Writing balance between ‘doing’ and ‘being’

Posted on | February 13, 2010 | No Comments

This week I began a set of sessions focused on personal development and coaching, courtesy of the prize money attached to a Teaching Innovation award I won from my employer (a UK-based university). I only half-joke that my employer is paying for me to find a way to a new career.

Gut Feeling
It wasn’t too far into the session when everything poured out about the current situation. I described it as a bodily ‘plug’ – that was, in my gut there was a plug stopper, desperately trying to stop up everything whizzing by (life, opportunity, happiness) so fast. We began with that metaphor. The coaching is a wonderful mix of personal development, psychotherapy and mindfulness from a gestalt theory, focusing on the body and bodily  feeling as a way of understanding life situations and life design: so it was the perfect image to begin with. Particularly when one knows of the potential for the enteric nervious system to be operating semi-independently of the central nervious system (managed by the mind) and to be ‘feeling’ emotions without us really knowing what is going on.

Pretty soon it became clear that plug or stopper was in fact me — that’s the way I had drawn it: a funnel going in, me in the middle, and a funnel going out. Around it, on the left, were the frustrations – not all negative – but distractions from the ‘goal’, on the right, which was the novel, the PhD: writing.

Busy ‘doing’ other things
My coach said, then, that he would suggest that everything on the left — the things I looked to for instant gratification — were what I could ‘do’ in the world; and on the other side, was what I was, am, wanted to ‘be’. And this difference then arose as the crux of the conversation. To misquote, what we want to be while we are busy doing other things.

There are less than 70,000 people working in the literary arts sector. That includes arts development. So there are less than, say, 40,000 writers who actually count as getting a salary from the literary arts. Which means that an awful lot of writers, as with other artists and crafts people, have to supplement their writing via other income. The idea of writing for a living is still, and normally remains, a long-way off.

Some people choose dull jobs that allow them freedom to think. James Ellroy was a golf caddy. Others combine different forms of writing: for example, Will Self or Andrew O’Hagan as journalists and essayists. Others choose a more academic route, combining writing with teaching and researching, such as Jackie Kay or my own supervisor, Andrew Crumey.

Don’t let it become about existence
What is important, and what came out of my coaching, is that if the problematic (the difference between ‘doing’ and ‘being’) becomes existential, it can become a crisis. I.e. if one becomes frustrated and demotivated with what one is ‘doing’ where that is not writing, then both the day job and the passion become more difficult.

So how do writer’s balance these needs? I’m asking this today because, after today, I have to sign off writing for a week or so to really concentrate on the day job and get on top of that workload (I’m an academic). It’s not an uncommon subject, e.g. some of the good explorations out there:

• The Precarious balance
• Balancing Day and, er, not day
• Working the double shift
• Writing and working full time
• Keeping the day job

My personal subject matter? The writing is there, but along come any number of wonderful, exciting (and instantly gratifying) people and projects. And if they are part of the day job – which I want to do well; which I am being paid to do well; and which involves people, students, looking to me for expertise and guidance — how can I not get involved? Why should I not let this part of me – what I can do in the world, based on my life experience – be gratified?

Ok, but if it is, and I do, then what of who I ‘am’ or _can_ ‘be’? The writer – that is not yet fulfilled, and for whom the long graft of writing will remain ungratified for quite a while. Well, gratified by others, at least.

For me: that’s where I’m at. What strength and discipline do I have for two things:

a) To know how much I can ‘do’ at any one time to allow me also to ‘be’ who I am
b) To have the strength to balance both parts of my life (I say both: there are others of course…. e.g. a wonderful blog post on a similar theme from the Millions Blog, but looking at the impact of falling in love on the writing habit, and how having a spouse can help or hinder the writing process.

So, that’s where I’m at. I’m taking the decision to sign off writing the novel for one week (with my PhD supervisor meeting on Friday to give it some focus for the coming weeks) to balance out with the day job, so I can get a handle on that. (Should be said the day job situation is incredibly stressful due to colleague illness: seven of us doing the jobs of 14; so not a completely normal situation).

And in this week, my ‘writing task’ is to hold on to the strength and discipline to do the day job well, be focused, and come back to the writing with the motivation and strength and positive emotions that make it both a joy and an easier, productive task. There. Easy.

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