On Putting the Pencil Down
Hi, friends.
Some time over the course of writing these letters to you, I stumbled upon the closing Pencils Up. I don’t know where it came from or when I began using it consistently. But I like its simple call to action. For me, it conveys a kind of shorthand - the world is a hot mess right now (and maybe we are too) but we can drown all that out for a few minutes today simply by scratching our pencils against paper. In doing that, we can make another world for ourselves.
It fills me with purpose, picking up that pencil. But today I want to talk about putting the pencil down.
Yesterday as I was making dinner, I had the sudden realization that I was happy and content. I had good music going and the door open. There was something about working with my hands to make dinner and the spring breeze coming in. In the morning, I turned in most of my grades and there was no longer anything hanging over my head. I could see how beautiful the day was, how full of possibility.
Story.
Instead of a story, today’s reading is a craft talk: The Autobiography of My Novel by Alexander Chee.
Craft tidbits.
There is something to be said for the confines of a semester. A set number of weeks, a beginning and an end. As I was grading final projects, I thought it was a shame I only got to see inside the lives of my students at the end.
I’ve always been someone who needs and enjoys a deadline. I’ve become accustomed to making the syllabi and seeing it through. To midterms and finals. And so, novel writing is an unwieldy beast. There are an infinite number of ways to see it through. It’s difficult for me to say how long it might take to write a chapter. I might fiddle with it for a long while only to eventually discard it. And even though I christen each summer as The Summer I Finish My Novel, it keeps rolling along, a Sisyphean task.
Perhaps what I need is a Pencil Down day. A day I work towards as though it is my final exam. As though time has run out. Of saying, it is done and now I can turn my time and attention to something else. Would I feel as free and lighthearted as I do right now?
Yes. And no. Reading the Chee essay or any number of essays about the path to publication shows how the road to publication is littered with pitfalls. Nothing is certain once the pencil is down, save the feeling of having done your best, come what may.
I tell my students all the time: writing fiction is an exercise in giving a shit—an exercise in finding out what you really care about. Many student writers become obsessed with aesthetics, but I find that is usually a way to avoid whatever it is they have to say. My first novel was not the first one I started. It was the first one I finished.
Chee’s essay is full of little gems, even if what you are writing has not the first bit of autobiography in it.
I think I knew all along that the process of writing a novel was less straightforward than it seemed. But thus far it hadn’t seemed straightforward at all. Perhaps out of a desire not to appear prescriptive, at no point in my education as a writer had my teachers offered specific instruction on the writing of novels and stories. We read novels and stories copiously, argued about what they were constantly, but plot was disdained if it was ever discussed, and in general I went through the MFA feeling as though I had to learn everything via context clues, as if I had wandered into a place where everyone already knew what I did not know, and I had to catch up without letting on.
For a long time I told myself that my novel idea was stronger than I was as a writer. And this was true. The novel taught me how to write it. Like Chee, it taught me about plot. About pacing. But I also wonder how much of me finds comfort in the re-writing, in sliding the pieces around one more time as a means to keep holding on to it. These are two sides of the same coin: seeing it through, and then letting it go.
Sparks.
What do you need to finish? How will you get there? How will you celebrate when you finally put your pencil down?
I’ve signed up for an intensive edit that begins tomorrow to keep me motivated. I’ll participate in #1000wordsofsummer in June and go to a residency in July and pop on zoom for seminars here and there and talk to friends and who knows what else to hold myself accountable. (Telling you is part of this too.)
None of this guarantees that I will hit my pencil down date but it makes the odds ever more in my favor. And I know not everyone has the summer rolling out before them. Andre Dubus III carved twenty minute blocks each day on his commute to write the House of Sand and Fog.
Perhaps it’s not the mountain of a novel or memoir that you are facing but a dozen half started stories. Those are worth finishing too. Worth sending out into the world. Worth someone else’s eyes upon them.
Perhaps it is not finishing that’s your problem, but beginning. Perhaps it is time for you to begin something new. Something you’ve been meaning to start for a long while now but you weren’t ready, the timing wasn’t right, etc. Perhaps, like Chee, you have a basket of fragments. Today’s a great day to ask them what they want to be and how you can see this through.
Other tidbits.
Have you already finished? Tin House is open to debut essay, short story, and poetry collections today. Smash that send button. (They’ll be open to memoirs in Sept.) Cease, Cows is open for flash until 5/15. Split Lip is open for micros until 5/31.
Here’s Lynn Steger Strong with some tough love on How to Finish.
Catapult had a series on social media last week. Perhaps breaking up with Twitter would be best for your writing practice. (Same, tbh.)
If you want some accountability finishing your project, do let me know. If you want to whisper your pencil down date in the comments, or commit to a seedling of a new project, please do.
Okay, scribblers. You know what time it is. It’s time for pencils up so that we can put them down soon enough~
Marsha