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!