Why My Last Year's Goals Failed (and no, it wasn't all because of COVID)

I'm seeing lots of rueful laughter on social media right now about the folly of having bothered to purchase a planner for 2020. This was the year when the best-laid plans of all of us (in a butchering of Robert Burns's famous words) ganged a-gley. 

I launched 2020 with a sprawling, unwieldy, unworkable plan already doomed to early abandonment. Even though I am a veteran life-planner who knows that simple goals are best, I opted for my most complicated and convoluted set of plans ever. Faced with looming family crises, I decided that mere survival was too dispiriting a goal for the year. Instead, I would work on improving my health on EIGHT different dimensions: physical, mental, emotional, social, professional, financial, environmental, and spiritual - with half a dozen activities listed under each heading.

Some of the mandated activities didn't happen because of COVID. Under "social health," I had "Make sure to have one social outing every week" and "Plan SIX special getaways with friends this year!" HA! Under "environmental health," I had "Buy carbon offsets for flights." WHAT FLIGHTS? 

But mainly I didn't do most of the things I said I was going to do because it made my head hurt to look at that long, daunting list. Plus, some of the things I already knew I would never do, even as I dutifully wrote them down in my little notebook. I already knew I wasn't going to follow through on some additional new form of exercise, when for 66 years the only exercise I've ever loved (and do love passionately) is walking. I already knew I wasn't going to make radical alterations in my food intake, when for 66 years I've mainly lived on English muffins with butter and jam and am the healthiest person I know by far. Some of the things I might have done if they were the ONLY thing I asked of myself for the year, but not as one of several dozen!

The items I did succeed in crossing off the humongous list were the one-and-done things. I made a new will from a free online template (financial health): it felt great to know that if I died from COVID, my family would find my affairs in good order. I deleted the Twitter app on my phone, which took ten seconds and greatly improved the quality of my life (emotional health). 

But basically the list depressed me and didn't motivate me AT ALL. 

Looking back at the year, just in narrowly personal terms (i.e., not thinking about COVID, the election, my family, or the fate of the planet), the best part of the year was writing two verse novels for young readers. Every hour I spent on those projects was BLISS, and the two books those hours produced are the two best things I've ever written (according to all readers so far, including me). I also got clarity on the kinds of projects I DREAD: projects that make me feel bad about myself (teaching courses I'm not qualified to teach, and writing articles I'm not qualified to write). 

I'm going to use these twin insights - about BLISS and DREAD - to make my (VERY simple and VERY minimalist) plan for 2021. Stay tuned! 

Lessons Learned from a Project Dreaded

Well, I knew I couldn't live with myself (with my shamefully procrastinating self) if I didn't complete this one long-overdue, mega-daunting, academic assignment by the end of the year. (Details in my previous whiny, whimpering post.) I wasn't qualified to write this thing, I had no idea how to write this thing, this thing wasn't a thing anybody would really know how to write. But I had agreed to do it.  So now it simply had to be done. 

So I did it. I emailed it off on Christmas Eve. It was a huge relief when, for better or worse, I pressed SEND.

Some of the lessons I learned in finally making myself do the undoable-task-that-nonetheless-needed-to-be-done are lessons I already knew, but keep forgetting. Others are new to me, and I'm glad I learned them before the new year begins.

Here they are.

1. The way to eat an elephant really is one bite at a time. When the elephant is overwhelming enough, for me the best way to measure the bites is by the clock, not by the task. The tasks are too awful to think about! But if I turn over my beloved hourglass and sit at my computer for an hour, SOMETHING WILL GET DONE. The Grateful Dead told us to keep on trucking, but I do best when I keep on trudging. 

2. The ONLY way that anything you have to do will get done is if you actually DO it. In real life, sad but true, no elves show up in the night to do your work for you. (Complaining about the work, making social media posts about the work, and blogging about the work are NOT the same thing as DOING the work.) One of my life mantras generally, which also applies here, is "If it is to be, it's up to me."

3. BUT that said, if you show up faithfully to do the work, the elves (or the angels, or the muses, or your sub-conscious) are likely to feel sorry for you, too, and show up with additional assistance. A brilliant insight may pop into your head - well, not brilliant, exactly, but a new idea you didn't have before. As you write, without really knowing what you are going to say, you will start to figure out what you need to say. THE MAGIC WILL HAPPEN. Or at least a glimmer or two of magic.

4. Those people (colleagues, editors, peer-reviewers) who are going to end up reading this disappointing, dismal draft are not your terrifying adversaries; they are actually ON YOUR SIDE. If you are making any terrible mistakes along the way, they will likely catch them and help you correct them. The making of this thing is a collaborative venture. You are not alone.

5. It will feel so good to have this thing done!! You will wish you had just sat yourself down at your desk months ago! But sometimes the time of dread bears unexpected fruit. While I was endlessly deferring the writing of this academic essay, I wrote my first two verse novels for young readers, which I believe are the best books I have ever written. I will never regret that I did that instead. Could I have reversed the order: duty and drudgery first, THEN the dessert of writing bliss? Maybe. But maybe not. I can't be sorry that I chose bliss instead. 

6. MAYBE the fact that you dreaded, feared, and loathed the doing of this thing so much means that in the future you should do less of it??  Maybe it doesn't: some people do dread and fear the work they love. But if you LOATHE the work? Well, maybe that's a sign that it's time to make some different choices. Note to self for 2021!

The Kind of Writing I Hate Most: or The Terror of Having to Write Something You Are Completely Unqualified to Write

I have a writing project I have been procrastinating on for MONTHS. 

It was due October 1, and it's now mid-December.

Every single day I tell myself, "Just write on this project for ONE HOUR." Or "Just write on this project for HALF AN HOUR." Or "Just glance at this project for FIVE MINUTES!"

But every day I don't do any of these things. 

During this extended session of procrastination I have written not one, but two, middle-grade books in the new-to-me-form of the verse novel; one of them is already far along in the production process for publication in the fall of 2021. So it isn't as if the pandemic has made me utterly unable to function (though I certainly have those moments). It is only this particular project that has me paralyzed. 

Why can't I make myself do this perpetually undone project?

It's because it is the kind of writing I hate most. 

What kind of writing do I hate most?

 I hate most when I have to write something I am completely unqualified to write. For me, this is anything where I have to sound like an authority, or an expert, a person who is supposed to KNOW something. Worst is when the thing I'm supposed to know is HUGE, so huge that it's pretty much unknowable by anybody. But particularly by me.

It's all I can to do confide to you what this hated project is. This is partly because the editors who commissioned it might read this blog post, and this would make me LOOK BAD. It's also because when I do, you will all say, "Yup, that is TOTALLY something you are not qualified to do." But I might as well face the worst right here and now. So.... gulp....  I've been asked to write a 7500-word entry on "Ethics" for the forthcoming Cambridge History of Children's Literature in English, Volume 3, 1914-Present. 

"Ethics" is a huge topic. 

 A century is a long stretch of time for anybody to know anything about anything.

Why, you may ask, did I say I'd do this given that I knew it would generate toxic levels of terror and dread? Well, in my career as an academic I figured out right away that in order to get tenure I would have to say yes to many things I knew I was unqualified to do. After all, when I started out, I was pretty much unqualified to do anything. I'd try to reassure myself that it was fine to answer student questions in class with a frank "I don't know," but I wouldn't have been able to keep my job if I hadn't offered actual answers at least occasionally and written the requisite number of tenure-worthy articles trying to act as if I had something noteworthy to say on various topics. 

I finally got tenure - hooray! Then a few years ago I relinquished my tenure and took early retirement from my academic job. So, freed from annual performance evaluations, I truly didn't have to accept this latest assignment. But saying yes to things becomes a habit. I've always taken pride in describing myself as a yay-sayer to the universe. In any case, now that I've said yes to this, for better or worse, I pretty much have to follow through on this commitment. 

Here is what I'm telling myself as I promise the universe that tomorrow I really TRULY will do this thing!! Maybe my wise self-talk will be useful to you, too.

1. MANY people have imposter syndrome, not just academics, and not just me. MANY people are put in a position where they are expected to do something for which they feel woefully unqualified. Decades ago on a Greyhound bus I sat next to a man who covered international affairs for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He told me that after seeing his authoritative articles in print, written just by him, just by this regular guy, he now knew that all journalism was written by regular mortals just like him. Ditto for me writing academic articles: I'm just one more regular mortal who will be pretending to know more than she actually does.

2. I may consider myself unqualified for this assignment, but the people who offered it to me apparently thought I would do just fine. Why should I persist in second-guessing their assessment? In fact, I have my name on the cover of an award-winning edited collection titled Ethics and Children's Literature. I'm sure I was asked to contribute to this book on the strength of that book. Why shouldn't the person who produced a book with that title have at least some authority to write about ethics and children's literature?

3. The very (ridiculous) breadth and depth of the topic means there are at least a million things that could be included within its scope. It is clearly impossible to include them all. Selectivity is needed. Selectivity is desirable. Since I am the selector, I might as well select the subset of things that I do feel somewhat more qualified to write about. 

4. Finally, my piece will go through peer review, so I'm not the only one who bears the burden of making sure the final product is acceptable. Others will be able to weigh in with their comments and suggestions. If they think my piece is truly terrible, they will say so: peer reviewers are not shy! I once had a chapter by me for an edited collection utterly fail in peer review, but only once. I doubt that will happen here. But if it does, it happened once before, and guess what? The world kept on turning.

All right. All this self-talk is only preamble to ACTUALLY SITTING DOWN AND WRITING THE DARNED THING. I have been alive for enough decades that I know from experience that dreading a thing is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS worse than simply doing it.

Dear friends, I am announcing to the universe that I, the Unqualified One, the Terrified One, the One Hopelessly Out of Her Depth, is going to get up tomorrow morning very early and get to work on this thing. (And to be fair to me, and I am always scrupulously fair to myself, I do have notes, and thoughts, and stuff I've read, so I'm hardly starting from scratch.)

 Cue the Little (Completely Unqualified) Engine That Could: "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...."

The Unexpected Difference Our Words Can Make

Writers write for many reasons. Surely one of the most important is to connect with readers: to have our words make a difference to some reader, sometime, somewhere. 

Here is a story of how words I wrote for the most ephemeral of audiences, to be heard for three or four brief minutes and then forgotten forever, ended up having, a decade later, an impact I could never have imagined.

The University of Colorado Philosophy Department hosts a fabulous conference every summer, the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress (RoME), billed as "an international conference geared to offer the highest quality, highest altitude discussion of ethics, broadly conceived." Each conference features dozens of submitted papers as well as three keynote addresses by the most prominent figures in the field of philosophical ethics. In 2009, one of these was Prof. Judith Jarvis Thomson of MIT, who happened to have been my teacher when I was an undergraduate in the early 1970s at Wellesley College; Wellesley and MIIT had a partnership, which continues to this day, where students at one institution could take courses at the other.

I asked if I could give the introduction for Prof. Thomson. I had wonderful material in the notebook I still had from that course, as she was such a charismatic teacher that every sentence she uttered was one I wanted to preserve for posterity. 

In the notebook I even preserved her advice to us for our paper on utilitarianism:

If you can read my tiny writing, you'll see that the main instruction to us was "No eloquence!" Prof. Thomson valued crystalline clarity in writing and despised flowery prose. I also remembered many other pithy pieces of writing criticism she gave me during the time of our acquaintance as well as bracing advice from her mentoring as I applied to graduate school.

So I wrote a page and a half of introductory remarks and delivered them one summer day in 2009 to the RoME audience. I was stunned by the impact of that three-minute speech. One colleague, not known for effusive compliments, called it "the introduction greater than which no introduction can be conceived." At RoME conferences years later, strangers would approach me and say, "You're the one who gave that introduction for Judy Thomson!" Of course, the introduction was so wonderful only because Judy Thomson was so wonderful; it was the details about this unforgettable women that were the unforgettable part of my speech.

This past month, on November 20, Judith Jarvis Thomson died. The chair of the CU Philosophy Department asked if I could send him a copy of my introduction for wider sharing, and it was posted here, on the leading blog of the philosophy profession, the Daily Nous.

I started to get emails: from a University of Maryland colleague from decades ago; from a children's literature colleague who attended the same high school as Judith Jarvis Thomson and had seen my post quoted on their website; from a friend who said my post was the subject of their Thanksgiving dinner conversation, as her son had also benefitted from Prof. Thomson's wisdom; and from Judy Thomson's nephew.

I would never have guessed that a three-minute introduction of a speaker would be widely circulated eleven years later. Oh, writers, little do we know what unexpected power our words may have. And, oh teachers, little do you know how much every utterance from your lips may be cherished by hundreds of students a generation later. 

Sparking a Book Idea: Part IV

CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS THREE POSTS IN WHICH I GROPE TOWARD AN IDEA FOR MY LATEST BOOK

I had my idea fairly well worked out on many pages of handwritten notes. (By the time I was done with the entire draft, I had accumulated 28 closely written pages of dialogue with myself.) I had decided on the form for the book before I even began thinking of an idea. It was to be a verse novel, my second attempt at this enormously pleasing literary challenge. For those of you unfamiliar with the verse novel: it's a novel with all the usual requirements of plot, character, setting, theme, etc., told entirely in free verse. Most of the poems in mine aren't longer than a single page; some are just a line of two - a fragment of thought, a single image, a moment captured.

Now I had to write the book.

I write for only one hour a day, timed with my cherished cherry-wood hourglass.

Because I adore writing verse novels so much, when I am writing one I call this my "hour of bliss." On my to-do list for the day, it appears simply as "bliss." My typical daily harvest of words produced for this latest verse novel (written by hand) was three or four poems - some longer, some shorter. Some days, I produced just one poem; other days, perhaps five or six. Then (and this did take an additional untimed half hour or so), I typed them up (doing quite a bit of editing as I typed) and printed them out.

The next day my hour would begin with reading over yesterday's poems and making more edits and corrections. Then I'd write the new poems. With this system, I never lose momentum on a book and also never suffer burnout from overly intense productivity. Slowly, steadily, the pages pile up. 

On some days, I realized that I needed to think more before I could proceed. I NEVER think thoughts about my writing in my head. NEVER! I think them ONLY on paper, with pen in hand. Sometimes it seems to me that I have no inner life at all because I do all my thinking about my life - wrestling with various life challenges - on the page as well. 

I started this new book (working title, The Silent Stars) with notes made on August 14. I see in my calendar records that I spent five more hours on the gathering and groping process before writing the first page of the actual text for the book on Friday, August 28. I wrote the final page of the full first draft on Monday, November 9. There were numerous days I didn't work on it because other projects demanded my attention, such as revisions for my editor on the previous verse novel (working title, The Lost Language). But I logged my hours of bliss with considerable regularity. Toward the very end, I have to confess there were a couple of days when the story was so gripping to me, its author, that I allowed myself TWO hours of writing bliss. But I'm reluctant to tamper with a system that has worked so well for me for decades: an hour a day day, no more, no less, pretty much every day. This first draft ended up at 227 pages and 27, 210 words (a novel not in verse would have more than double that word count for the same number of pages - one reason that verse novels are popular with reluctant readers, as well as with readers who value their more literary style).

Reading it through when the full draft was done, I made only a few changes at this stage, because I rely so heavily on feedback from my writing group. Mainly I pruned early mentions of story elements that ended up not not materializing as significant later on. For example, Clover can't have a dog of her own because of her father's allergies; this is why her relationship with the dog who has a tragic accident in the story is so important to her. In one poem Clover started to have some resentment toward her father for this reason, but this just didn't fit the way their relationship unfolded, so I dropped that poem. Clover's language arts teacher begins every class with a poem, which always resonates uncannily with what is going on in Clover's heart at the time. But I decided to limit myself to mentioning in detail only one of these poems, because it's too expensive and cumbersome to get permission to publish quotations from poems that aren't in the published domain, and I didn't want this teacher to share only familiar chestnuts from the past, so a couple more poems got the axe. Clover and her father are stargazers; now was the time for me to research which constellations would be viewable in the early evening in October and November. 

My writing group will read this tweaked draft at their December meeting. Then I'll make changes accordingly, perhaps a lot of changes (my writing group is loving but TOUGH!!!) before sending the book to my agent to see what he thinks.

It's been a week now since I finished the full draft, and I have considerable post-partum depression. My days feel so empty without my hour of bliss. I have plenty of other work tasks to do, including an overdue academic project; these provide their own satisfaction once completed, but they aren't blissful, and it's bliss I crave. 

So I need to start groping toward my next book. I feel daunted by the task, but I will re-read these four blog posts to remind myself exactly how I did this before and encourage myself to believe I can do this again. 

       

Off to start a new round of musings now....

Sparking a Book Idea: Part III

CONTINUATION FEOM PART II, IN WHICH THE IDEA THAT SPARKED THE STORY ENDED UP PLAYING NO ROLE IN THE ACTUAL STORY AT ALL!

At this point in the process of planning out my book, I had begun with the idea-spark of writing a book about a girl whose family is involved in some way with a Museum of Losers, based on a real-life museum of this name I had discovered in Kansas on a road trip. But as I probed further, the project became a book about a girl who idolizes her father and then learns some dark secret from his past, with the Museum of Losers totally dropped from the story. 

I don't think I can bear to tell you what the dark secret is, because this is truly the only time in my forty-year career that I have ever had such a big OMG moment in one of my books, or really any OMG moment at all. Even though there is close to a zero chance that a single reader of this post will (a) go on to read the book when it's published years from now; and (b) remember details from this post, it seems a shame to give away my one big thrilling plot turn, so here I will just give dark little hints....

I knew the book had to have some fun in it - some lightheartedness and laughter. I knew that my protagonist, Clover, had to DO SOMETHING to drive the story. In the course of DOING this thing (the emphasis here courtesy of editor Cheryl Klein, who in her book The Magic Words insists that characters have to DO THINGS, all-caps), she will discover the dark secret about her dad. I was also wedded to the idea that this girl would have some very confident opinion that she would have to rethink. Another brilliant guru for writing advice, the incomparable Kathi Appelt, calls this the protagonist's "controlling belief," which will be tested at the moment of climax in what Appelt calls "a crisis of faith." 

I decided that this would be what Clover DOES: she starts a dog-walking business with her two best friends, Quinn and Adalee. Adalee is a chronic complainer, a gloom-and-doom Cassandra whose many dire predictions add humor to the book, but also a sense of (I hope!) delicious foreboding. Quinn is a quiet, capable, somewhat nerdy boy, whom I didn't know much about yet; I figured I'd get to know him better when he would emerge on the page. I knew something bad would happen to one of the dogs on one of the walks, and Clover would respond with rage against the person responsible; she would express this rage in a letter to the newspaper, and the publication of this letter would trigger the revelation about her dad. 

I had a plan! I loved this plan!! I loved it so much! 

I followed my usual practice of writing the first page of a new book somewhere special, by sitting with my pad of paper and favorite pen on this bench at the Denver Botanic Gardens. 

But as I wrote the first twenty or thirty pages, I kept wondering what real purpose Quinn served in the story. I had a good sense of Adalee (I think she ended up being my favorite character), but why did I even need quiet, fairly unobtrusive Quinn? Should I just get rid of him? My choice as an author was: either eliminate Quinn or have him play a more significant role in the unfolding events. I rejected the first option: I didn't want to eliminate Quinn because I wanted a boy character in the book, plus a more positive friend to balance Adalee's comic negativity. Hmmm.... what should I do with Quinn?? 

So I sat down, pen in hand, to add to my growing stack of musings, in the form of notes to myself: "What is Quinn's role? in the [dog-walking business] and in the book?"

It was in trying to find an important role for Quinn to play that I came up with an additional plot twist that became, in my view, the best element of the book. This element of the story, which I introduced ONLY to give this secondary character more of a role, ended up giving my protagonist so much more depth, because now (it turns out) SHE herself is in part responsible for what happens to the dog, and she has painful questions about her own wrongdoing to address.

I love how attention to some structural requirement of a book - here, ensuring that every character actually plays a significant role in the story - can lead to uncovering a powerful and deep truth for the story to convey to readers. Oh, Quinn, if I hadn't realized how badly I was neglecting you, how much poorer this story have been!

Of course, however we spark ideas, and however those sparks catch fire in our feverish plotting brains, we still have to WRITE THE BOOK. In the final installment of this blog-post series, I will share the hour-a-day system that led to my writing a full draft of this book from first line on Friday, August 28, to last line on Monday, November 9.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Sparking a Book Idea: Part II

CONTINUATION OF PART I, IN WHICH I GET THE FIRST STORY-SPARK FOR A BOOK!

So I had the teensiest spark of a book idea: I would write a book, a verse novel, about a girl whose family is in some way connected with a Museum of Losers like the one I had discovered in a tiny town along Route 36, which traverses the northern edge of Kansas. I knew that I couldn't write a book about a Museum of Losers without thinking hard about the back story of someone who would create such a museum. What had that person lost that might lead them to empathize with losers?

But before I tackled those questions directly, I started thinking about what my protagonist was like. Because my previous book had been a verse novel, and I was already repeating myself by choosing that same form two books in a row, I wanted to make sure that the girl in this book was very different from the girl in the previous one. That girl was introspective and reflective (qualities that work well for the narrator of a novel in verse), but she was also very passive: dominated by her charismatic but controlling best friend and her charismatic but controlling mother. The book is the story of how she comes into her own. 

I decided that the heroine of this new book, by contrast, would drive most of the plot, something that is widely viewed as essential in a book for young readers, in any case. In her wonderful book on writing for children and young adults, The Magic Words, editor Cheryl Klein uses all-caps each time she reminds aspiring authors that their main character needs to DO THINGS. The character in my new book was going to DO lots of things. Of course, the girl in the previous book DID THINGS, too, but the things she did were small... small but deeply significant... which is actually my favorite kind of thing for a character to do. But this new character would be much more strong and assertive. On my pad of notes, I scribbled as a possible aspect of her character: "someone confident in her opinions who learns to problematize them." 

Also, as the previous book focused on Betsy's relationship with her mother, this book would focus on Clover's relationship with her father, and one of her confident but reevaluated opinions would have to do with him. Maybe Clover would idolize her father and then learn something dark about his past. Ooh! 

But then I needed to figure out: What would that thing be? Hmm.....

Also, where is the mother? Why didn't she tell Clover about whatever-this-thing-is? Is she dead? Are the parents divorced? Did the mother abandon the family (perhaps because of this thing)? Or is she alive and present, but just fiercely protective of her husband? 

And what is the girl herself going to be DOING, this girl who is NOT going to be passive and dominated? What does SHE want, and why does she want it? And how does her pursuit of this thing, whatever it is, lead her to discover the dark secret about her dad? 

I ended up with a sizeable sheaf of narrow-ruled pages of handwritten notes in my tiny, cramped writing.

I kept asking more questions; I kept offering more answers. By the time the full shape of the story had begun to emerge - this is the crucial part - I HAD DROPPED THE WHOLE IDEA OF THE MUSEUM OF LOSERS!

I dropped it partly because I was uneasy that there was a real-life Museum of Losers, and my fictional museum couldn't be held hostage to the actual facts about the museum off Route 36 in Kansas, though I supposed I could include an author's note saying that my fiction museum was "inspired" by the real one. But I just felt guilty about lifting the idea of this real-life museum into my book. I had also gotten discouraged when I started looking up all the losing presidential candidates, thinking I might pepper the story with facts about this gallery of failed presidential hopefuls. They all seemed so boring! Would kids really want to read about why Lewis Cass lost to Zachary Taylor? Or why Samuel J. Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes? 

The original snippet-of-an-idea that had sparked the story was snuffed out entirely! But it had done what I needed it to do. The musings it launched took their own form and led to their own story - a story that would prove to have further surprises in store for me, its creator. 

TO BE CONTINUED!