A Middle-Aged, Semi-Retired Academic Ponders Her Future

Years ago, when I was still a full-time, tenured professor of philosophy, navigating the rewards and frustrations of that career, I came up with this instruction to myself: "Do more of what you love, less of what you hate." That remains good advice for me now as I ponder the future direction of my professional life - and perhaps for you, too - for all of us.

Do more of what you love, less of what you hate.

Some things I love about the academic life:

Talking with people I love who love the same books I love. 

Writing thoughtful, insightful (but also critical) articles about the books I love.

Teaching eager, motivated students about the books I love.

Some things I hate about the academic life:

Academic politics, conflicts, "call-outs," MEANNESS!

Jumping through other people's hoops, especially hoops held by anonymous strangers.

Feeling like a failure, a fraud, a fake - the "imposture syndrome" known to almost all academics.

How can I get more of the former and less of the latter?

Well, one of the bad things about decades in a profession is feeling a bit worn out and washed up. But one of the FABULOUS things longevity provides is LOTS AND LOTS OF WONDERFUL FRIENDS. Some of my children's lit scholar colleagues are retired now - not just retired from the university, but retired, period. But others remain extremely active in the field, filled with ideas galore for organizing conferences, arranging symposia and discussion groups, and soliciting contributions for volumes they are editing on all kinds of delicious topics.

So: I no longer have to submit my work to scholarly journals for double-blind peer review, where usually one reviewer is kind and encouraging, and the other one is... not. On my most recent submission to a prestigious journal in my field, the first reviewer wrote, "This is a fascinating and informative article that stands to make an important contribution to the scholarship [on topic x]." Reviewer #2 wrote, "One of the key issues the author should consider addressing in revision is the essay’s overall lack of purpose and coherence."!!!! Ouch!!! This, after my having published - I just counted - some 50 academic articles and book chapters over the last forty years! So I'm hardly a wet-behind-the-ears newbie! Should I try to revise this piece to please Reviewer #2, who went on to provide a full page with half a dozen similar comments, all scathing, and who will likely prove impossible to please? Or should I declare myself done-done-DONE! with trying to please all the Reviewer #2s of the world forever?

Farewell, Reviewer #2! I have realized that I can write - and publish - heaps of lovely academic articles just by working with fellow scholars who already like me and value what I do. They will want revisions, too, of course; they have appropriately high standards of their own. But this doesn't feel like jumping through endless hoops of fire. It feels like joyous collaboration with people I know and respect.

I may continue to attend academic conferences, but smaller, friendlier ones. I will continue to teach, but at smaller, friendlier places. Hollins University (pictured below), where I have taught regularly for many years, offers graduate programs in children's literature that are BLISS for students and faculty alike. I told a new faculty member who was arriving as I was leaving from my first stint of teaching there, "You are entering the portals of paradise."

More of what we love, less of what we hate... sounds pretty good, no? 

To Think or Not to Think: That Is the Question

My recent posts have focused on my search this year for some form of "closure" on my decades-long career as children's book writer and scholar. Note that "closure" does NOT have to mean full-out retirement or complete bailing on the work and world that I have loved. But it will likely mean closing at least some chapters of my story to make way for the chapters that follow.

These posts have struck a chord in many readers of my age cohort, but also prompted some affectionate questions of the form: "Um - aren't you, well, OVERTHINKING all of this?" One friend wrote, "Why must you decide? Why not just follow your whim? Follow your gut, follow your heart, follow how you feel when you wake up each morning." Another wrote, "Just amuse yourself with unapologetic, unjustified fun in whatever form it takes." A third advised me to "wait and see what happens."

This is excellent advice, of course, but something in me rebels against it. So here is how I am THINKING through the question of how much to be THINKING about all of this!

Well, first of all, I like to think. People who become philosophy professors are usually people who enjoy thinking. And I'm particularly drawn to thinking about - I might as well admit it - ME. I have long discussions with myself in my trusty little notebook, where I pour out my troubles and then write, "Little notebook, help!" and then the little notebook proceeds to give me excellent advice.

All my writing - creative and scholarly - begins with my sitting down, pen in hand, and deliberately and self-consciously thinking about what I want to write. I NEVER EVER have an idea just pop into my head. I get ideas ONLY when I sit down with clipboard, pad of paper, and pen and write at the top of the page IDEAS. While I am not 100 percent a "plotter" as opposed to a "pantser" (one who flies by the seat of her pants) in creating a book, I'm closing to the plotter end of the spectrum (though not in a mechanized way). If I just waited to see what I ended up writing, I don't think I'd ever write anything.

Most important, though, is that what I'm thinking about so hard these days is the relationship between writing and publication - and all that the search for publication involves. I'm a writer who cares about having readers who aren't just me. Even when I write in a journal - oh, this is a narcissistic confession! - I imagine future biographers reading it! When I write poems, I want to share them at least with a few friends. Do I want to get poems published? Well, I sort of do. Do I want this enough to research poetry journals and jump through the hoops required to submit my work, knowing that I will face a 15:1 rate of rejection to acceptance? I'm not sure. I AM sure that I would never just wake up one morning and FEEL like doing this. Doing this is not FUN. But I might decide that doing an UN-fun thing that I DON'T feel like doing will result in future satisfactions worth doing it anyway.

I have LOVED publishing books! I have ADORED it! After 62 published books, it is still a joy to hold a brand-new published book BY ME in my hands. But the publication process involves much rejection, self-doubt, competition, and critique by total strangers. I'm at a season of my life where I need to THINK about whether, for me, the joy outweighs the misery. Of course, this is the kind of thing I can change my mind about, day by day. When I gave up my tenured position in the Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado, almost ten years ago now, I knew this was an irrevocable decision. The decision whether or not to keep on writing academic articles for POSSIBLE publication is not. Ditto for the decision to keep on writing  children's books for POSSIBLE publication. Maybe on Monday I would wake up thinking I will take a few more whacks at a children's lit article - and on Tuesday decide I can't stand it - and on Wednesday give it a few more whacks again. But in this last third of my life, I'd like to have a bit more of a PLAN than this - because publication is more likely to turn from POSSIBLE to ACTUAL with serious, sustained effort than with waiting for the muse to visit. 

For now I THINK I need to keep on THINKING. But this is enough THINKING about THINKING for today!

More Thoughts on "Closure" - Slammed Door or Gently Closing Gate?

One of my first realizations when I began to ponder what "closure" might mean for me in this stage of my career as writer and scholar is that "closure" is akin to "enclosure" - not just what is fenced OUT, but what is fenced IN, enfolded, protected - not just what I DON'T want anymore from my career, but what I DO. 

I do NOT want to give up everything I love most! But I need to find a new way to love it, appropriate for this season of my life.

I have wanted to be a writer from the moment I could first hold a pencil or a crayon. 

I even included an "ad card" at the end to publicize future titles - precocious marketing maven that I was.

Sixty-two published books later, I'm certainly not ready to say farewell forever to writing - and not just writing for myself, but for others to read - and yes, writing for publication.

And yet... I can't help but notice how much the world of children's book writing is changing. There is a rightful demand for and appreciation of new and diverse voices telling new and diverse stories - hooray for that! But I'm neither new nor "diverse" in the ways diversity is commonly understood. There is an almost insatiable demand on the part of young readers for graphic novels - an exciting literary form, but not "me." Stories for young readers are becoming ever more filled with (fun!) murder and (fun!) mayhem, but I'm not a murder and mayhem kind of person. My idea of a gripping survival story is a shy seventh grade girl surviving the middle school dance. And authors are increasingly expected to become adept self-promoters on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and platforms I haven't even heard of yet. 

My beloved Stoic philosopher Epictetus tells us, in so many words, "If you want to go the banquet, you have to flatter the tyrant. If you don't want to flatter the tyrant, then don't go to the banquet." It's as simple as that. But of course, what we want is for what worked for us forty years ago to continue to work for us now. Ain't going to happen. I have no right to expect it to happen. It's so good in so many ways that this is NOT happening! 

But still...

So I need to figure out how to keep on writing the way I want in a world that may or may not want what I write. Can I find a way to change while still being true to who I am as a writer? Am I willing to do this? (Tentative answer: not really!). Or can I find a way to gain sweet satisfaction from writing with altered expectations (I think this is the more promising route!). 

I don't want to slam the door on my writing life. But on some parts of it, I think I'll be closing a gate... gently...

Reflections on "Closure"

I read a piece of blogging advice some time ago. One thing it said was: "If you have a lapse in your blogging, don't call attention to it with any explanations (for who cares?). Just jump back in." Well, as I ignored the rest of the advice ("make sure to repeat lots of key words so you rise up in the algorithms for Google searches"), I'm ignoring this one, as well. 

I drifted away from blogging toward the end of last year as part of a larger reconsideration of my entire career as a children's book author and scholar - of my entire LIFE! But now it's the first day of a new month, time to start a whole NEW LIFE, so here is the post I would have written on January 1, if I had been in a blogging mood then.

My poet friend Molly Fisk promotes the practice, not of making a resolution, but of choosing a word for a new year: a word to ponder, to reflect upon, to live with as a thought-provoking companion. Actually, she says sometimes it's not so much that you choose the word, but the word chooses you.

The word that chose me was "closure."

I was discouraged about my career as children's book creator and as children's literature scholar. The world of both authors and scholars was changing so much, and I was feeling too old and weary to change along with it. I was also (joyously) distracted by suddenly, shockingly, stunningly, falling in love in a totally life-transforming way. So: did I even WANT to be part of this changing world? And if I did, did it still want ME? 

One of my friends found out her husband was retiring when she heard him say, in a phone conversation, "Well, I guess it's time for me to hang up my spurs." Maybe it was time for me to hang up MY spurs and ride off into the sunset. When I took early retirement from my career as a tenured philosophy professor almost a decade ago, I told myself not to think of this as "retirement" but just as a career change. My self-given command was: "Do not go gentle into that good pasture." Now I found myself asking, "What's so bad about the pasture?" The pasture was starting to sound awfully alluring. It might be time to think about discovering some satisfying form of closure on the life I had lived for so long. 

Another poet friend offered a writing prompt for January 1 that went like this: "fences that close, fences that open, pastures beyond." Ooh! THAT'S what I needed to be thinking about for this new year!

I've been thinking about this for two months now. In future posts, I'll share some of what I've figured out about what closure is coming to mean to me - and how different this is from what I thought it would be. Maybe it isn't closure at all? But whatever it is, I think I'm liking it....