The Yes and No of Writing

When I am writing I require (desire) complete uninterruption. There are just too many things my mind must juggle when I am writing, for me to countenance any diversion of attention. I must also be able to concentrate when I am solving the innumerable problems of word choice and the like. I also need (desire) uninterruption in the long term. Thus, without the prospect of an unbroken sequence of days and weeks and months to work on a book project, there is no point to my even starting. (It is not quite that strict, since if the progress is steady, I can usually break off for a whole day now and then, or could do so on a regular basis, for example, on Saturdays. But two days would be stretching it.)

By both chance and design my life has become very suitable for this M.O. For example I have no responsibilities to any other human being or institution, having (by good luck) had the opportunity to retire early, which I (by design, that is, intentionally) seized; and (by bad luck) I find myself living alone and (by circumstances) with no others dependent on me. Thus I don’t even need to answer the phone, so I turn off the ringer when I’m writing.

On the other hand, it is also essential (desirable to me) for the sake of the writing to take breaks from the writing. This is both because the mind needs to rest and refresh (in order for the writing style to be engaging) and because a dead-end train of thought (this having to do with the writing content) may benefit from an entirely new tack. Thus, I restrict my formal writing to mornings (when my mind is most alert and refreshed from a night’s sleep). And even a very brief break in medias res can provide just what is needed to get a piece of writing back on the right track.

For example, this morning when I was writing about our all having different worldviews, I began with the example of heterosexual men and woman having different desires. But while writing I began to sense the example was leading me astray and was not quite on point to begin with. I broke off to get a snack. While focusing on something entirely different the idea spontaneously occurred to me that Republicans and Democrats in the Trump Era (Error?) would make a far better example for the specific purposes of what I was writing. So when I returned to the computer it all went to my satisfaction. 

(Longer-term “breaks” – as between books -- also make sense, if only to gather more “material” for the next book. But by this point in my life I already have ten times more past experience on which to draw than I could possibly write about in my remaining years … which are themselves ever fewer, especially for peak acuity, thereby militating in favor of fewer or shorter breaks.) 

In sum, the “yes” of writing (for me, anyway) is the indulgence I allow myself (and am also fortunate to be able to enjoy if I choose it) to immerse myself in an activity I love and value. But the “no” of writing is the sacrifice and discipline I must exercise in order to sustain that indulgence. Again, due to fortune (good and bad), the whole world is my oyster, and so, precisely because so many of my options (at present) are good ones (in various senses of “good” – personal, altruistic, etc.), I must give up something good to do something good, such as the one good I have chosen to cultivate above all at this stage of my life, namely, my writing.

And this is not easy. One simple example I encounter every day is that (given the way I have discovered, over the last decade of trial and error, how I function best) even though I may be in the throes of a writing jag, come noon I must stop for the day. As my grandmother used to say about eating, “Always leave the table a little bit hungry.” (Someone has pointed out to me how exceptional that is for a Jewish mother!) This makes wonderful dietary health sense, but I take the advice also to mean that hunger is the best appetite, so by this practice one is always ready to enjoy the next meal. Analogously, by leaving off the writing before I am sated with it, I am always looking forward to its resumption with gusto. Many people would not have the self-control to do such a thing. I do.*

* In this way I conceive of myself as rational in action – at least in this instance, for surely I am irrational in other kinds of situations -- because I am carrying out what I have decided in thought is rational to do.