by Steffanie Triller Fry
In her October 21 post to SNL Writing News, Katie argued that distraction in the writing
process is “not a barrier to overcome
but a necessary part of the process of
overcoming” (Wozniak, Kathryn. “Distractions in the writing process.” Italics
in original). She argued that our brains, bodies, and spirit all want this
distraction in order to get us unstuck as writers.
This post
fell on the heels of the SNL Month of Writing Challenge, a month-long effort to
encourage writers to overcome distraction and produce as many words as
possible. The idea is that a month of writing will encourage us to understand
that we can write, and that the more writing that we do, the more good writing
we will do.
On November
26, Kamilah Cummings posted on “Lessons in Failure,” arguing that perhaps one
of the best ways to succeed is to readjust our goals. As she reflects on the
challenges that adult learners face when balancing their personal,
professional, and academic lives, Cummings thinks about the “psychological
impact” of teacher expectations and adult students’ struggle to meet these
expectations (Cummings “Lessons in Failure.”)
In addition
to the impact of Katie’s distraction and Cummings’ expectations, I think that when
writing, we also experience a significant amount of doubt. I see this regularly
in both myself, my fellow writers, and in my students. As an adult student in a
graduate program in creative writing, doubt is something that I think about,
experience, and attempt to overcome constantly. And, in answer to my prayers,
one of my own professors actually addressed this issue in one of my second
semester courses. In her seminar “Rich Porridge and Thick Mud,” A.J. Verdelle
shared with us the ideas of a little-known text by Kenneth Payson Kempton, The Short Story. In this text, Kempton
presents the chronology of composition from the perspective of the
psycho-emotional temperature of the writer. Below, I have reproduced his
T-Scale as Verdelle presented it to our class:
On this graph, despair through ecstasy
represent the psycho-emotional temperature of the writer. A is the point at
which composition begins. Note that the temperature (T) here hovers between
apathy and assurance: the writer is confident enough in his or her topic to
begin. T then rises steadily, the degree depending on the writer. B is the
point at which the writer begins to react to his or her composition, perhaps
after the first draft is complete. Here T drops, usually well below normal
(normal being defined as A). Kempton posits that close to C, somewhere between
apathy and despair, is where much good work has been finished.
This would
mean that most great writers – Hemingway, Fitzgerald, King, Morrison, etc,
likely finished their great works in despair! Or, at least, even when their manuscripts
were published, they still harbored doubt about their composition. When this
scale was first presented to me, I felt a kind of familiarity, kinship,
acknowledgment. I felt better about the way that I feel when it comes to writing.
But, after
Katie and Cummings’ posts, I revisited Kempton’s ideas. And, of course,
something seemed to be missing from his theory of psycho-emotional temperature
of the writer. So, I drew up my own graph, thinking in particular of adult
students, myself included. I imagined a psycho-emotional temperature of the
writer that begins at a stage before the A in the chart above. My adaptation of
Kempton’s graph is below:
What I have noticed, from working
with writers during the SNL Month of Writing Challenge, reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and experiencing my own
life as a writer, and the commonality that I notice in Cummings’ expectation
and Katie’s distraction, is that all of this “psychological noise” comes before the actual writing. Yet,
Kempton’s chronology of composition begins with the writing. So, my modified
graph acknowledges that most of us begin somewhere between apathy and despair,
and actually have to bring ourselves from my A-prime to Kempton’s A before we
can even begin. If we can learn to overcome the distance between A’ and A, that
is where the real work of writing is done. Perhaps, if we consider Kempton’s
idea that most great work is achieved at C, then we can begin to understand and
accept doubt as part of the entire writing process – beginning and end.
Works Cited
Cummings “Lessons in Failure.” Weblog entry. SNL Writing
News. November 26, 2013. January 4, 2014 http://snlwritingnews.blogspot.com/2013/11/lessons-in-failure.html
Kempton, Kenneth Payson. The
Short Story. Harvard University Press, 1947. Print.
Verdelle, A.J. “Rich Porridge and Thick Mud.” Lesley
University MFA June Residency. Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. June 2013.
Seminar.
Wozniak, Kathryn. “Distractions in the writing process.”
Weblog entry. SNL Writing News. October 21, 2013. January 4, 2014 http://snlwritingnews.blogspot.com/2013/10/distractions-in-writing-process.html
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