at least it will eventually be complete. That's all you can ask of a first draft.
So, this draft is going to be ugly and the book will be a bit delayed. June 2016 still sounds realistic, but we shall see. I delayed it because I wasn't ready to write this bad first draft. Now I am. Let's call it a down draft. Just get it down, Adam, and then move on to the up draft, where I clean it up. That's also an Annie Lamott idea.
To wait for perfection is to wait forever. To wait for yourself to be/feel perfect enough to do something is the same trap. Better to do the following: Seek joy in the journey through the general slog. En-joy (but don't expect) the shimmers of perfection. And smile wryly when things go right...or when someone points out blemishes in the final draft.
My friend, you should've seen the first draft.
So imperfect me is going to return to writing his imperfect draft now. By the end of the day it will be a bit more complete. Lord willing and me working, by the beginning of summer you'll able to read the final draft.
*Note: I kept writing poems and short stories. One of them was published in an anthology by Mutabilis Press. :)
Photo credit: goteenwriters.com.
This fall I took a long-term substitute position at the school where I coach. It was a three month commitment. One of the teachers left on maternity leave, so I took over her two English classes for a few months. It was good to be back in the classroom and nice showing up to school at 10am and leaving by 1:30 everyday. It gave me time to keep writing, and in a perfect world, I would have been writing my third Tully Harper novel this fall. I should have been writing my third novel. But I wasn't. And I didn't.
Here's what happened: I played a lot of volleyball. I stayed out late on weeknights with friends. Okay, that happened but it's not what made me stop.*
What made me stop writing the novel was I stopped writing the novel. At first I told myself I was taking some time off "to process." Processing, it turns out, looks a lot like procrastination when I do it. Processing included research and outlining -- necessary work for a writer. So, after several weeks of processing, when I did sit down to write again, the story didn't come out right. It worked in my head but not on paper. So I dreamed up new ideas but didn't update my outline. I took notes but didn't write chapters because they felt...off. Gone were the glimmers of perfection amid the general slog. Gone were the fevered all-nighters where I knocked out 5,000 words in a sitting. I expect the general slog when I write, but I need those glimmers of perfection and authorial heroism to keep moving forward. The glimmer and heroism didn't appear.
So National November Writing Month rolled around. Hoping to finish my first draft in a month, I announced I would do just that; however, I couldn't sit myself down to do the work. Every word I wrote felt faulty. Every sentence a derailment. Every paragraph a train wreck. Anxiety crept into my writing life. Day flew by without hitting my word count. Finally, realizing I would have to write 10,000 words a day, I threw in the towel. NaNoWriMo defeated me. At the end of the month, I had scarcely 30,000 words toward my next novel. Just think of it: all those words and none of them see to be the right ones.
As a novelist, I was a bit of a mess.
In December, after a few more weeks of "processing," I tentatively got back to work on the Tully Harper Series. Just dipping my toes in the water, trying to figure out if I could acclimate to the cold of a first draft again.
I got back to writing the novel this week, in part because of the note I wrote on a student's paper.
"It's better to arrive on time than to arrive late because you're chasing a particular notion of perfection."
Today I added that quote to the comments section of a student's final paper. He's a talented writer. He wrote a wonderful essay. I loved teaching him. And to me the problem was clear: he wanted to write a perfect paper for his final exam, but he didn't have time with everything else going on at school and in life. So he submitted the paper a week late. He couldn't bring himself to finalize until then.
Nevertheless, my guess is that his essay would have been only good to great if he had submitted it on time.
I imagined him polishing each paragraph to a high sheen, spending hours on the first body paragraph when he hadn't yet written the second one yet. He spent all his time polishing that one paragraph and didn't have time to write the others. I drew up a simple solution to this: it included writing the whole paper before revising the first part. Just get the draft down, imperfect as it may be, however much you want to make it perfect before moving on to the next part. Then do your best to make it excellent along the way.
There's nothing wrong with seeking perfection, as long as you don't become its slave.
My gosh. That reminded me so much of myself. It's why I delayed writing this novel. I wanted my first draft to be perfect. This is, after all, the third book in the Tully Harper Series! The third book has to blow the readers away. It has to be perfect. What's more, I have to be perfect to write it. Perfect posture, perfect outline, perfect coffee, perfect me.
Ah, perfection, almighty inhibiter of creativity, destroyer of self-esteem, causer of much fretful processing. Please excuse my (or her) language, but I forgot one of the greatest tenets in all of Writerdom, as explained by Annie Lamott: "Everyone's entitled to a shitty first draft."
This student was. I was. Annie was. The third novel, like the third time, may turn out to be a charm, but I shouldn't expect its first draft to be better than the bad first drafts of the first two novels. It's not perfect, but at least it will eventually be complete. That's all you can ask of a first draft.
So, this draft is going to be ugly and the book will be a bit delayed. June 2016 still sounds realistic, but we shall see. I delayed it because I wasn't ready to write this bad first draft. Now I am. Let's call it a down draft. Just get it down, Adam, and then move on to the up draft, where I clean it up. That's also an Annie Lamott idea.
To wait for perfection is to wait forever. To wait for yourself to be/feel perfect enough to do something is the same trap. Better to do the following: Seek joy in the journey through the general slog. En-joy (but don't expect) the shimmers of perfection. And smile wryly when things go right...or when someone points out blemishes in the final draft.
My friend, you should've seen the first draft.
So imperfect me is going to return to writing his imperfect draft now. By the end of the day it will be a bit more complete. Lord willing and me working, by the beginning of summer you'll able to read the final draft.
*Note: I kept writing poems and short stories. One of them was published in an anthology by Mutabilis Press. :)
Photo credit: goteenwriters.com.
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