The Inertia of Writing

It has been put to me, by more than one observer, that I am “unbelievably” productive. The incredulousness, I think, comes from within the realms of what, for want of a better word, is “normal” academic life. Normal academic life, for those rare birds who have attained it, seems to involve a lot of everything that gets in the way of productivity, even as politicians assert the right to judge rare birds precisely by how much they produce, by instituting measuring systems designed further to stifle productivity. It seems, to someone who can, I think, lay no claim to a “normal” academic life, absurd and horrendous in equal measure. My answer to the charge of unbelievability, therefore, is that I am as productive as any academic would be, if the absurdities of academic life were taken away. The rider to this is that I also do not have access to “permanence” in employment. I no longer care for it – haven’t looked for it in years – but the life of a research contractor does come with a ready dose of fear that could probably light fires in the dampest of minds. Time + fear = productivity, I suppose.

 

The “how” of it still bugs people. I have found that my answer to this question baffles and annoys, though it is true all the same.

I write. When there is a deadline pending, I consistently write 1,000 words a day, for up to four months, in order to get a book finished. Once complete, there is a period of repose, or rather, of exhaustion, when it seems as if writing would be forever more an impossibility. But there is an inertia to writing: when practiced regularly it has a momentum of its own, such that the words come again quite quickly after a brief hiatus. Phases of not writing feel like an itch, which becomes less bearable the longer it lasts. I’m scratching right now. It’s not a bad image for a writer (especially one who still uses a pen).

Yes, a pen. And ink. Not for everything, it’s true, but a manuscript goes through a phase of crafting in between first and second drafts, and this always involves the spilling of ink. I write in the margins of the first draft, and scrawl new passages on the backs of pages. I spread out pages all over the place and “move” passages with ink instructions. It’s so much more visually accessible than a computer monitor, and thinking through a nib is a different kind of thinking to thinking through keys.

If there is a master “technique”, however, it actually has nothing to do with writing at all, but rather to an affected sense of alienation from my goal. An analogy: I run. But I only hit the streets when there’s a race in the calendar, toward the end of the season. I enter the race and pay the fee, but afterwards I claim that I must run because there’s a race in the calendar. It’s a process of self-deception about which I am fully aware and reflexive, but it still works.

It’s the same with writing. At the beginning of projects I set out to write the book proposal. In the process of negotiating a contract with a publisher I state a deadline. That deadline then becomes incorporated into the contract. Suddenly I am confronted with a legal document that tells me by when I should be finished. Hence, I must write.

At present, I’m without a book contract, though negotiation is in the works. I’m working on a sample chapter to submit with a ready-to-go proposal, and I have reason to be sanguine about its chances. Writing this chapter is probably the hardest part of the whole process. It’s an investment of time and intellectual energy without a sense of alienation. As such, I’m relying on that itch, that inertia, the very muscle memory of writing, to get me to the end.